Instrumentation Superintendent Systems at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Customizable with a straightforward setup and reasonable pricing
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is scalable."
  • "The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use it in the OT environment. We use it for important equipment, voice equipment, safety devices, and to alarm and report on.

How has it helped my organization?

Solarwind NPM gives you a quick overview of the OT environment. This greatly  improves response times on down equipment.

What is most valuable?

The solution is quite customizable. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution is stable.

We have had a good experience with technical support.

The product is scalable.

So far, we have found the pricing to be reasonable. 

It meets expectations. With a bit of SQL knowledge, you do manage to get a lot out of your reports.

What needs improvement?

There are still huge concerns about security. The image of Solarwinds NPM took a huge knock due to SUNBURST and SUPERNOVA. Security experts are still concerned. I would suggest that Solarwinds put more effort into rebuilding trust with the customers and the market.

Buyer's Guide
SolarWinds NPM
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SolarWinds NPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for five or six years. I've been using it for a while. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is great and any issues we face are addressed very quickly by technical support.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is there. If you need to scale the solution, you can. 

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good. All of the issues I had were addressed by the support team within hours. They are helpful and responsive and I am satisfied with the level of support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not difficult or complex. It's quite simple and straightforward.

We have an internal team that can handle any maintenance we need.

What about the implementation team?

In-house

What was our ROI?

As we monitor safety equipment and underground phones, the first incident you can prevent and save a life, the ROI is instantaneous. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product compares well against all the other monitoring software out there. It is not overpriced at all.

What other advice do I have?

We're just customers and end-users.

The solution is easy to use and customization is possible. It is extremely powerful when set up correctly.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been pleased with its capabilities, although its level of security is still worrisome.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Engineer, Infrastructure Applications at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
With an easy-to-use interface for both admins and users, we use it to provide infrastructure monitoring services.
Pros and Cons
  • "The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."
  • "Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today."

What is most valuable?

An easy-to-use interface for both admins and users is key. Adoption of any product can be constrained by a UI that is neither intuitive nor visually engaging. The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products.

How has it helped my organization?

We used a monitoring platform from an enterprise vendor that was so complex to manage that we struggled even to deliver the base infrastructure monitoring services. This is not a unique position as many IT departments manage by the mantra of "Nobody was ever fired for recommending [insert enterprise vendor here]".

In a few short years, SolarWinds has empowered us to provide robust infrastructure monitoring, including a converged view of our servers, both the physical and virtual servers, and the storage and application environments.

What needs improvement?

  • Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today.
  • Scaling to the enterprise level is also an issue. SolarWinds NPM officially supports up to 100K elements (the number is unofficially about 50% higher), but enterprise customers could scale beyond that limit. However, this would only be applicable to environments with extensive interface monitoring requirements (where every interface is an element) or there is a node count > 10,000. SolarWinds is committed to growing that threshold in the near future, but no official announcements have been made.
  • Enterprise customers would also like to see high-availability and fault-tolerance. HA v1 was implemented in the latest release at an additional cost. FT has yet to hit the current release but is something we regularly discuss on the Thwack forums.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using various versions for the past 10 years.

We are currently using:

  • SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor 12.0.1
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Manager 6.3.0
  • Storage Resource Manager 6.3.0
  • Network Traffic Analyzer 4.2.1
  • Virtualization Manager 6.3.1.575

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Scalability and HA will impact larger customers. The current HA release requires the redundant nodes to be on the same VLAN. This limitation is being actively addressed in version 12.2 which is in beta testing as of the writing of this review.

Scalability is fit for most customers with capacity for over 10K devices (~100,000 elements). As with all applications running at scale designing your infrastructure is key. The published specs will need to be tuned for your environment at both the polling and database layer to push your implementation beyond 10K devices. (See notes below on scalability)

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Again, enterprise-scaled customers are probably the only ones to notice issues here and it usually happens post-upgrade. We process 4,000 transactions per second in our monitoring environment and that scale exacerbates any code inefficiencies or bugs. However, the platform is generally very stable and any issues are dealt with rapidly via tier 3 support and the development team.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SolarWinds NPM officially supports up to 100K elements (the number is unofficially about 50% higher), but enterprise customers could scale beyond that limit. However, this would only be applicable to environments with extensive interface monitoring requirements (every interface is an element) or a node count >10,000. SolarWinds is committed to growing that threshold in the near future, but no official announcements have been made.

