SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer is a network monitoring tool within the broader SolarWinds ecosystem. It includes core traffic monitoring features, as well as customizable traffic reports and alerts.
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IBM Turbonomic
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
IBM Turbonomic is a performance and cost optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds used by cloud, infrastructure operations, and architecture to assure application performance while eliminating inefficiencies by dynamically resourcing applications through automated actions. IBM states that Turbonomic customers report an average 33% reduction in cloud and infrastructure waste without impacting application performance, and return-on-investment of 471% over three years over…
$3,333
per month per installation
Pricing
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
IBM Turbonomic
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
IBM® Turbonomic Cloud Optimization Essentials
$3,333
per month per installation
IBM® Turbonomic Hybrid Standard (Software)
Varies - Request a Quote
per month Advanced hybrid cloud optimization capabilities for customers with 200 managed virtual servers (MVS) or more
IBM® Turbonomic Cloud Standard
Varies - Request a Quote
per month For customers with more than $2 million USD annual cloud spend
IBM® Turbonomic Hybrid Standard
Varies - Request a Quote
per month Advanced hybrid cloud optimization capabilities for customers with 200 managed virtual servers (MVS) or more
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
IBM Turbonomic
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
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* Estimated prices do not include tax and are for new Turbonomic customers, initial purchase only. Volume discounting available.
We used to use Solarwinds' Virtualization and Storage manager products. These were good products but always seemed to lack the full automation that VMTurbo brings to the table. I also tested VMWare's vCops at the time (now vRops). This product was very overwhelming and had a …
I would suggest this tool to any user that has to monitor multiple sites and locations where bandwidth monitoring can be a labor. This software works really well for central monitoring of multiple sites and services where having a technician onsite isn't feasible. I really like the reporting, though, and would recommend this for someone wanting to keep an eye on bandwidth usage for replication of data across sites.
Turbonomic helps us see what uses resources and what needs more and how to reorganize to maximize hardware use. I think companies with multiple VMware clusters would benefit from this software. Perhaps not if the company is small. However, Turbo Operations Manager is best for virtualizing data-intensive platforms like SQL.
The level of customization possible with Network Bandwidth Analyzer is very valuable. Rather than being stuck with a "one-size-fits-all" presentation, an administrator can easily create customized views, reports, and alerts so that users can have a more tailored view of the data provided by Network Bandwidth Analyzer. This has the effect of making the tool more attractive to the end user.
The NetFlow Traffic Analyzer piece of Network Bandwidth Analyzer provides the details on bandwidth usage on the network. More than knowing how much bandwidth is being used, one is provided with detailed information on how that bandwidth is being used. This provides invaluable information for capacity planning and even certain forensic tasks faced by the network engineer.
The ability to produce network maps provides an easy way to create an attractive and functional NOC/SOC view of the entire network. Both technician and the occasional passerby can quickly determine if there are issues to be addressed. The ability to customize a map with background images and custom icons and stencils can make these maps really pop.
The ability to intuitively and quickly serve up specified information up to a dashboard for general “public” consumption, that cycles through several pages of information.
The ability to intuitively set up alerting on bandwidth levels, instead of having to dig through all types of alerts available to find the one needed.
Provide a pricing model based on different support levels: if I want only available update installations, don’t make me pay the same amount as those wanting full support.
It would be nice if the UI included a break-down of features that are both licensed as well as un-licensed. That way, you could not only see what you have, but what you don't.
The right-sizing recommendations are great, but very little info is given about why the recommendation is being made. More info would not only increase understanding, but would also help drive decision-making.
We are certainly happy with Turbonomic as a whole and have invested quite a bit of time and effort into learning the ins and outs of the product. We have our reporting setup the way we want it and have gained definite value from these features. I will say though that many products nowadays are offering more native monitoring, reporting, and alerting features which may eventually steer us away from this product
As far as rating for usability is concerned I would give 10/10 as NTA is very easy to use. All you need to do is install that module and ask network Team to configure the Netflow towards Server IP. [The] rest is pre-configured and reports are pre-built. Moment you receive the flows from Network all you will have is information about traffic.
Excellent approach to larger VM organizational management. They have an very clean integrated dashboard that allows us to see everything in our environment and what that is doing in real-time. It works on multiple hyper-visors really well and integrates capacity planning on my local site as well as my cloud locations.
It allocates resources among applications by showing more on the cost breakdown by cloud service, with metrics on cloud provider information like Azure Management, Identity, Networking, Storage with costs per day, and total services costs. This then could facilitate and show the corresponding actions thereafter upon scaling.
It is useful for our Infrastructure team and also provides valuable insights to our application team regarding the traffic being sent from various endpoints. They can monitor their applications and ensure there are no network issues that may impact their application.
When I contact support I get a quick response and they are able to solve my problem quickly. I also get a sense that they want to make sure that we are getting value from the product and walk me through whatever steps are needed to accomplish my goals.
Alex (from VMTurbo) has worked with the product for years and helped develop the product. He was very knowledgeable and was able to provide our support team with details knowledge on how to get our deployment configured correctly as well as help with another VMTurbo POC within another customers environment.
The training offered by SolarWinds is some of the best out there. They have several different videos that go into great detail from initial setup to advanced configurations. In addition to the view at your own pace video, they also have live training for customers that focus on a single product and you can ask questions with the folks who develop the software. I have had good success with their live sessions and getting questions answered.
After buying VMTurbo Operations Manager, I was invited to an online user training event. I felt this training was effective and dug just deep enough to be informative yet still keep my attention. Additionally, the webinar was free.
The implementation was very simple. Just upload an OVA file and power on the VM. Once it comes up enter some networking information and you can then access the web interface. From there, just begin configuring the system for your environment by adding you license and the various virtual environments and storage through the inventory tab
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer compared to Wireshark and PRTG Network Monitor beats it by just the simple interface. Though all are manual setup, NTA takes it a step further with graphs and reports that analyze the data for you. In comparing to Extrahop from a bandwidth comparison, Extrahop wins but Extrahop is a lot more than just a bandwidth monitoring and cost.
As the organization had experience of years in using IBM products, we had the confidence that they will provide us with great support. And we needed a reliable solution as a financial institute to ensure continuous operations. Even though the price was very high, we made the correct decision to go ahead with IBM Turbonomic as the feedback from existing users in the region was very positive. We needed a solution which was capable of handling our automation requirements. All these were green in IBM Turbonomic.
Professional services were always there to guide us in our transformation to the cloud. They understood our business model and then were able to provide guidance on what we needed from the tool.
Be prepared to answer lots of questions. When people see the data in NTA they are going to want to know why App A is talking to App B. Be ready to explain!
Hand the keys to the NTA kingdom to the network team. They will thank you. Everyone wants to have friends on the network team, right?
Be prepared to invest in some significant compute and storage performance to keep up with your NTA monitoring
Running the latest firmware for your network gear is (often) required to take advantage of all the flow-monitoring. You upgrade regularly, right??
Application performance has been a big one. With Turbonomic keeping everything running at top performance, it can make changes when extra resources are need, quicker than somebody being notified and then making the necessary changes.
Turbonomic has been a great cost savings for us on multiple occasions. We use it every time we are improving servers.
With the planning feature we get the best performance form new hardware purchases
