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SolarWinds NPM

SolarWinds NPM

Overview

What is SolarWinds NPM?

SolarWinds NPM is a monitoring and performance management platform. It provides performance troubleshooting support, auto network discovery, customizable thresholds, and can be rapidly deployed.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Users have found this product to be extremely versatile and useful in a variety of situations. One key use case is for professional …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 10 features
  • Alerts (228)
    8.8
    88%
  • Hardware health monitoring (215)
    8.7
    87%
  • Network monitoring (231)
    8.7
    87%
  • Customizable reports (212)
    7.9
    79%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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NPM

$1,638

On Premise
per year

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.solarwinds.com/products/pric…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Why I Recommend SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

YouTube
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Features

Network Performance Monitoring

A network performance monitoring system monitors the entire network for performance problems and collects performance data such as network traffic analysis performance bottlenecks, etc.

7.9
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

What is SolarWinds NPM?

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) delivers comprehensive network fault monitoring and performance management that scales and expands with a company's network monitoring needs. Users can collect and view availability, real-time and historical statistics from routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and any other SNMP-, ICMP-, or WMI-enabled devices directly from a web browser.

The vendor states that SolarWinds users can get a full NPM installation up and running the same day they download, and that implementation does not require a team of consultants. NPM provides visibility into the health of network devices and servers on the network, ensuring that users have needed real-time information to keep their network running at peak performance.

Network Performance Monitor helps IT Pros:

  • Detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and avoid downtime
  • Respond to multiple condition checks, correlated events, and device dependencies
  • Automatically calculate capacity exhaustion dates using customizable thresholds based on peak and average usage
  • Streamline network troubleshooting with a Web interface
  • View paths to critical business services hop-by-hop, even into the cloud, with the NetPath™ feature
  • Get deeper visibility into complex network devices with Network Insight™ features for Cisco ASA firewalls, Cisco Nexus switches, and F5 BIG-IP load balancers

SolarWinds NPM Features

Network Performance Monitoring Features

  • Supported: Automated network device discovery
  • Supported: Network monitoring
  • Supported: Baseline threshold calculation
  • Supported: Alerts
  • Supported: Network capacity planning
  • Supported: Packet capture analysis
  • Supported: Network mapping
  • Supported: Customizable reports
  • Supported: Wireless infrastructure monitoring
  • Supported: Hardware health monitoring

Additional Features

  • Supported: Seamless conversion upgrade to AIOps-powered Hybrid Cloud Observability
  • Supported: Multi-vendor device support for any router, switch, firewall, VPN concentrator, wireless access point and other devices that support standard protocols
  • Supported: Intelligent alerts for correlated events, sustained conditions, and complex combinations of device states
  • Supported: Insight on hardware health by monitoring, alerting, and reporting on the state of key device sensors
  • Supported: NetPath for hop-by-hop monitoring of critical business services, on-premises or into the cloud
  • Supported: Network Insight for Cisco Nexus switches, F5 BIG-IP load balancers, Cisco ASA firewalls

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.

SolarWinds NPM Video

Network Performance Monitor overview

SolarWinds NPM Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Windows® Server 2016; SQL Server 2016 SQL Server 2016 SP1 SQL Server 2017 (including installations on Linux)
Mobile ApplicationNo

SolarWinds NPM Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

SolarWinds NPM is a monitoring and performance management platform. It provides performance troubleshooting support, auto network discovery, customizable thresholds, and can be rapidly deployed.

Reviewers rate Alerts highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of SolarWinds NPM are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(599)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

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Overall, this product has proven to be versatile and adaptable in various contexts, making it an indispensable tool for professionals, educators, businesses, and individuals alike. Its user-friendly interface combined with its extensive features and customization options allow users to unleash their creativity and achieve impressive results in a wide range of use cases.

