SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We are customers of SolarWinds and I'm the corporate IT infrastructure manager.

SolarWinds provides a good enterprise level of tools and covers the essential components. I like the new GUI. 

The solution could be enhanced. It currently lacks integration with SMS services which is something we need. A cloud-based option would also be helpful so we can monitor at any time and from anywhere; for now, we need to VPN to our environment. 

I've been using this solution for six years. 

The solution is generally stable although there are occasional bugs when updating to the latest version. 

The scalability is good, we currently have around 2,000 users. 

The initial setup is simple.

Compared to other products, SolarWinds is not expensive. 

We evaluated Zabbix and Nagios but SolarWinds is better for enterprise organizations. Other solutions are on a smaller scale and only provide basic monitoring; SolarWinds has a better engine.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use SolarWinds NPM for network monitoring.

The most valuable features of the solution are its graphical interface and reports.

The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long. The solution needs to provide better training videos, especially on creating individual reports. It would be good if reporting were made easier with SolarWinds NPM.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for five years.

SolarWinds NPM is a very stable solution.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

I am the main user of SolarWinds NPM in our organization.

I rate the solution a five out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s customer support is not very good.

Negative

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly.

The solution’s maintenance is easy. The solution can be easily integrated with other services like Cisco. There are issues with the solution's updates, and our security team has not approved them. So, we are waiting for the new version to be approved.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The SolarWinds product is easy to deploy and the product features are quite granular. We can dig deep into the infrastructure and at the data level, or we can aggregate and come higher up and look at all the trends and analysis of what it provides.

The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved.

I've been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is a highly scalable product. Users can use something like F5 or load balancing. That gives you failover and similar infrastructure for disaster recovery as well. It's very, very scalable and stable product.

Usually, NPM users will be fewer as they're all network engineers. The solution doesn't require hundreds of users. We have about eight to nine. However, we deploy SolarWinds with a lot of clients. If you look at our clientele and our own user base in NPM, we must have had more than 100 users on this product between clients.

Technical support is excellent. 

SolarWinds wants its partners and resellers to succeed. They give you all the support, all the training for free. It's really, really, really good.

One of the competing products for this solution is Cisco SecureX. We have used it in the past.

The setup and deployment are quite simple. 

It's straightforward, however, you need to have networking knowledge. If you have knowledge of the network, then it's straightforward. It's a great product.

On a medium-sized enterprise, for one of our clients, we deployed it in three hours.

We've got our own engineers to handle the setup. However, whether we set IP up or not all depends on the client. If they define everything properly, the delays are not with the product. The product actually answers a lot of the client's questions and helps the client determine what they should be doing.

You've got the annual license, and then you've got a perpetual license as well. The pricing is very affordable.

There is no extra cost beyond the licensing. 

It is the latest version. The latest version comes with observability as part of the package. It's SolarWinds attempt to bring all its products under one platform. We've kind of become quite an expert in the area.

We are a provider of SolarWinds. We are an MSSP and also a reseller. It depends on what the client wants. 

We want to launch it as an MSSP for SMEs, and small companies who can't really afford a full install. We just doing a SaaS model so they can deploy it at cost to SMEs.

I'd advise potential users to use the one-month free trial and get a company like us to do a proof of concept and then do the NPM, application monitoring, log monitoring, et cetera. One by one, pick up all the products and integrate them.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case for the solution is to monitor whether certain devices are up or down, monitor bandwidth utilization and have a network performance monitor.

The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable because we use the solution for monitoring. For example, a map that shows all of our switches, which make up our core infrastructure, and then the small firewalls that connect to the other locations so that we can see how our devices are running. Hence, the monitoring ability to create those maps and monitor everything on warmup is a very valuable feature for us.

The solution works very well for our current use case, but the price of the solution can be improved.

We have been using the solution for a while and are currently using version 12.4, but we are considering upgrading it.

We have not had issues with stability. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable, and there is currently only two staff utilizing the solution in our organization, but we have plans to increase usage further.

We have a fairly small environment, but this is because we only have about 15 switches, some servers, and our remote locations, so we're using a couple of hundred nodes altogether, but we can scale up to probably thousands or even tens of thousands because there is room to add additional servers. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

We dealt with customer service and support once for a license issue, and they resolved our concerns swiftly.

Positive

SolarWinds NPM was the first network monitoring solution we used

The initial setup was complex as there was quite a bit of work that had to be done in terms of setting up databases and making sure the database was linked to the application.

We implemented the solution through a vendor team the first time, but further installations were done in-house.

The licensing costs are fairly high. I rate it a five out of ten.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten based on our current version. The solution is a robust and stable product but can be improved by reducing its licensing costs. Therefore, I recommend the solution to users considering implementing it.

We use the solution for our network. It's for P2P networks or our servers to our network.

It can be a monitoring tool that just monitors for us at the moment, checking what the issue is or where the issue is. It is managed by a third party. Basically, it just gives us a view of what the site is. We can see our server connection and whether it's up or not. It's just checking if the servers are up or not and if the network is up or not. It's not doing too much else.

The solution is very user-friendly. 

When it pinpoints something, I will get an email alert. I'll immediately know what the problem is and be able to do something. 

The pricing is great. 

We were looking for some sort of endpoint monitoring as well. it would be nice if that was covered. We'd like to have more security when it comes to ADR. 

We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future. 

Sometimes, if the problem isn't on our side, it doesn't provide a very clear problem in terms of what the issue is. 

I've been using the solution for about two years. 

It's been very stable and reliable. I'd rate the stability ten out of ten. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs. 

We just have one user on the solution who monitors it. Three of us can cover it at any given time. It's web-based. 

A third party helped with the initial setup, and they handled everything. I'm not sure how the deployment worked. 

The initial setup was done by a third party. 

