PRTG Network Monitor is the flagship offering from German software company Paessler, for monitoring local and wide area networks (LANs & WANs), servers, websites, apps, and more.
$1,750
perpetual license
SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager (VNQM)
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Solarwinds VoIP and Network Quality Manager is a VoIP analytics and monitoring tool.
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.
It is best suited for managing and monitoring homogenous networks where the design is similar across the board. The most obvious use case is to make sure the correct network quality of service is being maintained to ensure voice call quality in a converged networked. It would be less suited/necessary if the voice and data networks were segmented from each other.
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.
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.
The impact on SolarWinds performance itself of configuring a large number of IPSLA operations for monitoring can be difficult to predict. It would be beneficial to have some tools that could warn or predict the results of doing so.
Additional background information on the use case for each SLA operation type would be helpful to the user who may not be an expert in the field. The Server and Application Monitor product provides this benefit for application component monitoring.
The tool should be engineered to allow repeated SLA node discovery for any and all nodes in the Orion Platform database.
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.
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.
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].
Our VOIP system is from Cisco, so they suggested their Packet Tracer to help with managing our quality of service. We found it to be an extremely technical tool much better aligned with diagnosing a detailed issue rather than helping monitor and manage the VOIP traffic as Solarwinds does.
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.
VNQM has enabled our network engineers to see network quality issues from the end user perspective and thus be more proactive.
The call records searching capability is very user friendly and has made it easy for VoIP engineers to troubleshoot call issues from a single pane of glass.
We were able to implement SLA monitoring by leveraging an existing feature of our Cisco routers. No additional investment was required.