Users recommend considering the whole stack of Network Modules on the SolarWinds platform instead of NPM as a standalone product. They believe the other modules are valuable additions for monitoring, managing, and analyzing the network. SolarWinds NPM is considered the best network performance monitoring solution on the market. Users suggest using it for network monitoring and exploring other modules for specific infrastructure monitoring. While NPM is a good tool for network monitoring, users advise looking into alternative options for advanced monitoring needs. Some users suggest improving the navigation to make it more fluid and user-friendly. Overall, users recommend SolarWinds NPM for managing and monitoring network infrastructures due to its reliability and cost-effectiveness. They also recommend trying the live action feature and Meraki for enhanced network analytics. Users suggest considering other products with better UI and capabilities. SolarWinds NPM is worth the price if affordable, especially with sponsorship. Working with third-party services or SolarWinds to properly set up the tool is recommended. Using multiple tools in conjunction with NPM provides more visibility. Users recommend signing up for Thwack and utilizing their resources for assistance with SolarWinds products. Trying the demo first before purchasing is advisable. NPM is considered a core module in every company that chooses SolarWinds as their monitoring tool. It is important to ensure that the server can handle the software. Experienced staff maximizes the benefits of the platform. Users suggest downloading a trial copy of NPM to test it out. NPM outperforms other tools according to user opinions. More theme options and additional ways to export data are requested. Other modules from SolarWinds that work well with NPM, such as Server & Application Manager, should be explored. Support team and Thwack community are highly praised by users. Users should not be overwhelmed by features and take advantage of free trial resources. SolarWinds is recommended for enterprise-level monitoring, but Loop1 consulting is advised for complex environments. Initial setup can be time-consuming. The 30-day evaluation of the full product is excellent. Becoming a Thwack member provides access to extensive resources and support. SolarWinds may have a higher cost but is considered worth it. Proper provisioning of hardware, software, and infrastructure is crucial before deploying SolarWinds. Users recommend setting up the trial version first and getting familiar with the product. SolarWinds NPM receives high recommendations from users and is praised for its great dashboards.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 236)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Based on my 7-years of experience I am deeply convinced that Solarwinds products (NPM, NTA) are extremely scalable and reliable solutions with customizable user-friendly interfaces. The most important feature for me is the creation of custom reports using a variety of data sources (SQL query, SNMP, OID, etc.). Alerts constructor is a simple and powerful tool as well.
  • Custom reports building.
  • Alert management with conditions constructor.
  • A huge variety of data sources.
  • Web console requests cashing works quite slow - I assume Redis configuration should be improved.
  • Network elements virtualization and clustering monitoring do not satisfy the contemporary requirements (has to be more functional and provide a wider list of vendors).
  • WiFi heatmap is available for Cisco Meraki equipment only.
I created a numerous list of custom reports that haven't been presented as out-of-box - IP SLA monitoring, RAID status/information, information about switches virtual-chassis, etc. as well as was able to present reports from another monitoring system in Solarwinds Web console. I also actively use such useful tools as NetPath.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We choose to use SolarWinds because the legacy Monitor tool was not cover some areas/alerts/vendors. Also, we were looking for a tool able to identify and act in some alerts. We are using NPM to monitor the infrastructure, to provide some stats that can help us to identify possible issues in the future, and to automatize some regular actions.
  • Monitor Cisco devices in general
  • Monitor Azure Gateways
  • Provide different kind of reports
  • Provide different kind of alerts
  • Pollers for Aruba Devices
  • The SolarWinds support team is not familiar with non-Cisco vendors, so it's hard to get some support from them.
  • Bugs sometimes is happening
  • Sometimes the Dashboard delays to show the current status of Nodes/Services
Great tool if you have Cisco-based devices. Not suitable for all vendors like Aruba, HP, Citrix. For other vendors, the Thwack forum sometimes is contributing with something that can help.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance (NPM) is used to monitor the health of our switches and other network devices, from several brands including Cisco, Aruba, and HPE and (I) OT devices. We use it to monitor when devices are offline, when interfaces have status changes, and also interface bandwidth on devices to identify potential issues.
  • Alerting network device status down/up
  • Monitor devices for hardware status
  • Monitor bandwidth usage
  • No improvements needed
For our organization, we use Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) for network visibility, downtime, uptime, and troubleshooting for our organization. SolarWinds NPM verifies issues with network devices, such as bandwidth allocation, network devices up/down state, and other things to assist our organization in troubleshooting any problems or performance issues.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is being used effectively throughout our organization. It's being used across different regions of the world with multiple instances setup. It's able to manage and monitor our entire customer infrastructure proactively.
  • Easy to implement
  • Easy to navigate
  • User friendly
  • Nothing as of now.
This is well suited for a company either with medium or large scale infrastructure monitoring. Also, it's best suited even with multiple regions as well.
Jesse Bridgelal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) to monitor the availability and performance of our networks across 15 geographically dispersed sites. This includes network devices, Servers, Virtual Machines and even our bandwidth consumption. SolarWinds NPM is a powerful and yet user-friendly solution with a variety of very useful tools and performance monitors allowing you to proactively manage your network and be alerted to potential issues using proactive monitoring and threshold management. The system is able to manage a wide variety of devices regardless of manufacturer and brand. There are also a host of very useful reports which can be customized to the organization's needs and automated according to run as needed.
  • Excellent Network Reporting
  • Great performance monitoring with various KPIs
  • Proactive alerting with alerts when approaching set thresholds
  • It would be great to have Root Cause Analysis built into the platform
  • The Network mapping feature could use a friendlier interface
