SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We primarily used the solution for routers and switches.

The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.

From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. I think it was kind of a neat feature they added. However, it obviously depends on who's using the platform. I use it as a troubleshooting tool mostly for historical data. That's kind of why I have a monitoring system. We rely heavily on that. We are supposed to be on 24/7 so if some resource is knocked out we can just do troubleshooting using historical data. Performance Analyzer was one of the core features I thought was pretty cool.

The idea that you can automatically trigger alerts from the TRAPS received is still something that still hasn't really taken off or worked properly. We have to manually go into the database and create SQL queries or SQL queries, to be able to match those and trigger those as alerts. On the engine itself, the Orion platform, just being able to receive the TRAP and generate the alert or something like an alert is a manual process.

We have all of these other networks that rely heavily on their own vendor protocol for monitoring, and then what the vendor has in place is just a place to be able to northbound, whatever it received to another server. 

It becomes tricky when you're trying to, for example, dry contact monitoring for power, etc. Those are not necessarily your network, they're using dry contacts. Just analog. The vendor needs to get all the information, and then put it into a format that actually works to be able to be received by other networks.

Basically, it's just important to have some sort of TRAP alert generation. There's no point of us trying to do queries into the database.

Before I joined my current company, I had been using SolarWinds for about six years.

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes.

In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node.

If you have a router that has over 400 interfaces, you need a very robust server. If you don't you'll end up running into issues.

I've never really reached out to technical support. I understand that it's alright. The very few times I've needed assistance, I was able to get some things from the SolarWinds page and their knowledge base. That's where almost everything you would need is found. 

For the most part, I've not had issues that required me to go past their knowledge base. The other thing is, when people do try to reach out past the knowledge base, the support staff always bounce back with a question like "Hey, did you check the log?" It can be frustrating because obviously you've looked and that's why you're calling. Because the answer isn't there.  

For the most part, they do a great job of having people share stuff on their knowledge base. Once you get access to that, most of what a general user would need is on there, if they running into something. The few times I've actually worked with support, it was in relation to something that was related to an enhanced feature. The experience, overall, I'd say has been okay.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

It's easy. A user can download the file, then they simply click the installer and it provides simple step-by-step click-through style instructions. It's been very intuitive for the most part. Before installation, it's important to consider space requirements, resources for the server, etc. before jumping in. Users will also need to consider (if they're running netflow) whether to save the data on the email server or not. It's possible to run out of space that way, however. There are various guidelines, however, at the end of the day, the installation process isn't complex in and of itself. 

I no longer work at the company that uses Solar Winds, so I don't have information about what they were paying or what they pay now. The current package I'm using myself is a free package as I do a comparison between PRTG and SolarWinds.

We're in the process of doing a comparison between SolarWinds and PRTG. 

At my old company, we were always using the current version of the solution. We'd like to keep up to date with the latest releases. The company even changed over when there was a move from a 2012 Windows server to an updated version of Windows (16).

We had a single server located in one location and all the other devices were networked. Sometimes SolarWinds was used as a slot receiver and trap receiver for some of those devices that have their own "NMS" (network managed system). It's not really proprietary, but we had a northbound interface to be able to send syslogs or TRAPS. SolarWinds was used as the one central location to be able to receive and process alarms and alerts for any trigger actions.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The solution is kind-of expensive, but at the end of the day, it's quite robust. It has several great functionalities. It has groups, maps, almost everything. It's just a matter of the price point that makes it somewhat prohibitive.

The primary use case of this solution is for network monitoring.

The biggest thing for me is that it provides enough information for me to monitor. It alerts and provides you with the information that you need.

SolarWinds is one of those tools that work across the spectrum with different products, such as Cisco HP.

It is very customizable. I am quite happy with what it gives me.

I can say that SolarWinds is good on the market, but it's also expensive. The price is an issue.

It would be nice to have the device tracking software as part of the Network Monitoring suite. If you go with Spiceworks, which a free shareware product, they will give you all of that type of information. They will tell you that this is all of the features you have and this is what is up and what is down, and they will tell you if the device is a laptop or if this computer is plugged into this port, which is handy. SolarWinds has that tool, but it's an additional license.

Sometimes there are issues when upgrading to a new version of the product.

The market is always changing, but one thing that would add value would be analytics. Many put that into a SIEM-type solution, but from a network point of view, if I had analytics on my network to expand with then it would be helpful. I would say normally this port does this much traffic and over the last six months it's doing that much traffic, and then all of a sudden, today, it's doing an amount that isn't normal. It means that something is wrong in your environment and you can start an investigation.

When you are dealing with a large network, there is a lot of information coming through. If you had a system that did some sort of analysis and collating of information into smaller blocks, you could quickly look at a dashboard and say these are ten points I need to go and look at because these are things that are not 100% correct in the environment.

I have been using SolarWinds for about ten years.

We have four or five users, and we have approximately 150 devices that it's monitoring.

