SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.
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SolarWinds NPM
Score 8.2 out of 10
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SolarWinds NPM is a monitoring and performance management platform. It provides performance troubleshooting support, auto network discovery, customizable thresholds, and can be rapidly deployed.
We evaluated PRTG Network Monitor which was similar to SolarWinds but was very resource-intensive and the server kept crashing when we got close to 100 devices
whereas on SolarWinds we were able to add several thousand devices. We
also evaluated Nagios Core as a free …
Solarwinds Network Configuration Manager is extremely powerful in allowing our organization to automate specific tasks. It is extremely simple to use and offers a Graphical User Interface for performing tasks. I am a very curious person, which has led me to use Ansible simply …
SolarWinds NCM solution is more flexible and GUI is from my point of view more intuitive, from the other hand Manage Engine solution is [a] cheaper solution which has almost [the] same functionality but suffers of luck of deeper integration with other Manage Engine modules.
At the time SolarWinds was the biggest player in the space and their whole portfolio was very comprehensive. As time progressed and newer technologies came about (i.e. SDWAN) their products couldn't keep up with the consumer demands and changing market. Security became such a …
NCM is superior to ManageEngine or Spiceworks in its ability to automate the primary tasks of a configuration management tool. Of course, it integrates well with other applications in the SolarWinds Orion suite of applications. The list of vendors supported by NCM is larger as …
If it has been used and it has been functional since it reduces the work time by more than half, making the process faster, safer, and more precise, carrying out not so complex and functional processes referring to configurations of multiple devices at the same time in an agile …
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) was by far the easiest to implement and it just started working right out of the box. Within a few hours were we populating our config backup repository and soon after that, we were writing scripts to audit our configurations. …
We have a very diverse IT environment (Cisco/Palo Alto, VMWare, Cisco UC, SD-WAN, Windows Servers) and we wanted to have one suite of software that we could manage as many of our different areas in one single pane of glass. SolarWinds allows the network team, VOIP team, Storage …
Prior to implementing SolarWinds NCM, we were utilizing a free solution called RANCID. This solution is a Cisco specific opensource tool that allows a simple backup of Cisco device configurations. This tool was very limited in our ability to search, backup, restore, and …
We tried a few different products at a cheaper level such as Spiceworks and PRTG. But were unable to make them work for everything we would get with Solarwinds. We also tried a few products at a higher price point like Ipswitch by What's up Gold and BladeLogic Network …
We selected NCM because of its integration with NPM and other products. Pricing, Support, and Thwack all played a major part in the reason for the procurement and implementation of this system.
When I took over my current position, we'd already purchased SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, but we were not using it. I can't, therefore, compare it with other tools, as the only thing I have to compare it to was our manual processes. When compared to any …
We used to use Kiwi Cat Tools to backup the configurations on our network devices. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager has replaced that functionality and added so much more. We now are also able to run configuration change jobs and reports to make sure that all of our …
Probably the best feature of NCM is integration with other SolarWinds products. This enabled us to have a single pane of glass for management of all our network infrastructure. Simply adding NCM management to all our devices also gave us basic performance monitoring to the same …
We haven't vetted out any other solutions for backing up our network devices. NCM does this job well, but isn't the most user friendly software out there. Our Ubiquiti networking hardware is managed through an admin console for all Ubiquiti devices. It manages our configs, and …
PRTG has been a very old tool that was good for plotting the utilization graphs of interfaces but lacked comprehensive device views, overall end-to-end dashboards, comprehensive reports, and alerting functions. WhatsUpGold lacked comprehensive Dashboards, Alerts, and Reporting …
We evaluated PRTG Network Monitor which was similar to SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor but was very resource-intensive, and the server kept crashing when we got close to 100 devices. Whereas on SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, we were able to add several …
We tested Observium as an alternative to Solarwinds in the past and it required all host to be added by DNS instead of IP addresses which we prefer. We have over 2000 devices so creating DNS records for all of these was a deal breaker.
