Likelihood to Recommend If there are a number of different protocols and devices to monitor PRTG is really an all in one solution. There are network specific solutions, telephony solutions, server solutions, etc - but this tool can do anything. Even if you don't use this tool as your main "monitoring solutions" every IT professional should have access to this tool for at least troubleshooting purposes. If you are looking for something specific built for a task you may be able to find [a] more direct and easy tool to use that would be easier and quicker to setup as customization is not needed.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Very, very configurable. You can create all kinds of monitors for all kinds of things. Plus it has loads of suggestions out of the box. It can get complicated but monitoring is complicated. Pretty decent interface and good support - active community. I really liked how easy it was to add alerts by SMS. So easy to setup. I like their sizing models (for purchase). We're actually small enough that we are free. But it's not free as in stripped down - it's free because we don't use many "sensors" and don't honestly have the need. Read full review 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. Read full review Cons The probe service can be quite resource-intensive. This can cause false-positive readings from some sensors sometimes. The software gets updated very regularly. Whilst this is usually a good thing to fix bugs etc, it does meantime downtime of the monitoring quite often while they are installed. The ability to create Maps from Libraries. Very specific issue but a lot of people have been asking for it for years and it is still not available. Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is now an essential tool for monitoring and maintaining the health of our network and systems.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Usability The tool is very intuitive to use and it is Windows-based (everybody knows how to use Windows) so it's easy to get into. Every time is setup in a hierarchy so if you have a good initial hierarchy design, it will really reduce administrative effort down the road.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We don't have any issues with availability. Our cluster setup provide us a 99,9% availability that is enough for us.
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating I am giving this a 6 simply because I have never had to contact support. The online documentation is adequate for most things, and the user-maintained knowledgebase is excellent. The few times I have run into issues that were not easily resolvable with intuitive UI, I was able to find the answers that I needed either in the PRTG-provided documentation, the knowledgebase, or with a quick online web search.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating Know the full scope of what you will be installing. Solarwinds can be a very complex installation. IPAM is just one fairly simplistic piece.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have deployed and tested three products for evaluation I found [PRTG Network Monitor] very easy to deploy, the deployment literally took not more than one hour including basic configuration and network discovery. After deployment few configuration changes and creation of maps, reports and little tweaking is required. [Then] it would go through its process of recommendation that took some time to complete, while [on] other hand other software's took lot of time to install and configure. And features were also missing, which resulted in decision in favor of [PRTG Network Monitor].
Read full review 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.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Return on Investment The ability to analyze multiple pieces of information in one place, especially with historical data, has saved our IT department time and headaches. It would be so much more difficult to trace an issue without PRTG, just relying on event logs and an open task manager window. The cost is not cheap, so it's an expense that hits the bottom line like everything else. Figure in hardware costs as well, ideally a server outside of your main environment. I keep saying this, but the historical data piece is worth so much. There's really no good way to collect all of that information in one place without something like PRTG. And that definitely saves time and money in the long run. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) Screenshots