Virtualization Manager can scale almost infinitely, but we found that it performed best, especially when integrated with the SolarWinds NPM framework, with more moderately sized vCenters rather than a fewer large vCenters.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer service is exceptional if not a little too communicative at times. SolarWinds does an exceptional job of engaging their customers.

Technical Support:

Technical support is currently the achilles heel of SolarWinds.

  • Non-critical issues can be handled through an extremely active and passionate user forum (at thwack.solarwinds.com), but actual technical support requires engaging their team via a case that can be opened from the support portal or by phone.
  • Every customer receives the same level of support regardless of their size, and there is no option to purchase 'advanced' support at this time. Enterprise customers will find this model challenging. This is mitigated by hiring experienced SolarWinds engineers, especially SolarWinds MVPs.

Developing an enterprise support model with measured and reported SLA and OLA targets should be at the top of the SolarWinds support model to do list.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In every case where I have used SolarWinds, I have displaced an enterprise platform from a larger software company including, but not limited to, IBM, HPE, NimSoft, and so on. I've also displaced segment competitors because of the aggressive pricing model from SolarWinds and their favorable cost-to-value ratio.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is as about as easy as they come. SolarWinds products are renown for being easy to install and configure, and for rapid time-to-value; but the devil is in the details.

As an experienced enterprise engineer, I often see inexperienced engineers jump into the product and start producing metrics that add value under the assumption that everything out-of-the-box adds value. This is not the case; and it is a weakness of the installation model. Customers can be lulled into a false sense of success by their rapid deployment and TTPP (time-to-pretty-pictures). Understanding the data is just as important, perhaps more important, than getting the data.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented through an in-house team but that team consisted of a lead engineer who is now a SolarWinds Head Geek. You can absolutely deploy this without professional services but depending on your timeline, objectives, and workload within your organization you may need to engage the services of a consultant. There are many freelance and corporate freelance options out there but be sure to ask around about their experience.

What was our ROI?

Reduced annual support costs by 75% year-over-year based on our prior solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs. The first year of maintenance is included in the initial purchase. This helps drive down the ROI in the first year. Subsequent years are a percentage of the retail cost. They are on par with similar service offerings from other companies.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We considered options from most major vendors. SolarWinds won out because of the low price-to-value ratio; and the immediate and long-term cost savings made by displacing other products.

What other advice do I have?

Avoid the urge to go quickly. Take the time to forecast your growth in the next 12-24 months and plan the infrastructure for that target. Always follow the size and scaling recommendations, especially for your database environment. Do not use RAID5 for your database as the transactional environment or SolarWinds Orion will overwhelm your storage environment.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user575310 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user575310Engineer, Infrastructure Applications at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User

If you aren't following the updates to NPM in the SolarWinds Community Forum (Thwack.com) you should - https://thwack.solarwinds.com/community/network-management_tht/orion-network-performance-monitor

See all 3 comments
Buyer's Guide
SolarWinds NPM
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SolarWinds NPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user651858 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
I can monitor server performance. This tool lets us know when a site is about to go down, before it does so.
Pros and Cons
  • "With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
  • "If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools."

What is most valuable?

I find there to be three areas in which this suite provides significant value.

It integrates well as an ‘everything’ tool. We all understand the concept of “jack of all trades, master of none”, but SolarWinds tends to cover 80-95% of everything across every module they have. This means that if I have vendor A for product A and vendor B for product B, there’s a pretty good chance they can integrate it with the rest of their suite.

