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SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) vs. Retrace (legacy)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds NPM

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds NPM is a monitoring and performance management platform. It provides performance troubleshooting support, auto network discovery, customizable thresholds, and can be rapidly deployed.

    $1,638

    per year

    Retrace (legacy)

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AStackify Retrace provides application performance management across the entire stack. Coupled with aggregated logs from common logging frameworks, find every exception in code. Retrace code with lightweight code profiling and track and monitor all key application and server metrics. The vendor states that with coverage for full lifecycle development, the Stackify Retrace software offering is tailored to be inclusive for multiple role types, and presents everything your team needs to know about…

    $99

    up to 3 servers, 500,000 traces, and 1,000,000 logs

    Pricing
    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
    Editions & Modules
    NPM
    $1,638
    per year
    Essentials
    $99
    up to 3 servers, 500,000 traces, and 1,000,000 logs
    Standard
    249+
    2,000,000+ traces and 5,000,000+ logs
    Enterprise
    Custom
    Customer number of traces and logs
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Pricing is based on trace and log usage.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds NPM
    SolarWinds NPM is a good entry tool for smaller companies as it provides you a decent baseline to monitor your network. To unlock the full potential you need to add agents and it falls pretty quick. It is not as good as enterprise tools like ExtraHop. Also it is not as easy to …
    Incentivized
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    91%
    Would buy again
    32 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    34 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    29 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    30 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
    Network Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) and Retrace (legacy)
    Feature
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
    9.0
    232 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Retrace (legacy)
    -
    Ratings
    Automated network device discovery9.0211 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network monitoring10.0232 Ratings00 Ratings
    Baseline threshold calculation9.0202 Ratings00 Ratings
    Alerts9.0229 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network capacity planning7.9188 Ratings00 Ratings
    Packet capture analysis7.2130 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network mapping10.0191 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable reports10.0213 Ratings00 Ratings
    Wireless infrastructure monitoring8.0154 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hardware health monitoring10.0216 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application Performance Management
    Comparison of Application Performance Management features of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) and Retrace (legacy)
    Feature
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
    -
    Ratings
    Retrace (legacy)
    6.4
    1 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Application monitoring00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Database monitoring00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Application dependency mapping and thresholding00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Server availability and performance monitoring00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
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    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
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    Auvik
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    Medium-sized Companies
    PingPlotter
    Score9 out of 10
    SolarWinds AppOptics
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Nmap
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Splunk AppDynamics
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.7
    (238 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (27 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (22 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (28 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds NPMRetrace (legacy)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is excellent on node monitoring, for servers, switches, voice routers, etc. It also provides quick information on the dashboard, so you can take a look an in a few seconds determine is an entire site is down, if portions are down, and what may be causing the issue. We have experienced some difficulty when working with our wireless environment. It is less than natural when attempting to determine if a wireless access point is down itself, or if the switch feeding the access point is down, either port or switch. It does a very good job telling you if a switch is down, but troubleshooting the devices (specifically access points) it struggles.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    If I need to change a logo design on the invoice, the new logo is slightly larger or smaller so the type below the logo is in a different area than before. In this case, you would need to load the new version of the document into APM Plus and redo the mapping of the field areas to properly grab the information needed to process the document. Without doing this, the document could fail or go to the wrong archive based on the fields.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    SolarWinds
    • Out of the Monitoring of almost all Network Devices.
    • Build custom pollers to monitor which is not supported out of the box.
    • Further you can alert on these custom metrics and Out of the box metrics.
    • It provides you great dashboards, Reports features.
    • You can integrate it with any MoM layer tools either using its API or sending out traps.
    • Out of the box Integration with Service Now ITSM Tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Integration of performance management with log management so you get the parameters sent
    • In-line log and error data in trace
    • Integration of error and log data, so in one click you can see all the logs recorded when an error was thrown
    • Very reasonably priced
    Read full review
    Cons
    SolarWinds
    • The software upgrade process is a little hairy and has caused me trouble on occasion.
    • The server that it needs to run is a bit of a resource hog along with the SQL server.
    • Some additional features like the network map are a bit clunky compared to some other products that we use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • To set up the fields that APM Plus monitors, you need to map each field area on each document.
    • APM Plus could use a way to link the documents back into the finance or business software so you can find the document under the PO, Sales Order, Invoice, etc.
    • APM Plus setup is only for the professionals. There are many areas that need tweaking on setup, having a better default setup would lessen the learning curve to set it up for use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    SolarWinds
    The entire IT staff relies on NPM in its daily operations. It would be impossible for us to maintain our level of service without it. If SolarWinds gets to proud of their product and begins to over charge for it, we would be forced to reconsider and use a different product. But as it stands it is worth the price to renew it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is quite an extensive product, covering all our bases and requirements. There are a lot of customizable options and features which you can work with for their alerting which is really useful. I haven't found anything yet which I thought SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) could do, but it actually couldn't so overall it works nicely and does the job.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    SolarWinds
    Always available. Always is important to plan the software available during the machine/application setup.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    SolarWinds
    Pages load slow, especially the bettors map. Could be that my server is old.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    SolarWinds
    In all of the times that we called support, someone at SolarWinds had the answer for us in a timely manner. Through thwack and other internet searching, we have been able to resolve all of our issues that arose to our satisfaction. The support staff have always been knowledgeable of their products or had a fellow support staff member to rely on to get the needed answers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    SolarWinds
    The training is good but during the implementation, you can get situations not learned during the training. The trainer was very open to hearing the questions about use cases and always sharing his experience. I really recommend having official training to take advantage of all features that the NPM can bring.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    SolarWinds
    Make sure your inventory is accurate. Stand up some virtual machines for testing prior to installation. Make sure your database and its credentials are setup. Think about things you want to monitor that may not be obvious - UPS units, Door hardware, PBX systems, Fabric Channel switches, firewalls, routers, switches. Try to setup SNMP on these devices and have an IP that you will assign to the new server. If you do that it will go well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    SolarWinds
    We use NPM along with PRTG Network Monitor. While NPM is great at monitoring network devices and network links and some aspects of the servers, PRTG provides more in-depth monitoring for Server systems, applications and application ports such as Web Ports etc. PRTG also provides a more comprehensive Root cause analysis.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    It is a very impressive tool which doesn't overwhelm you with unnecessary data. They have combination of tools that haven't seen by any other company which makes it a very powerful tool
    Read full review
    Scalability
    SolarWinds
    From the direction and information I have been given it is very flexible and scalelable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    SolarWinds
    • SolarWinds allows us to proactively address hardware issues before they impact the business. We recently had a server that was experiencing issues sporadically and we were able to use the data from SolarWinds to track down and correct the issue before it tanked the server.
    • SolarWinds gives our IT department some piece of mind knowing that they'll be alerted of any issues real time.
    • We can use SolarWinds data to justify needed to replace or upgrade certain equipment that is key to our core business.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • APM Plus has freed up users from having to manually attach documents to each place they are sending it. APM Plus will do it automatically.
    • APM Plus provides a searchable archive to re-visit sent documents with customers and vendors. Having to reprint a document you risk the potential that something has changed since it was last printed.
    • APM Plus does need IT staff for adjustments and to review sending problems. Not for an average user.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds NPM Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network monitoring software used to reduce network outages and detect, diagnose, and resolve multi-vendor network performance issues.Screenshot of See relationships for routers, switches, interfaces, volumes, and groups, updated automatically without user intervention to maintain the network, not network maps.Screenshot of Reduce visibility gaps into critical network switches, firewalls, and load balancers with Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, Cisco ASA, and F5 BIG-IP.Screenshot of Reduce the flood of unnecessary network alerts. Create alerts based on simple or complex nested trigger conditions, defined parent/child dependencies, and network topology.Screenshot of Identify dead zones and improve wireless coverage. With its network monitoring tool, users can access out-of-the-box wireless reports, including wireless availability and rogue access points.Screenshot of Configure alerts by calculating dynamic baseline threshold data with network performance monitoring software.

