NetBox is a free and open source tool (Apache 2.0 license) used to model a network's entire presence through the use of purpose-built models, built to serve the needs of network engineers and operators.
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SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Austin-based SolarWinds offers Internet Protocal address management (IPAM) networking service.
N/A
Pricing
Netbox
SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Netbox
SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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SolarWinds professional support is included to help customers on active maintenance 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Netbox is very well suited when you want to consolidate your inventory in one place. Netbox is also very well suited when you want to generate network configurations. You can request the REST API to get the date of a device and generate network configurations with a templating tool, and that is very easy.
SolarWinds IP Address Manager is very useful the bigger and more complex the environment. Smaller organizations will have to consider the cost as it provides little benefit over monitoring maybe 2-3 servers. But I have over 24 DHCP servers with on average 15 subnets each so tracking and monitoring all that was very time-consuming. As a result, it was generally ignored until there was an issue. With SolarWinds IP Address Manager, I was able to set alerts to monitor scope utilization and duplicate IP addresses.
With IPAM automated address scanning, we can be confident that we are looking at an up-to-date, accurate snapshot of our network.
The built-in alerts are a great safety net. We know that even if we aren't paying close attention to our IP address space, IPAM is. If a range is nearly full, IPAM lets us know before it becomes a real problem.
IPAM's event logging gives us insight into any and all changes made by our network engineers.
The user experience is not as intuitive as other products. We have to be more restrictive around level 1 help desk access compared to NCM or NPM in SolarWinds.
Making and enforcing changes, not just monitoring, has been hit or miss in some instances.
We are heavily invested in SolarWinds. We currently own Network Performance Monitor, Netflow Traffic Analyzer, User Device Tracker, Server Application Monitor and Network Configuration Manager. We have NOC mode setup for deskside support for monitoring any down devices that may effect our network across the globe. This application gives us the information we need when we need it.
SolarWinds IPAM is like what SolarWinds itself says, i.e. easy to use and simple. SolarWinds has really made their orion and non-orion platform products so simple that any newbie can give a try and make the best use out of it. I learned SolarWinds IPAM by myself in a POC environment, and not just IPAM but other modules and now I own 6 certifications. You see how easy to use this product is.
We do not integrate IPAM into other systems other than the standard Orion integration. The performance is reasonable, however, we are running all the SolarWinds applications on a very large server.
I have not contacted customer support and therefore have no experience in this area. I know we have some issues with our VAR support at this time for Orion, but I don't know if the IPAM falls into the same support structure. Perhaps others in the organization may know more regarding the support area.
The API is just very well designed. All tools say that what you can do with webUI, you can also do it via the REST API. That is usually not the case except for Netbox, where you can really do everything with the API. For instance with GLPI, you cannot get rack and rack units data with the API, while you can do it via the webUI
SolarWinds IP Address Manager was cheaper than both alternatives and far easier to manage. Device42 interface is years behind what Solarwinds offers. It is very outdated; BT Diamond required remote management and we constantly had to message support, it reached a point where it was better not to have the product at all.
We have not experienced any scalability issues with this product. However, SolarWinds needs to allow users to scale horizontally without any license restrictions. For example, we would like to separate Netflow and Orion onto different platforms but are unable to due to license restrictions.
IPAM has saved countless hours of running scripts and gathering data to compile reports to plan re-subnetting globally.
IPAM has reduced helpdesk incidents by immediately spotting bad DNSR and IP conflicts.
IPAM has helped eliminate blocks on projects whereas there is not currently enough address space requiring major changes to accommodate more IP'ed servers, gear, etc.
