PingPlotter vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

It is well suited for performing monitoring and testing from a single device. It is less appropriate if you have to monitor from multiple different endpoints. That type of deployment would be more of an enterprise application. If you are looking for an end user monitoring solution then PingPlotter is the one for you.

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

• Monitor traffic in network
• Measure stops when contacting network locations such as websites
• Measures the lag and latency it takes to contact network locations
• Gives you both induvidual measurements as well as good oversight
• identifies when network lag or disconnect occurs

• 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

• Its a little confusing to see which targets are currently running pings and which ones are displayed in the plots.
• Starting and stopping pings requires a right click and that would be better with a play/pause button I think.
• Ability to drag and drop the graphs to reorder them.
• more columns to show which targets are running and which are displayed. Currently this is done with symbols so you cant sort by just the running targets for example I've found.

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

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

I installed it and it just started working. I realized I could then tweak it to show what I needed but didn't have to spend a long time configuring it before use, editing YAML files etc. Maybe that's fine for a network professional, but I only need this software if something goes wrong, and then need it to work quickly out of the box.

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

I have not had much contact with the PingPlotter support, only one time have I went to them and it was a positive experience. The questions I had were answered quickly and professionally. I have no issue with the experience I had with the Support team. This was from before and after the purchase of the product.

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

Change management played a key role in our organisation. We didn't have any major downtime but it was crucial for us to get his product.

Incentivized

I used Ping.app and UptimeLog.app on the Mac. These both provided different aspects. These two had a menubar to show me green or red for multiple connections. UptimeLog showed me very clearly when my connectivity was on or off and for exactly how long

Auvik has some similar features but it is very expensive. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) has gone up in price but it is much more affordable than Auvik. Auvik has no way of sending a script to more than one device at a time so that is a downside of Auvik versus SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM).

Incentivized

• Great ROI, troubleshooting time has been reduced by 90%
• Network Discoveries used to take 2 to 3 hours and were inconsistent - now it is a matter of minutes
• lacks integration into our MSP toolkit, and we now use it as a stand alone product

Incentivized

• Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
• Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
• Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.

Incentivized