    Retrace (legacy) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Detailed stack trace with inline error and logsScreenshot of Web Apps Dashboard:
The Apps Page gives you a high-level overview of all applications found and monitored across all servers in each environment. Click on any app to take you to the App Dashboard to view more information for a particular app.Screenshot of Apps Dashboard:
The App Dashboard is a powerful monitoring and troubleshooting perspective that gives you a view of application health across one or more environments.Screenshot of Performance (APM+) Dashboard:
The Performance section will give you a report of how well the application is performing overall, as perceived by your users.  A graph will allow you to view all requests by Satisfaction by viewing "Fast", "Sluggish", "Too Slow", or "Failed" types of requests.  Another report includes graphs of HTTP Error%, Satisfaction Score%, and Page Load Time.  Lastly, you will have the ability to sort each page request of your App by different categories: Satisfaction, Slowest page, Failed pages, pages hit, and total load time.  By clicking on an individual page a Performance Details page with further information about that specific page's health, performance, and errors will be displayed.Screenshot of Performance Traces:
One of the ways we strive to deliver relevant insights is to only collect traces around interesting requests. Some examples of these request types that are interesting would be faster than normal, slower than normal, new web requests, requests introducing new SQL, requests introducing new exceptions, or abnormal satisfaction scores. Under performing requests will be profiled more often than fast requests. As long as the app is getting steady traffic Retrace should be saving a trace every 5 to 15 minutes.Screenshot of Errors Dashboard:
From the Errors Dashboard, you can get an overview of all the exceptions of all your applications across different environments. It gives you a central location to view details about your errors.