NetBrain vs SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

• It automatically updates your network documentation.
• You can search for devices even if they are no longer operational (by a lot of attributes).
• It can simplify your troubleshooting by showing you the L2/L3 path a packet would take.
• It can automate and document the steps of troubleshooting tasks to get more information from one level of support to the next.
• The support team of NetBrain is very fast and very helpful.
• Heaps of information in the maps.

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• Configuration Comparison Tool is great since you can quickly compare configs in a single pane of glass. To make things easier to identify, NCM will highlight the differences.
• Vulnerability reporting on all current versions of Cisco IOS/NXOS software. NCM will identify the version of firmware you are using and also list the most well known CVE vulnerabilities that are associated with each version.
• I appreciate NCM is vendor agnostic. It will consume configs from any network device. It can also be customized to look for certain strings that are missing or to look for certain strings that are present. Very flexible and since it isn't vendor specific, I don't feel like I'm being forced to buy a certain manufacturer to obtain all of the 'features' like I do with other products.

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• Not all devices are integrated with the same quality.
• Not all steps are self-explaining.
• The updates were difficult (but thanks to the help of support no real problem).

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• The NCM does not work particularly well out of the box on some not so popular network hardware like Ubiquiti, Fluid Mesh and others
• The auto-select device does not always work and sometimes you have to modify a template to get the full backup to work. SolarWinds tech support can help with this if you are not familiar
• The email notifications of the backups and the deltas are very simple html. It would be nice to see some improvement on the output there. Looks about 10 years old...

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• Network automation is up to date.
• Quicker failure discovery and resolving due to the path discovery.
• Less time spent on documentation.
• Much more details in the documentation.

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• Prior to breaking the baseline function, NCM was considered our most valuable network tool. Without adding any additional FTEs, we could ensure we maintained current backups, ensured consistent application of security settings and can monitor for unauthorized changes.
• For a very little additional cost, we vastly improved our network security and availability.

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