SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We use this solution for one of our very big customers. We are consultants and I'm the technical specialist and consultant. The company is a customer of SolarWinds. 

SolarWinds core data is organized in a very good way. The solution can easily be interconnected with other management systems to get information not only from networking devices but also applications and servers.

I think the graphical environment, the GUI still has to be improved. Other tools like Power BI provide a more graphical dashboard for executives to show what's going on with operations. SolarWinds has the data but the representation needs to be enhanced for an executive view. It requires a large amount of customization to get to a point where you are able to have something concrete for the upper management team.

For additional features, I'd like to see something more in automations, the graphical interface, and some dynamic dashboards or at least the ability for integration with some dashboard tools. 

I think it's a pretty stable solution although we have identified some security gaps around it. I think it's more about managing it correctly and having the security hot fixes and patches up to date. It's generally stable and we haven't had many issues. 

Technical support is pretty good, they are very keen to help. There are some options which provide premier support and that enables access to direct SolarWinds support and upgrades. 

I think the initial setup is pretty simple, the challenge is more about trying to generate all the dependencies, setting the rules and actually setting up internals, ENBB. Our deployment was staggered and took five to six months. We started with a pilot in a region with the most number of users and complexity in order to test and configure the rules we needed. We then went global, starting with the big operations and then moving to the smaller ones which would be easier and take less time. Implementation required a couple of consultants who were familiar with the application and a team that managed the whole operation. The deployment probably involved around 10 people.

Any WAN or LAN environment will benefit from this sort of solution because it consolidates not only the monitoring but also the operation. You can actually trigger some actions based on the conditional threshold that you set in the tool.

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

It is for our current infrastructure or servers and storage system. We're using it globally to monitor our global network. We are currently monitoring all the infrastructure APM, network, switches, and routers. We have some elements in the UK and the USA. 

It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there.

It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price. 

We have been using this solution for around eight years. 

It's stable. We didn't face any issues in the last period.

It's scalable. We see expansion there. More than 500 users are currently using it.

We contacted them once last year. We requested their support with an upgrade. They were very helpful.

It's easy and straightforward. There is no complication. 

We deployed it in one day. We had POC in one day, and we prepared the servers, virtual machine. We did the installation, database setup, and firewall setup in one day. It was easy.

We get some consultants. If there are some challenges, then we definitely need a consultant.

It is too expensive.

We also use Microsoft Operation Manager SCOM. Microsoft is dedicated to monitoring servers, but it needs some improvement in network monitoring. SolarWinds is more appropriate.

We are also comparing SolarWinds NPM and Zabbix. Currently, we have SolarWinds NPM, but its license is about to expire. We need to see which product is suitable for our environment.

I would recommend SolarWinds NPM. From the product side, it covers everything. It is perfect.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We have a data center that is used by multiple clients and we need to see how applications are performing when clients are on our network. The NPM tool is used to analyze what different applications are consuming, in terms of bandwidth.

The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface.

SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market. There are better products available, albeit more expensive.

We have been using SolarWinds NPM for three months.

This is a mature product and the stability is quite good.

We have eight users including an operations analyst, system analyst, and support engineers.

We have been in contact with technical support and they are good.

SolarWinds was the first product of this type that we used.

The initial setup is straightforward. The implementation took about two weeks in a controlled environment. We had no problems with the installation and connecting to our devices.

We did not require assistance for the deployment.

One person is suitable for deployment and maintenance.

It is not an expensive product.

We will probably continue looking for a better product.

This is a product that I recommend, although it requires technical skills in order to use it.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

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.

• Real-time netflow data
• Highly customizable alerting & reporting
• Very large base of information, further customized by high compatibility with MIBs from many, many vendors, resulting in very customizable UnDPs

Being a global company with many highly-sensitive manufacturing lines and process control environments, SolarWinds consistently delivers real-time and accurate views into the deepest parts of our environment. Though my role is 100% network-side, SolarWinds has greatly benefited our team of systems-side admins as well.

Because SolarWinds is built upon a SQL database, some level of SQL query knowledge is necessary if one really wants to take customization of alerting/reporting to a deeper level. This is really difficult for someone who

1. Doesn't have the time to devote to this
2. Doesn't have a strong background in any sort of software development/coding

I've used it for three and a half years.

I was not around for the initial deployment, but I've been responsible for maintaining the environment over the last three and a half years, including product upgrades and migration(s) to new VMs.

At times, we've had trouble with lost data within the database. These were largely resolved by moving to a more stable database server. I don't recall any recent issues now that we're on 11.x.