SolarWinds is an all in one solution. We don't need to install different servers for different packages. It provides easy installation, easy maintenance, easy monitoring by NOC and end-users of NOC. SolarWinds tools have more features than other tools. We have done POC for many …
For the most part, SolarWinds products work great 95% of the time. They have great functionality, but since SolarWinds is an application that has been developed for several years, there is plenty of bloat, which causes some severe slowness. If you can deal with the slowness, …
Most have been SolarWinds products for either monitoring and management. As I mentioned, the top usage now is for alerting on up/down. Performance monitoring is mostly on an ad-hoc basis.
I don't think this is really a fair comparison, but both Cacti and Nagios have some similar functionality to SolarWinds NPM in that they all do performance monitoring on networked devices. Cacti and Nagios both lack the in depth feature set and customization that NPM offers, …
A lot easier to configure. Maybe I got used to the software we are currently using or I am not too experienced in the field but I got literally lost in HP IMC not knowing what to do. İ really like SolarWind's next-next done configuration.
Solarwinds NPM is significantly better than Intermapper. We haven't used Intermapper in a couple years now but it was leaps and bounds ahead of Intermapper for Network monitoring.
I've personally used SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor and Network Configuration Manager for about 10 years and it has made the task of keeping the network up and running much easier. Much more granular control than options like Nagios, MRTG, and PRTG.
If your IT team isn't proficient in automation and scripting, Solarwinds NCM can fill that gap (assuming your company's security team signs off on approving SW in your environment given the hack.) Basic device configuration, pushing mass changes reliably and backups are NCM's strong suites. If you have a complex scenario where if/then cases are needed, NCM is a bit lack luster. Auto discovery isn't as easy either as certain parameters need to be met for that feature to work 100% of the time
Solarwinds NPM is well suited for medium to large networks, it may be a bit heavy for the SOHO environment as most of the tools and reports are designed for monitoring KPIs which may not be critical for a small shop. NPM can handle large networks with several sites and mixed technologies ranging from networks, server systems, storage devices and SLA reporting.
For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.
Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.
The entire IT staff relies on NPM in its daily operations. It would be impossible for us to maintain our level of service without it. If SolarWinds gets to proud of their product and begins to over charge for it, we would be forced to reconsider and use a different product. But as it stands it is worth the price to renew it.
The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is quite an extensive product, covering all our bases and requirements. There are a lot of customizable options and features which you can work with for their alerting which is really useful. I haven't found anything yet which I thought SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) could do, but it actually couldn't so overall it works nicely and does the job.
To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.
In all of the times that we called support, someone at SolarWinds had the answer for us in a timely manner. Through thwack and other internet searching, we have been able to resolve all of our issues that arose to our satisfaction. The support staff have always been knowledgeable of their products or had a fellow support staff member to rely on to get the needed answers.
Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it
The training is good but during the implementation, you can get situations not learned during the training. The trainer was very open to hearing the questions about use cases and always sharing his experience. I really recommend having official training to take advantage of all features that the NPM can bring.
it was a fairly easy implementation and everything was pretty straightforward. only challenge we had was getting all the snmp communities updated on the networking equipment
Make sure your inventory is accurate. Stand up some virtual machines for testing prior to installation. Make sure your database and its credentials are setup. Think about things you want to monitor that may not be obvious - UPS units, Door hardware, PBX systems, Fabric Channel switches, firewalls, routers, switches. Try to setup SNMP on these devices and have an IP that you will assign to the new server. If you do that it will go well.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a great tool and matches much of the functionality of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. Nothing about Ansible will likely be overwhelming to an engineer with a little time to spare, but that spare time combined with SolarWinds already being our monitoring tool made the decision easy. Time is at a premium in small teams and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is very easy to use right out of the box without all the tweaking required by powerful command line driven tools like Ansible.
We selected SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor because of the capabilities of the product versus the price. The tools also work well with their other products and support is fairly good. We have never had a problem when we needed to make a call.
SolarWinds allows us to proactively address hardware issues before they impact the business. We recently had a server that was experiencing issues sporadically and we were able to use the data from SolarWinds to track down and correct the issue before it tanked the server.
SolarWinds gives our IT department some piece of mind knowing that they'll be alerted of any issues real time.
We can use SolarWinds data to justify needed to replace or upgrade certain equipment that is key to our core business.