For example, they have a network monitoring (NPM) core module that integrates with SAM (Server and Application Monitor) and NTA (Netflow Traffic Analyzer). This gives you a very good first view of an environment. It’s very analogous to SCOM in how complete it is with Microsoft products, but with none of the limitations. For example, SCOM doesn’t handle network equipment very well.

With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server. They can all:

  • Be monitored as if they are on-premise
  • Handle syslogs/traps/logs
  • Monitor most applications out-of-the-box with a lot of flexibility
  • See who sends traffic to whom via NTA.

All of this tends to display on a single page for each node that I choose to monitor. Every tool tends to build on one another and SolarWinds does tend to highlight where the tools integrate and how.

With staff that has some technical knowledge, this tool is pretty intuitive out-of-the-box. Getting people to look at it may be one thing, but getting those that are at least at a helpdesk level of knowledge serves to take them very little time to orient, if the tool is set up properly.

They have a THWACK support forum that is incredibly useful. I remember the days of trying to search for Microsoft problems and running into support forum posts that range from "useless" to “actually something that would harm your environment” with an extremely high noise ratio.

With THWACK, the developers will often reply directly in the forums with helpful replies. The community is also extremely helpful and fairly loyal. I’d consider it to be more like how I imagine that the Splunk community functions.

How has it helped my organization?

In a more recent example, we rely on this tool to let us know when a site is about to go down, before it does so.

We do this by monitoring when interfaces drop (multiple connections to a site) or when interfaces have received errors. Both typically occur before a site goes down entirely. It has helped us a ton to actually be proactive and not simply wait for customers to call.

What needs improvement?

I feel there are two areas of improvement. One of which SolarWinds employees will probably roll their eyes about and the other one that maybe they didn’t realize:

  • If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools.
  • For example, if you don’t have the storage module, you won’t be able to even do the basic monitoring (interface, memory, CPU, etc.) for a NetApp device that you can do for other device types that are covered in other modules. Install SRM and suddenly it works, like magic!
  • I’m OK with the concept of “you have to pay for the storage monitoring if you want to do storage monitoring”, but this becomes an issue in certain areas depending on what modules you license. This is also something that people may run into the hard way if they didn’t realize that this was the case.
  • Some of the older components are in need of updating, which is something they’re focusing on more and more. But there are some areas where new tools work this way and old tools work that way. Some of these have gone away little by little, like classic report writer (which was on the server itself requiring RDP) and the old “advanced alert manager” which required the same. In today’s environment, having to RDP to the server just to do things that you’d do on the front end doesn’t quite make sense. There are some that still exist, though they are lacking some modern features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used SolarWinds for almost five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are a few things to watch out for regarding stability. All of them are basic administration issues. For example:

  • Do run configuration wizard after EVERY single module update
  • Do not give every user of the tool view rights and report rights, etc., where people are going to be messing with everyone else’s views and reports (or creating reports that kill the DB).
  • Do create custom views so that people aren’t seeing everything and stressing the web client, etc.

In older module versions, there were issues where upgrading from module version A to module version B could sometimes carry over old things that had a performance impact on the app servers themselves. But these days, you can blow away the install and do a clean one to fix that.

On new installs, as of the latest few releases, they upgrade everything for you and/or have smart installers to make this significantly easier.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is something that isn’t quite straightforward for new admins. But, you can either:

  • Install an additional poling engine on a second server for more scalability
  • Install an additional polling engine on the PRIMARY app server for more scalability (stacking)

How are customer service and technical support?

I rate technical support everywhere from poor to great. Lately, it’s been getting better and better. But in the past, it was very hit or miss.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I’ve used SCOM and CA before. We switched off of both because they were awful. CA cost a boatload and had a very limited feature set.

SCOM requires too many people to be dedicated to SCOM to be of actual use.

Plus, the aforementioned scope limitations and the requirement of having to go through *every* monitoring pack with every affected group in detail, takes up way too much time.

How was the initial setup?