Yes, but only due to our own willingness (or unwillingness) to deploy additional polling engines. We're actually researching this feasibility right now, so that we can support a greater number of devices globally while maintaining a centralized "pane of glass" for administration.

This is one area where SolarWinds can do better. Customer service, in terms of account renewals, and licensing, and so on, is very quota-based. They need to make their sales/transaction quotas, and that's about all that matters. They can be very pushy when it comes to the purchasing process. I think this is probably due to SolarWinds being THE solution for network/systems monitoring, and they know they have some level of a monopoly on the industry. SolarWinds is also not a cheap product -- it's very expensive under a CapEx consideration, and annual renewals are about 10-20% of the initial CapEx. So, it's not inexpensive.

This is also an area where SolarWinds could do a lot better. Every time I've opened a case, they agree to a screen-sharing session (GoToMeeting/WebEx, etc) as an absolute last-resort. Sending me KB articles and other suggestions is always the first three to four emails, until I can formally get them to agree to take a look "in-person". I greatly enjoy working with Cisco TAC mainly because of their complete willingness to dive head-first into the issue by STARTING with a screen-sharing session. It gives me, as a customer and end-user, a much greater appreciation for Cisco's interest in resolving the issues, and making sure our production-affecting problems are no longer present.

In-house implementation.

As far as I know, SolarWinds was really the only option at the time.

It was an in-house implementation.

As far as I know, SolarWinds was really the only option at the time.

Don't assume SolarWinds is the right choice. Evaluate LOTS of other alternatives. These days, SevOne is a very promising competitor. But if you choose SolarWinds, dive into it as deeply as you can. Take advantage of their free online classroom training sessions (it's thousands of dollars for you to pay for from a third-party training vendor).

• Easy monitoring of applications
• Networking
• Power
• Server infrastructure components

We are frequently able to attend to issues before our user community and customers are aware that a problem exists. We are also able to provide interfaces to our service desk and other users customized for their needs.

The stability when multiple modules are added could be addressed. We have the need to restart the monitoring solution on a weekly basis as we've combined NPM with a variety of other SolarWinds utilities.

I've used it for nine years.

No issues with deployment.

Yes, as noted above, the solution is not always stable and generally requires a weekly reboot. We do own a wide variety of SolarWinds products that are integrated with NPM.

No, additional polling engines can be purchased at any given time.

They have an excellent sales team however, they do not negotiate maintenance. So while you may get the product for 75% off list price, you'll pay 20% of list for maintenance every year. Once they have you on the product, they get their money back on the 20% maintenance on list every year.

First level usually doesn't get any further than running through the installation wizard, next, next, next. I've run into some scenarios where we've been requested to "start fresh" with data which is not a good resolution. We generally push for escalation and work with second and third level support/developers.

We used What's Up Gold at one company, which wasn't as feature rich, and Nagios at my present company which was quite expensive in terms of custom programming to get what we want out of the solution.

Quite easy, the "next, next, next" GUI installation with the addition of a standard SQL database usage made installation quite seamless and easy.

All in house.

I couldn't tack a dollar figure on this without analyzing all incidents/service requests entered based upon information obtained from SolarWinds. We do have recognition that profitability is affected at a rate of approximately. $58 x 700 = $40,600 per hour for each hour that either warehousing or manufacturing systems are unavailable.

We did an evaluation of continued Nagios utilization costs vs. purchasing of the complete SolarWinds package.

Examine all the products on the market and choose the solution that requires the least amount of interaction with the most amount of usable data. I haven't looked recently so I cant comment if this is that package or not.

Monitoring and reporting are valuable features.

Previously with RTGS software we manually retrieved monitoring reports and checked downtime but with SolarWind NPM reporting is automatic and very good with auto email and message features and because of these great features even late at night or on the weekends our network team knows which link is down.

I faced a problem with GRE over IPSec tunnel traffic, it was not showing Netflow enabled traffic and without IPSec tunnel traffic Netflow was working fine.

2.5 years

The latest issues I've encountered was the Netflow traffic issue I mentioned above.

No issues with stability, if we follow the prerequisites properly.

No issues with stability.

7 out of 10, compared to slow response time from Cisco.

7 out of 10

WhatsUP Gold because of the scalability.

It's a little complex for enterprise level installation.

With Vendor team, 8 out of 10.

Around $50,000 to $70,000 as a one time cost. If we add additional features then it will be an additional cost.

Yes, Manage Engine and Lancope StealthWealth.

It's the best solution on the market so far. I recommend adopting all the latest features in latest update.

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.