N-able N-central vs. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager (NAM)

N-Able is perfect for an MSP environment. It gives all the standard functionality an IT professional needs out of the box and can be configured to show almost anything required. For example, we have configured a dashboard to show when our backups need attention for each customer. This is achieved by running a small script on repeat via N-Central everyday/evening, and the result gives us information on the dashboard to help us identify exactly what is working and what needs looking into.

Incentivized

Well Suited Areas - 1. Network Fault and Performance Monitoring 2. Network Devices Configuration Backup and Configuration Push 3. Netflow Analysis 4. Call Quality Monitoring for Cisco and Avaya 5. Users Ports Management 6. DSN/DHCP Monitoring 7. Alerting and Integration Not Well Suited - 1. Predictive Intelligence based Alerting or data analysis 2. REST API Based Monitoring. 3. SD-WAN Monitoring

Incentivized

• Remote tasks - entry-level techs can run basic tasks without physically touching a piece of equipment.
• Remote support - remote controlling user devices is easy and saves a lot of time with having to initiate a remote session.
• Management of devices, particularly patch management and anti-virus management - you can automatically approve and deploy patches and schedule automatic AV scans.

• Fault and Performance Monitoring
• Devices Configuration Backup
• IP Address Management
• Voice Infrastructure Monitoring
• Users Ports monitoring
• Netflow Traffic Utilization

Incentivized

• Customer support just points to online guides and I feel they aren't helpful.
• During the trial they turn on a lot of features. In my experience, if you play around with the features, they charge you for them. Keep this in mind if you move forward with N-Able - they will charge for "trialed" services.
• In my experience, some services that you're being charged for can't be disabled or monitored by you or your team. You only see them on the monthly invoice.
• In my opinion, the "Scripting Automation" doesn't provide value. You're either going to be writing your own batch or Powershell to make scripting work.
• In my opinion, monitoring software deployments is painful.
• The default monitoring template can't be duplicated, edited, or referenced. You'll find that the default monitors in an unusual way and will throw needless recurring alerts into your ticketing system. To avoid this, you need to create a template from scratch which takes many hours to set up.
• In my opinion, they're more concerned about a quick buck than customer service. "Buyer beware" company.

• Support for more call infra provider vendors
• Cloud Network Monitoring
• Event Management
• Predictive Intelligence using AIOps and ML

Incentivized

Overall we have liked our solar winds experience, however, as our company has grown to support larger enterprises, this product does not have the functionality that our teams need in order to fully support them. The lack of granularity with backups and lack of ability to support nutanix environments is slowly drawing us into the use of other tools.

Incentivized

The user interface is fairly straight forward, with logic groupings for objects. I did not deploy this software, but am one of the daily administrators. Once you get the correct agent package (Which can be a challenge) the integration into AD is not bad. The UI could be more customized, but that may have been a design choice.

Incentivized

Every time we have reached out to SolarWinds they are quick to respond, even offering support chat 24/7. Their support team is great and works with you to find solutions to issues. They have taken items we had issues with before and used those to create updates so that the issue is handled better in the future.

Incentivized

Make sure if you your using a vm you follow the instructions for provisioning to the letter or it will be starting from square one

Incentivized

Our version of SolarWinds was old and running on old hardware, but it was way easier to setup and do things with. It did not do everything N-able does such as patch management, or at least we didn't have a module to do so if one existed. However it definitely seemed easier to use and possibly more stable.

Well Solarwinds is placed much ahead of these products because of the following reasons - One single tool which can perform Fault, Performance Monitoring, Network Bandwidth Utilization, Devices configuration backup, IP Address Management, NetPath, Voice Infra Monitoring, Traps and Syslog Logging, Alerting's, Users Ports Monitoring, Rpeorting etc and hence this make Solarwinds a complete solutions. Whereas other products Like Microfocus requires multiple modules and installation is not easy. LogicMonitor on the other side is well competing (Specially SD-WAN Monitoring) with Solarwinds but it still lacks Devices Configuration Push feature, IP Address Management, NetPath, Users Port Monitoring etc.

Incentivized

• We have lost hundreds of hours on the phone/emailing support with no resolution for any of our issues
• We had to move all of our services away which was very painful
• Staff satisfaction was low having to deal with this company

• Our Network Health has improved with Proactive Monitoring
• Cost reduction on additional products like PowerBI for Reporting
• Service Now Integration was easy enough and hence less efforts and cost

Incentivized