The pricing is decent. We chose to use it based on the price. I can't speak to the exact cost, however, I can say it is very reasonable. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. 

As a user, I would recommend the solution as it is user-friendly and easily understandable. It will tell you exactly what the issue is and where. It's quite useful. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers.

SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license.

If we want to have more polling engines it will cost an additional 20 Indian rupees.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for approximately nine years.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

The scalability of the solution is good. It is easy to do.

I would recommend this solution to enterprise-sized companies.

The support is good.

I rate the support from SolarWinds NPM a five out of five.

Positive

The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India.

I find this solution to be better than others because we are familiar with it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SolarWinds NPM a nine out of ten.

What I like about SolarWinds is the application health monitoring system. It's a very good system, and I recommend it to big companies in the pharmaceutical or the banking industries, for example, with large networks and very critical servers. 

The other valuable system is the DSS (decision support system). If there's a fault in the network, SolarWinds is basically capable of rectifying and resolving that problem on its own without any intervention from an IP assistant or administrator.

The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations.

I have approximately seven years of experience.

We have a hybrid cloud type of deployment.

SolarWinds is a stable product.

It's a very scalable solution because you can install different pollers.

I have not had a good experience with technical support because most of the time when I contact them, they first want to know whether you have a license. If you do, then they support you. However, if you are working on the evaluation version they do not take your queries very seriously. There is some level of support, but it's not at a high level. So, I'd rate them at six on a scale from one to ten.

Neutral

The initial setup process requires specific knowledge of the product, and if the implementation manager has the appropriate knowledge, it will not be that difficult to set it up.

The deployment can take up to two weeks depending on the size and complexity of the network.

When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low.

I mostly recommend SolarWinds, especially to companies with a low budget or to those that are not ready to spend a good amount on network management and network tools.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate SolarWinds at eight.

If there's a connectivity issue, the packets have dropped, or the traffic is going through any of the routers, you can see where that is just stuck.

The individual’s bandwidth we do not know. For monitoring purposes, we can find the exact amounts through this NPM, Network Performance Monitor, and Network Traffic Analyzer. We can see who is using how much bandwidth and where the traffic is stuck. It provides visibility to show what the issue is in our network.

The solution is very good. Previously, in the solution, there was no more option for customizing the reports and the alerts. However, they’ve improved. Now, in the last two years, since 2021, they have had a new release, a new version, and there are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports. 

Over the last couple of years, they have introduced features like NetPath and PerfStack. That is very helpful for any of the admins to troubleshoot issues to know precisely what is going on in nodes.

If we go for the NT license, then we have to purchase the NPM, Network Performance Monitor. That is a dependency. In all of the SolarWinds products now, there are only these products. For example, Net Traffic Analyzer is a product. If we go for the licensing, then we have to purchase a Network Performance Monitor. There's dependency there. If they could combine everything into one product, that would be very helpful.

The NT is the enhanced version of the NPM. They have not put a license on the different monitors of the NT. However, they have to include in the same manner in the NPM itself.

For NetPath services, right now, we have to manually install the events in the nodes. If there was something from the console side, we could post the event to the nodes. If there was automation, that would be helpful. Already there's automation for other types of things or in other features, like for communication of the nodes. However, for the NetPath feature, if we could automatically move the event from the console side to the application side, that would be a great feature.

I’ve been using the solution for the last five years.

It’s stable.

In 2020, as most people know, there was an attack on SolarWinds. At that time, there was a problem. However, in 2021, everything was good. If it wasn’t, we would have been looking for another solution. Everything has been stabilized.

We are using one in five total devices connected to that SolarWinds. We are using an AP, Additional Polling engine that will scale the solution. Scalability is there.

Only the licensing part is different. We have to purchase more licenses on that part. Currently, we are monitoring 12,000 nodes. If we want to go to the 13,000 nodes, then we have to purchase one additional license, the Additional Polling license.

We have about 50 people using the solution. They are system admins. In the North, the solution is used vastly. In the South, the solution is used by the different departments. I'm not part of the South. I'm part of the North.

We do have plans to increase usage.

For L2 or L1 problems, we are giving the support. For the L3 level, if the issue is beyond our reach, then we contact the support team from Solarwinds.

We have an online number. We have to call that number, and we’ll get support. They will support you, for example, if the system is down. Otherwise, you can open a support ticket, and they will help.

Overall, the support is good.

Now we are using Tripwire also for some of our customers. It is also good.

I am not using any other products. However, there are some solutions that are free tools.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have to just go to NetPath and just connect to the database. Once the connection is established to the database, then we will be up on both devices. There are a lot of options for onboarding the devices. It is easy. Anyone can do it.

There's an admin guide. There's a very helpful guide that SolarWinds has provided on their customer portal. There are training options too. You are well prepared.

The deployment took two to three hours to install the product and five to six hours for the entire deployment. It’s pretty fast if you have a good strategy.

While one person is enough to deploy or manage the solution, it would depend on how many devices you are dealing with.

If you are going to monitor 2,000 devices, one person is enough. If you're going to monitor a large number of devices, you might need two managers for all devices.

We are the third-party vendor for the bank. We deploy the solution, and we support them. We provide professional services as well.

The basic ROI is the fact that the client is happy, and that’s all that matters.

I’m only a technical person. I don’t have access to the pricing.

Extra costs come under support and maintenance. Obviously, we always consider support and maintenance under the same licensing cost. They'll only provide one year of support and maintenance.

We had to go for the SolarWinds. We are not able to work with any other solution.

Once the solution is implemented, we'll populate whatever the dashboard is. However, some of the things will not populate. There is a need for services there. We can use the NetPath services feature. We can export that feature to the dashboard. However, it will be easy for any of the system admin to troubleshoot the issue.

I’d rate the solution ten out of ten.