SolarWinds NPM Reviews

The simplicity of this product is a valuable feature; everything you need is easily accessible and the maintenance is low. In addition, it is customizable which makes it possible to do anything you want with little work.

NPM gets information out fast, so troubleshooting time is reduced.

I enjoy their latest revamp of the alerting feature. However, I still think there is a little more that can be done there.

I have used this product for around 12 years.

We are currently using:

• Orion Platform 2016.2.100
• WPM 2.2.1
• NCM 7.5.1
• NPM 12.0.1
• DPA 10.2.0
• QoE 2.2.0
• IVIM 2.1.2
• SAM 6.3.0
• NetPath 1.0.1

I have encountered issues only with the Microsoft OS that it lays on.

NPM has scaled in pace with my business.

I would give their technical support a 7/10 rating.

As their customer base has increased, they have been walking through more basic troubleshooting. Thus, it takes longer to get through the basic checklists of questions that I have no doubt solve many of the other issues experienced by their customers and may not even be related to their product.

Initially, we used a home-grown solution. Since it was not scaling/developing with the rate of technology, we moved onto this product.

The initial setup was simple. I have also used Whatsup Gold and open-source Nagios; they were either too simplistic or too difficult to get actionable data.

The only thing I don’t like is that NTA license size is tied to NPM’s license size, since my organization's need for NTA is lower than our need for NPM.

We looked at other solutions, namely WhatsUp Gold, TNT software and Nagios.

Keep your imagination open and keep looking around Thwack; there are lots of great ideas in there.

It is an awesome production, I just haven’t found a way to do all my work yet.

This product is useful for monitoring our network devices.

It monitors bandwidth utilized on the network and tells us whether particular nodes or particular services are available or not. 

This product is of good caliber and we get better results by using it on our network.

Not many technical people are needed for administration.

The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring.

I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better.

We began using SolarWinds NPM a few months ago.

This is a very stable solution and we use it extensively.

SolarWinds NPM is scalable.

Up to now, we haven't opened any cases to tech support. Our local support is helping us to deal with the issues and if required, we will contact the vendor for support.

This product is easy to install.

A single technical person can deploy it.

We have a technical team aligned with our support SLA and they are helping us in this regard.

We pay a yearly licensing fee.

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for detecting weaknesses and portal connectivity with our client's machines. We also use it to analyze the stacks of data to figure out where downtimes are and for how long. 

It helps us figure out how to fix problems faster than we were able to before.

The connectivity of the solution is very good.

The solution is quite robust.

My team has had a lot of issues with support.

The solution should offering monitoring for the database and for the TC (traffic controller).

I've been using the solution for three years.

The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't faced any bugs or glitches.

The scalability of the solution is okay.

Currently, we have ten people in our organization using the solution. They are mostly admins.

Technical support hasn't been the most reliable. Sometimes it takes them a long time to respond or resolve the issues. Occasionally they aren't able to resolve issues at all. The solution is great, but they're really missing the support piece.

Out of ten, I'd rate support at three or four.

We didn't previously use a different solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward. We didn't have any issues at all. I don't recall how long deployment took. It does depend on what the company needs though. It can vary from company to company. Most installations don't take longer than six hours at a maximum.

Three people handled the implementation.

We handled the implementation process ourselves. We used our own team.

We did try out some other software before we decided on SolarWinds, but I don't recall the names of the other companies.

We use the solution on a daily basis. 

I'd advise others that if they just implement the software with an engineer that knows how to handle the installation they should be okay.

We've generally had a good experience using the product.

I'd rate the solution overall eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if the support was better.

I am working at a company which is an Internet service provider (ISP). So, I'm monitoring the traffic on some nodes, like switches, routers, firewall, the traffic, and the CPU.

I am using the latest version, which I just downloaded from their site.

There is a customization feature, but it is not a good feature. While it's somewhat good, it is too complicated.

The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable.

It is stable.

It does not take much staff to maintain.

It is scalable, but my network is not that big. We have just a few nodes.

For technical support, we are dealing with someone in Ireland. I have not always received responses to my inquiries.

I previously used PRTG, but PRTG is now forbidden in Libya. So, we switched to using SolarWinds and ManageEngine OpManager.

The set up was very easy. We didn't have any problems with the setup. The deployment took less than an hour.

We used a SolarWinds reseller for the deployment in Libya. We found them on the SolarWinds website.

The pricing is very expensive for SolarWinds. That's a huge disadvantage for it.

PRTG is easier to use, but SolarWinds is more customizable. SolarWinds also has more features, but they are complicated to use.

We are just trying the demo. I am not going to recommend this to my company because PRTG is much easier. We're looking for something that is very easy to export the reports from the dashboard. SolarWinds is sort of complicated.

If you are looking for something which is very customizable for the customization of your network, then you should go with SolarWinds. However, overall, the customization feature is also a disadvantage because it can be very complicated.

We use this solution for checking databases and new devices that are added to the network. We test the L state of routers and firewalls.

The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network.

Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier.

I have been using this solution for two years.

This is a stable solution. 

We have not experienced any challenges with scalability. 

The support for this solution is satisfactory.

Neutral

The initial setup is not that straightforward and could be made easier. We have approximately 500 devices using this solution. We require only two team members for maintenance. 

I would recommend this solution to other users. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use it for our network LAN and some problem that we saw in our switching networks.

We had some interfaces where the SFP Ports were having some problems after a while. We found which of the SFP Ports was having the error and changed it, so the bandwidth become okay.

The error handling interface has been helpful. 

Mostly, we use the bandwidth monitoring because we experience problems with the bandwidth.

SolarWinds is not an all-in-compassing product. We need other products like Cisco and HPE to work with it.

It couldn't find the error to the problem because it was missing detail in the reports. The reports that we received from it weren't clear.

We aren't getting the solution that we need from the device.

We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country. The documentation is too weak.

The stability is very good.

We use it every day. We use it as a monitoring tool.

One person maintains the solution.

The scalability is very good for physical machines. For virtual machines, the scalability is challenging.

We have 10 users for 2000 devices. Most of the users are admins.

We have no plans to increase our usage.

We haven't called the technical support team. 

There wasn't enough SolarWind's documentation to fine tune the system.

For networks, we prefer to use Cisco Prime.

For service devices, we use HPE OneVIew. This is helpful for HPE services.

The enterprise setup was complex because we have too many devices (about a 1000 routers). It is very challenging to tune all these devices.

Maybe the support team didn't train us well on how to use the product. We might need experts to train us.

Deployment took about six months.

We deployed it ourselves. For deployment, two people worked.

It is expensive.

We are having some problems. Our network can't find the problem. We will probably go use Cisco Prime.

We have also considered switching to Zabbix due to its support and deployment.

Some solutions are open source and free.

We monitor five firewalls and five switch stacks in five offices. We also monitor around 30 servers that are both physical and virtual. Most of them run Windows Server 2016.

The data available per device is particularly valuable when trying to determine what caused a problem.

• Performance history is the most valuable feature, especially when tracking down a problem. 
• Root cause analysis is very valuable to us.
  

Stability is an issue. We have installed SolarWinds (Server 2016) on a dedicated physical server and as a virtual machine in a brand new Hyper-V environment with brand new servers. We only monitor five firewalls and 30 servers. In both installation scenarios, SolarWinds randomly starts reporting falsely that devices are down. We have to bounce the server, and then it behaves for a while. SolarWinds support was no help. So, we are looking for a replacement.