The initial installation is super simple. Pretty much you install SQL on one server, the app on another, and then you’re done.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers. Sales will negotiate on new product purchases as well as upgrades. Also, remember you can always run a 30 day trial of any tool you want to consider without committing any money.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We’ve evaluated PRTG, CA, SCOM, and Splunk.

What other advice do I have?

It’s a super easy tool to use, but you need to make sure you have a plan for what you want to do with it.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user347748 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user347748Senior Technical Analyst at CS Softwares.
Consultant

@MatthewReingold The company when choose poll 60s Understand is necessary Less data storage time, or hardware upgrade on the database server.

See all 4 comments
Solutions Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
The network and server application monitoring features are strong.
Pros and Cons
  • "SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong."
  • "SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."

What is our primary use case?

We use SolarWinds for network monitoring. It's suitable for mid-sized or enterprise-scale companies. It can work for a small business, too, because it's not too expensive. 

What is most valuable?

SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong.

What needs improvement?

SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot.

At the same time, some tools don't have the ability to customize, so SolarWinds is ahead of the competition, in that regard. I would also like to see more support for software-defined network platforms and enhanced API monitoring capacity.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for more than five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SolarWinds offers some options for scalability, but there is a bottleneck on some features. I hope the scale of NetFlow can be increased. Also, SolarWinds uses the Microsoft SQL database, which doesn't allow distributed architecture or scaling options.

How are customer service and support?

I rate SolarWinds support seven out of 10. The quality varies depending on who picks up the phone.

How was the initial setup?

In most cases, setting up SolarWinds is simple. However, when customers have some special requirements, the deployment can become highly complex.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I rate SolarWinds NPM six out of 10 for pricing. It isn't the cheapest solution, but it's still affordable.

What other advice do I have?

I rate SolarWinds NPM eight out of 10. I would recommend this product for medium-sized and enterprise-scale companies.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Yoshiro Travezano - PeerSpot reviewer
IM Infrastructure Specialist at Anglo American
Real User
Efficient support, easy installation, and helpful for monitoring our operations
Pros and Cons
  • "Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
  • "The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."

What is our primary use case?

We are a mining company, and we use this solution to monitor our system operations. We monitor the truck service, and we have the network devices installed onto the equipment.

What is most valuable?

Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up.

What needs improvement?

The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is good.

How was the initial setup?

It was easy to set up. It took less than a month.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Vice President Of Global Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Easy to deploy and good alarm tuning but cost prohibitive for smaller companies
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is easy."
  • "Technical support can be slow to respond."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for network health.

What is most valuable?

The ease of deployment is great. I also would say that it gave us good capabilities to tune alarms. 

I'm overall a huge fan of Solarwinds. To me, it's a top quadrant for a solution and I would be pushing for it internally were it not cost-prohibitive for startups.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

The initial setup is easy.

What needs improvement?

The downside was the expense. At large, large companies, that's okay. However, at companies like mine where we're building a tech startup, it can be cost-prohibitive.

They've had some issues with security, and confidence in their product is probably down.

Technical support can be slow to respond.

I would like to see more of a focus on edge computing and edge device monitoring.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for several years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. Aside from the very public hack, from a user's standpoint, it's good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's easy to scale. I'm probably an avid fan and I'd say it's easy to scale. 

We have around 100 to 150 people using it at our company.

How are customer service and technical support?

We didn't always get the responsiveness that we needed in terms of the level of urgency. If it was something where it was potentially project-related and very time-sensitive, they didn't match our level of urgency which could be frustrating. 

That said, overall, when it came to deployment or wanting upgrades or improvements or changes, that we would get good support. 

Still, for incidents where you are in a mission-critical and you have an incident that you need assistance with, they weren't always as quick to respond.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward and simple. A company wouldn't have any issues with it. It's somewhat easy to deploy, however, I'm not the engineer. I was the business leader. I just know that I never received any complaints.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is expensive and may not be very affordable for startups or smaller companies.

What other advice do I have?

We're just customers and end-users.

We are likely using the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number.

We use both the public and private cloud deployment models. 

