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Prometheus vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Prometheus

    Score8 out of 10
    N/APrometheus is a service monitoring and time series database, which is open source.N/A

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.N/A
    Pricing
    PrometheusSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    PrometheusSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PrometheusSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    35 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    34 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    26 Answers
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    29 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    PrometheusSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Small Businesses
    InfluxDB
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PrometheusSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.8
    (35 ratings)
    8.0
    (142 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    7.1
    (3 ratings)
    7.0
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.7
    (9 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PrometheusSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    This program works from the roots of the problem and creates a professional matrix for each of its users. This will give them more skills and resources to carry out tasks and reduce the difficulties of operating each of the processes of my work, as well as being An ally for the manipulation and operability of all your master data; Prometheus is very easy to recommend since it is a program that fulfills its mission.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    Network Configuration Manager is well suited for backing up configurations of all your devices. It also has a great comparison tool for seeing only the differences in config. Another great feature is it's ability to push a script to any number of devices. This is very handy for pushing changes to one, 10 or multiple devices. There are also some great reports that you can run against the devices in inventory
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Open Source
    • Looking at metrics such as the aggregate number of HTTP requests served.
    • Understanding how our services are performing in aggregate.
    • Easy to deploy within a variety of architectures/environments.
    • Open source so new features are added regularly and bugs are fixed in a timely manner.
    • Free so there are no licensing restrictions.
    • Endorsed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • 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
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    Cons
    Open Source
    • Customer Service: since this is an open-source tool, customer service is not that great. Generally, you get all answers to your problems in online forums, but in case you got stuck, nobody will assist you in a channelised manner. You will have to find the way out on your own, and it may become frustrating at times.
    • More metrics for dashboards shall be added per the application being monitored. Standards metrics will work in most cases but may not in specific applications. Therefore, customised metrics shall be created for some of the industry-standard niche applications.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • 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
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    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
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    Usability
    Open Source
    It is usable and one can learn if few people in the team are already using it. It can be difficult to understand at the beginning because of non intuitive UI and syntax of the rules. So, I've gone for 7 points as there is some room for improvement in user interface and rules syntax.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    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
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    Support Rating
    Open Source
    Never had to reach out to them.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    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
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    Online Training
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    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
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    Implementation Rating
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    it was a fairly easy implementation and everything was pretty straightforward. only challenge we had was getting all the snmp communities updated on the networking equipment
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    Highly customized pricing plans to choose from. Lower pricing for the same features compared to competitors. Easy to reach the support team, which provided detailed documentation and helped set up the Prometheus. Monitoring metrics gets very easy after the integration with Grafana. It also has a sophisticated alert setting mechanism to ensure we don't miss anything critical.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    At the time SolarWinds was the biggest player in the space and their whole portfolio was very comprehensive. As time progressed and newer technologies came about (i.e. SDWAN) their products couldn't keep up with the consumer demands and changing market. Security became such a big focus that once Solarwinds got hacked we had to remove all their products from our environment
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • We are still working on the ROI
    • The ROI mentioned during the purchase has not been achieved, however this could be due to lack of data from our side. 2 years of implementation is too early to calculate and confirm the ROI.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • 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
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    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network Automation -  manage rapid change across complex and multi-vendor networks, reduce time needed to complete repetitive tasks, and maintain standards and service levels for uninterrupted ITScreenshot of Config Backup - rest easy knowing you can locate the most current configuration and quickly apply it to a replacement spare, or to roll back a blown configuration.Screenshot of Vulnerability Scanning - Take the hassle out of vulnerability scanning using NCM's integration with the National Vulnerability Database and access to the most current CVE’s to identify vulnerabilities in your Cisco devices.Screenshot of Inventory Management - Be able to know what devices are connected to your network, their hardware and software configurations, and when they approach end-of-service and end-of-life, with NCM device configuration management tool.Screenshot of User Management - Use NCM's integrated console to lock down devices from unauthorized access, delegate who can view device details and make configuration changes, and determine when network changes can occur.Screenshot of Baselines and Diffs - IT professionals can get a more comprehensive view by leveraging baselines across multiple nodes. Diff view in NCM’s network configuration management tool is designed to highlight only those lines that changed.