ManageEngine OpManager vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

OpManager offers a set of advantages that allow it to adapt to the needs of the company, guaranteeing effective monitoring of the application networks used in our organization. It has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. The initial setup went smoothly and in a decent amount of time.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• 3D NOC Dashboard gives granular visibility on Port in error, which saves Technician time prior to Onsite troubleshooting.
• Separate modules such as Network Bandwidth, IPAM/SPM, APM, Server Monitoring can be opt-out Individually, huge cost saving for clients.
• MSP version gives flexibility for Service providers, to offer Uninterrupted Infrastructure services across to their wide clientele.

Incentivized

• 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

• Adding devices to existing groups and applying a group-wide parameter.
• Email alerts can be a bit challenging depending on how email is managed within a company, sometimes adding ManageEngine OpManager to the allowed relay list for Exchange is necessary to receive any alerts

Incentivized

• 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

This product works very well for our organization, and it would be hard to not have a tool like this going forward

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

We are extremely pleased with the network discovery feature of ManageEngine OpManager. It greatly streamlines the process of discovering our network. Additionally, the bandwidth utilization feature is crucial. The detailed bandwidth and traffic reports aid in monitoring traffic at various levels.

Incentivized

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

At first, we were not able to add our Avaya switches to the configuration backup module, our partner tried to help, but they did not find the solution, we had one remote session with tech support of ME and they solve the problem.

Incentivized

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

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

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

ManageEngine OPManager has already made its place in the market as compared to other tools available due to following reasons - 1. Monitoring capabilities for almost every infrastructure types such as Network, Servers, Virtualization etc 2. Medium Licensing Cost and not that aggressively increasing every year. 3. Good Support and steady pace of growth and marketing.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Better visibility of the network
• Better visibility of server performance which helps us to take calls on increasing or exact utilization of server
• Report of ISP link helps us to calculate the exact bandwidth used by location which helps to take a call on fixing the requirements of each site

Incentivized

• The time savings from automatic daily backups is significant
• The compare configuration tool is super helpful at spotting errors when small changes occur that are hard to detect otherwise.
• The compliance check tool saves countless hours going through configurations for errors.

Incentivized