I have contacted technical support once or twice. I logged a ticket and they responded quite promptly, and they tried to help me with it.

The only time that I have had any issues was when I was upgrading. I had one surprise in my ten year period. When I upgraded to a new version of the product, the upgrade failed. It leaves you in a position where you can't go forward and you can't go backward. You're stuck. You almost have to reinstall it from fresh and start over, which is not a great point to work from. You would like to keep all of the history and information that you have built.

It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing.

They have additional modules, for instance. They have a device tracking software that is an extra module. It tells you which device is connected to which port on your switch. It's a module that you have to pay extra for, at about $2,000.00 to $3,000.00.

It becomes expensive when you add all of these modules, just trying to do work with basic network tools.

We don't have any plans to increase usage in the future, but we do have some additional plans on providing it as a service to other companies. That said, I don't think that we will be changing anytime soon.

I have recommended this product more than once. It's one of the better products on the market, and it also has an extensive suite.

If people are looking for network monitoring software, and are willing to pay for it, and don't want a free version, I have always said that SolarWinds is one of the better options.

I think that there is room for improvement. I have seen other products that do similar, where some elements are better and some are worse. I think that it's a good all-round product, but it can be better.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

There are modules in SolarWinds NPM which are better than other competitive tools. However, some areas require new releases or updates. For example, there have not been many updates to cloud monitoring, containerization or serverless environments. In that regard, SolarWinds NPM is not as good as other solutions in the market.

It is a stable solution, and rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The scalability can be better.

The technical support has been a good experience.

The ROI has been good.

It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools and available technologies in terms of LMS or EMS.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. Regarding advice, I would recommend concentrating on gaining some expertise. A foundational or intermediate understanding of different network protocols and technologies would be helpful when using SolarWinds. In addition, understanding the underlying technology that will eventually be monitored or managed will be good.

Our clients are using Solar Winds NPM to monitor their network product. Solar Winds NPM is straightforward and you can monitor it very easily.

I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility.

I have been using Solar Winds NPM for about three years.

The product is very stable and we have been using the product for around ten years.

Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades. I would rate them about an eight or a nine.

Positive

The setup is straightforward and takes about a week.

I would rate this Solar Winds NPM an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for SolarWinds NPM is for network monitoring and SNMP traps.

SolarWinds NPM features that I have found most valuable are the reporting tools and the ability to create customized reports.

With regards to suggested areas of improvement for the product, I would like to see the price come down, and in addition I think the network element mapping tool is not as robust as it should be. 

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for 5-6 years.

SolarWinds NPM to date has been stable for me. 

The SolarWinds NPM product is easy to scale.

I have utilized SolarWinds technical support to help with issues, the experience is adequate for the the level of support we pay for. 

The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex in my view. There are many knobs, dials and buttons to push, and it can take several days to get familiar with the product and it's functionality. 

Approximately 50 users utilize SolarWinds NPM within my company. 

The most valuable features are language support and technical support.

An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients.

I have been using this solution for seven years.

The initial setup varies but can be quite complex.

This product is priced quite highly. Its licenses are available yearly, and the calculation of costs is quite complex.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor and manage network devices and infrastructure in our environment.

SolarWinds NPM has helped our organization by providing a proactive approach to understanding the current trends in the environment, utilization of the resources, and providing inventory reports of the environment. This has helped us stay ahead of the cost for new infrastructure requirements as well as licenses.

The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for approximately two years.

I have found the stability of SolarWinds NPM to be good.

The scalability has been adequate.

We have multiple users using the solution with various roles, such as network administration, server administration, and reporting users.

We have plans to increase usage. We are currently leveraging the internal infrastructure aspects of the environment. We're going to expand it and we purchased additional infrastructure to expand the visibility across multiple areas.

The technical support offered by SolarWinds NPM is pretty good.

The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades. 

We coordinate with the vendor to help support the implementation. It can take many days depending on the modules that need to be installed. It took us approximately two days.

We need at least one staff member in each focus area for the implementation of the solution, totaling approximately six, depending on the modules you have.

We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment.

Before choosing SolarWinds NPM we evaluated other solutions such as Splunk and ScienceLogic. The flexibility and the overall breadth of different modules that SolarWinds has to offer were superior to the other solutions evaluated.

I rate SolarWinds NPM an eight out of ten.

It is a good solution, it provides multiple module options, easy to use, and predominantly easy to find people to support it in the industry.

SolarWinds NPM is used to monitor network components and solutions.

We used it to monitor downtime and latency between applications, as well as the latency between services.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities.

If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better.

I have been working with SolarWinds NPM for 10 years.

We are working on the most up-to-date version.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable product.

You could question the scalability. It could be improved.

The technicals support is fair. I would rate them a three out of five.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I believe that we pay approximately $80,000 per year.

There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on.

I would suggest putting in a larger VM infrastructure than they ask for because, if you don't, it'll probably be a little slow.

I would rate SolarWinds NPM an eight out of ten.