IBM NS1 Connect vs. SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)

It is a tool used for making and managing IP to DNS connections, it is well suited if you want a decent software to maintain DNS for your devops team. It is a bit expensive and UI could be a little tricky to understand, also third party software integrations could be a little tricky as well.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• IBM NS1 Connect provides a comprehensive solution for managing and optimizing traffic steering.
• It provides solutions like Dedicated DNS, which offers a separate resolution network for authoritative DNS, ensuring maximum uptime even in the face of outages.
• It utilizes real-time metrics and automated DNS routing decisions to optimize traffic distribution and ensure resilience.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• User Experience - Please make it more easy to use for Admins
• Also add some more details in the reference documents
• Try if they can offer a monitoring tool

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

The product is very easy to use even for a junior admin new to the job. It has an intuitive interface, logical layout and easy to generate reporting. We have been able to catch configuration errors, DDOS attacks and logging of unusual behavior. We also love how it can be used in a redundant fashion to eliminate downtime

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The interface can be better. As of now, it is a bit difficult to manage multiple records at the same time or to test the rules effectively. The data reporting is also not as great as we expect with tools of today’s maturity.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We don't have any issues with availability. Our cluster setup provide us a 99,9% availability that is enough for us.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Know the full scope of what you will be installing. Solarwinds can be a very complex installation. IPAM is just one fairly simplistic piece.

Cloudflare offers a very intuitive interface and strong security features, but its DNS traffic management is more opinionated and provides less granular control for complex routing use cases. Akamai is powerful and enterprise‑grade, but it felt heavier and more complex than what we needed for DNS‑focused traffic steering. We ultimately selected IBM NS1 Connect because it struck the right balance between flexibility, intelligence, and control.

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.

Incentivized

I gave it an 8 because it handles massive datasets and high user concurrency very reliably without significant performance lag. It’s built for enterprise-level growth, but the infrastructure setup for that maximum scale can get quite complex to manage.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Enhanced end-user experience as a result of better performance & uptime
• Easy management - resulting in cutting down in operations cost

• 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.

Incentivized