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Grafana Cloud vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Grafana Cloud

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AGrafana Cloud is a fully managed Observability Platform designed to aggregate, visualize, and analyze telemetry data across distributed architectures. The platform provides a unified environment for Metrics, Logs, Traces, and Continuous Profiling, utilizing the LGTM (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) and Pyroscope stack to provide high-cardinality analysis of system state.

    $0

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.N/A
    Pricing
    Grafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Editions & Modules
    Grafana Cloud - Pro
    $8
    per month up to 1 active user
    Grafana Cloud - Free
    Free
    10k metrics + 50GB logs + 50GB traces up to 3 active users
    Grafana Cloud - Advanced
    Volume Discounts
    custom data usage custom active users
    Grafana - Enterprise Stack
    Custom Pricing
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Grafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Grafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Considered Both Products
    Grafana Labs
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
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    User Ratings
    Grafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.4
    (7 ratings)
    8.0
    (142 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    9.6
    (3 ratings)
    7.0
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.7
    (9 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Grafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Grafana Labs
    Just about any organization with more than one server and more than one cluster as it scales very well. Configuration of the application takes time and finesse to fine tune to where the balance of load time and getting data quickly meets. The plugins add load time but fine tuning for the application to meet demand needs nailed down at implementation
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Network Configuration Manager is well suited for backing up configurations of all your devices. It also has a great comparison tool for seeing only the differences in config. Another great feature is it's ability to push a script to any number of devices. This is very handy for pushing changes to one, 10 or multiple devices. There are also some great reports that you can run against the devices in inventory
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Grafana Labs
    • Alerting through many different medium as Slack, Email, Webhook etc
    • Beautiful and unlimited number of dashboards to view your metrics and tweak them as you please
    • Log aggregation and powerful Logql to filter and view your logs
    • Microservices monitoring
    • Large number of plugins and data sources to collect your metrics from almost anywhere
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Integrates with Network Performance Management for Alerting and Reporting.
    • NetPath and detects issues due to Configuration Change.
    • Keeps a record of which user made the change.
    • Which devices are not being backed up, devices where backups are failing, dashboard and alerting available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Grafana Labs
    • There are some settings which we can't configure from UI (Web Console).
    • We've open[ed] up configuration files in command line text editors and manually do the settings e.g. LDAP/SSO configuration.
    • In terms of visualization, it's best, but it doesn't support log analysis otherwise it could destroy business of all other visualization tools.
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Grafana Labs
    It is infinitely flexible. If you can imagine it, Grafana can almost certainly do it. Usability may be in the eye of the beholder however, as there is time needed to curate the experience and get the dashboards customized to how it makes sense to you. I know one thing they are working on are more templates, based on data sources
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Grafana Labs
    Grafana blows Nagios out of the water when it comes to customization. The ability to feed almost any data source makes it very versatile and the cost is great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    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 big focus that once Solarwinds got hacked we had to remove all their products from our environment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Grafana Labs
    • Grafana has replaced many higher priced tools
    • The integrations are seemless with multiple backends
    • Combining graphs and dashboards from multiple data sources is a game changer
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
    • Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
    • Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network Automation -  manage rapid change across complex and multi-vendor networks, reduce time needed to complete repetitive tasks, and maintain standards and service levels for uninterrupted ITScreenshot of Config Backup - rest easy knowing you can locate the most current configuration and quickly apply it to a replacement spare, or to roll back a blown configuration.Screenshot of Vulnerability Scanning - Take the hassle out of vulnerability scanning using NCM's integration with the National Vulnerability Database and access to the most current CVE’s to identify vulnerabilities in your Cisco devices.Screenshot of Inventory Management - Be able to know what devices are connected to your network, their hardware and software configurations, and when they approach end-of-service and end-of-life, with NCM device configuration management tool.Screenshot of User Management - Use NCM's integrated console to lock down devices from unauthorized access, delegate who can view device details and make configuration changes, and determine when network changes can occur.Screenshot of Baselines and Diffs - IT professionals can get a more comprehensive view by leveraging baselines across multiple nodes. Diff view in NCM’s network configuration management tool is designed to highlight only those lines that changed.