I led a team of several hundred engineers who used SolarWinds every day. I would be involved in making the decision of a product to go through. Once they came in and recommended me their top three, I would choose it.

I would advise potential users to first take a look at some of the newer vendors on the market who may be a little bit more nimble and are coming out of the box with a focus on edge and edge devices. SolarWinds has a heavy, heavy background. There are lighter options. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Lets us track down brownouts in a multi-host, multi-guest virtual environment
Pros and Cons
  • "As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning."
  • "The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."

What is our primary use case?

We have been making use of the most recent version.

We use it for monitoring our uplink ports on our routers and switches. We also use it to monitor our servers and we utilize its disc space and processor memory. We do the same thing for the routers and switches.

How has it helped my organization?

An improvement the solution has brought to our organization is that it enables us to track down what I call brown outs in a multi-host, multi-guest virtual environment. It allows us to see why and when this occurred and to know what else was transpiring at the time that we had received an end-user complaint of the system running slowly. 

What is most valuable?

As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service. 

What needs improvement?

The solution should make things easier to set up on a node by node basis. When turning on the network scanning to try to set up nodes, it has a tendency to grab everything in site, every port on a firewall, for example. One should have the option of picking through these before they're automatically added, so that there should be no need to go through them manually and delete them. The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work. Once the nodes have been added, there is a need to go in and delete them manually. 

I cannot think of additional improvements that are worth mentioning. The solution does a pretty good job all around. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using some version of SolarWinds for 20 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. We don't see many outages of the actual platform. The sole exception would concern us taking a process in which we would be restarting it on a monthly basis. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is very scalable. I've never seen a problem with this.

I don't have any plans to increase the usage in the future. I would not say that the solution is being extensively used, as we're not necessarily monitoring everything that we could, there being no need for some of this in our environment. I would make use of the performance monitor should I wish to dive deeper into a running system for detailed analysis.

How are customer service and technical support?

As I have been using the solution for so long, I have not had any need for technical support. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used other products prior to SolarWinds NPM. I switched because the solution provides a consolidated view of everything. 

How was the initial setup?

A moderate level of knowledge of the product's use is required for installation. 

The initial installation occurred a long time ago. While, for me, this process would not take long, somebody who is new and who has never used the solution may take a day or two to do installation and to become fully up to speed of what is being added, the reason for doing so and how the solution should be configured. 

Installation is not easy for a person who lacks the requisite experience. 

What about the implementation team?

I did the integration myself. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I renewed the licenses around two-and-a-half to three years ago and do not have the relevant numbers off the top of my head. 

What other advice do I have?

I would estimate there are three insfrastructure managers, with myself as the head of the IT department. There is at least one other technician working on the wide area, local area network.

My advice to others is to add their nodes manually, not to let the network discovery and auto ad run.

I rate SolarWinds NPM as an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Donald Bakels - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Adfontessoftware
Reseller
Top 20
Reliable and awarded bandwidth analysis that provides important information about performance and traffic
Pros and Cons
  • "A product that is well-tested and trusted in demanding situations."
  • "The only thing that can be improved is to continually add to the existing capabilities of the product."

What is our primary use case?

We are a reseller of SolarWinds, so that is our primary use. SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer is actually a marketing name. That is the brand name of a couple of products in a suite. The main product of the network management suite is NPM, or the Network Performance Monitor, which is qualified as a global market-leading product and has won a lot of awards in the past few years. It is the flagship for network management software.  

The cool thing about that product is that you can use it to also monitor your network cloud connections through the internet. That is quite a unique feature. With this NPM piece, called NetPath, users can see how their applications on the internet are behaving performance-wise. So, for example, you can see how your Office 365 use, status, and performance are doing on the internet. Our customers would otherwise not have a clue when they have performance issues without using this tool.  

What is most valuable?

What is good about this product is that the customers get real insights into the behavior of their network. They can see what is flowing over it. They will know what kind of data it is, like whether it is YouTube movies or if it is application information. This allows them to get an exact picture of how their network is being used.  

What needs improvement?

I see a tendency in the industry that a lot of software is going into the cloud. Customers now have to install it on-premises or they could install on-premises software in the cloud. That is also possible. So I see a tendency that software is becoming more cloud-related and I think that it is valuable for customers. SolarWinds should continue in this direction.  

As far as areas that can be improved, we already have NetPath functionality. Maybe that can be improved even more to add more options for visualization.  

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution since 2013.  

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product is very stable. It has been a proven software solution for a couple of years. 
We have sold this to global banks who use it to manage their global networks. For this purpose, it needs to be very scalable and very stable.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a very scalable solution as well. It is meant for large businesses but small and medium-sized businesses can also use this product. They can all use it, but I see more and more big companies — enterprise companies — coming to use this software. This includes data centers, global industries, banks, other financial institutions, insurance companies, and big brand names.  

How are customer service and technical support?

We do not have to contact the technical support for SolarWinds that I am aware of. Sometimes I have heard of support cases that are resolved really quickly by SolarWinds for their clients. We can not have any kind of issues in production. The company knows this so takes this responsibility for support very seriously.  

So I would say that overall they have good support.  

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have been working with another HP product called OpenView a long while ago, but that software is now disappearing and it is being replaced by HP with SolarWinds. The big bank I worked with has already replaced all the HP OpenView software with the SolarWinds product.  

The main difference between SolarWinds network monitoring software and other software is the price and the ease-of-use of the tool. The software has also been made by network engineers for network engineers. The designers are in the industry as well. So they speak the same language and the software is being endorsed by other IT engineers.  

How was the initial setup?

It is very easy to set up. We also deliver consultancy and I recommend to all our customers that they have us involved in the configuration of the software. It is easy to install but then when it is running, it has to be configured. We are good at that.  

What about the implementation team?

We recommend an integrator or consultant while deploying it because this part is very important. That is a bit of marketing, of course. But we are experts with a lot of experience. We see what happens with the customers and we already know what they need and why they have the product, so we recommend they take some help from us with this. 

We do mostly one-on-one consultancy with someone who can do the job. He is engaged for a couple of days and depending on the customer's requirements he takes care of those needs. For example, some of them want to have an integration with other software, like ServiceNow.  

If they want to have SolarWinds integrated with something like ServiceNow it takes a bit more time because it adds a level of complexity. Then the client should also get training in the new product. We provide certified admin training for the software. We train about eight people at one time and they get a certification at the end of the week after a five-day training. Having a SolarWinds certified staff member is very valuable for our customers as then they are experts as well in-house.  

What other advice do I have?

My advice to people who are coming to SolarWinds is that they do a training on the website and take advantage of exploring the trial version. The free trial will allow them to use the product and get to know the features before paying for it. I always recommend that smaller organizations start small. You can make the initial purchase of a very simple license which is not very expensive. Then you can build it out later to a bigger scale and then use the software company-wide.  

So the advice is really to begin small and build it out and take more licenses as you need them. You can pick the functionality that you need at the current time and scale-out. Sometimes you need more functionality or you may need more analysis as well. You can take another module and put it into the Orion platform to integrate it. Sometimes a customer might say they are having some database performance issues. We use the Orion module DPA (Database Performance Analyzer) and then they get to see a lot of information about how their applications are using the databases — like an Oracle SQL server. Another company is also producing a database performance monitoring tool for Progress Databases and some other open-source flavors. So over time, the picture is getting more and more complete to cover everything that clients want to do.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a nine. The reason I would give it a nine is that our customers are evaluating the software and they are big brands, like famous names in the banking industry. They really rely heavily on the software for their business. Before they purchase it, they go through a fairly strict selection procedure to get everything they need, find out if it is stable, and how well it is running. They make the product pass rigorous testing and evaluation. So if it is good for them, it is a proven solution. It is stable, scalable, reliable and not too expensive.  

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SolarWinds NPM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SolarWinds NPM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.