  • The Network Monitoring Platform does not include the Topology Mapper.
Solarwinds NPM is well suited for medium to large networks, it may be a bit heavy for the SOHO environment as most of the tools and reports are designed for monitoring KPIs which may not be critical for a small shop. NPM can handle large networks with several sites and mixed technologies ranging from networks, server systems, storage devices and SLA reporting.
Ravi Khanchandani | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is used in various ways for us as well as other organizations that we support. Various use cases are as follows - Network availability during business hours Network utilization reports to review all Service provider WAN links Device health monitoring Capacity planning reports for a proactive approach NetPath - very widely used for identifying network issues like latencies, packet drops, config issues, traffic issues using a hop by hop path analysis
  • Device Health Monitoring
  • NetPath - network path analysis
  • Performance monitoring of devices - utilization of resources like CPU, Mem, Interfaces
  • Specific vendor monitoring with Network Insight - Cisco, F5, Palo Alto
  • NetPath scaling for very large environments like Banks
  • Drag and drop functionality in Reporting
  • Drag and drop functionality in Dashboards
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is most appropriate in environments where the traditional network gear like routers, switches, wireless controllers, and firewalls are in place and you need to do monitoring for availability, performance, health, and path analysis - basically all monitoring aspects. In environments where you have more of the recent network components like SD-WAN solutions, no real value add comes in from deploying SolarWinds, though SolarWinds claims that more and more SDWAN vendors will be added to the monitoring bandwagon. Currently, there are only a limited set of SDWAN vendors that are supported directly.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our corporation uses SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to monitor all of our networks/endpoints for outages that may affect connectivity. With the use of NPM, we can easily view uptime graphs, receive alerts, and even SNMP traps or Syslogs. In addition to SolarWinds NPM, we also complement it with SolarWinds NTA and NCM where we can view all network traffic and download nightly backups to our configurations.
  • Monitor uptime and create alerts for nodes which are down.
  • Collecting Syslogs and Traps
  • NPM is very slow at drawing charts and historical data from the SQL database.
SolarWinds NPM is well suited for any Information Technology professional who needs to monitor their networks, nodes, or endpoints for outages. NPM can easily create rules for alerting and is invaluable to our organization to maintain high uptime.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is used to monitor all network devices (switches, routers, firewalls,...), manage SLAs and alerting. We build dashboards to monitor main link usages, implement complex alert rules and use Netpath to monitor end to end paths. It is helping us have a clear view about our network and very useful for troubleshooting
  • Devices monitoring
  • Alerting
  • Graphs
  • Scaling (each node is limited)
  • Cloud monitoring
  • Dashboards
Monitoring network devices (status, performance) and manage alerts with specific schedules as per device type (datacenter, user, ups, ...). SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is less appropriate for wireless devices. For network devices you can monitor everything that's read by SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (all versions) and create graphs.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company uses SolarWinds NPM to monitor the health of our network and servers. We have thousands of devices and it's very helpful to know which are functioning properly in one dashboard. Alerting is also a key feature of the SolarWinds NPM and is essential to our job duties. We are all able to keep track of malfunctioning equipment without having to dive through thousands of logs. Setting up alerts to cell phones and emails is also pretty easy to do and we could not live without it during our on-call rotations.
  • Alerting on the SolarWinds NPM platform is straightforward to set up, customizable, and works reliably.
  • Being able to set up basic and more complex monitoring is a nice touch. Even devices that don't support SNMP can be monitored via a simple ping.
  • Visibility of all network and server device health on one dashboard is very convenient.
  • The SolarWinds NPM UI/UX isn't exactly the most modern-looking, but it gets the job done.
  • Updates to SolarWinds can be tricky at times and have broken the system in the past.
  • Configuring and scripting some of the advanced features can be confusing, but the thwack community is always very helpful.
I think SolarWinds NPM is well suited for larger organizations that need quick, easy, and supported visibility into network and server devices across a large network. The ability to configure and customize alerts and reporting, give users role-based access, and have professional support options is ideal for large companies that need minimal technical overhead and just want to provide infrastructure teams with a tool to give them visibility into the health of the network and servers makes SolarWinds NPM a great choice.
Curt Sminkey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We essentially use it to monitor our network devices - switches, routers, firewalls, ETC. We have our uplink interfaces monitored as well so that we can see usage and report on them as needed for things like bandwidth bottlenecks both internally and externally.
  • Notify us when a network device goes down and comes back online.
  • Reports for network interfaces.
  • Fairly simple to add or remove a network device.
  • 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.
NPM is well suited for small to medium-sized organizations. It does the basic functions of a network monitoring suite very well however some of the more advanced features aren't as straightforward. Basic up/down email alerts work well but there are obviously many solutions that do this as well. I wouldn't recommend NPM for very large organizations because the server needed to support that many devices.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) to monitor device health at all layers of our network (switches, routers, wireless controllers, etc.). The dashboard allows us to quickly identify problems such as down devices, bandwidth spikes, dropped packets, and high CPU utilization. Particularly useful is the notification system that alerts our network team when a device is not reachable.
  • Easy identification of network issues
  • Notification when critical systems are offline
  • The "Network Top 10" dashboard is all-around great
  • Upgrading the software can be tedious
  • Managing/creating reports could be faster
  • Overall, no major complaints
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) should be considered by anyone who is in charge of managing a medium to large network. It allows for a high degree of oversight of your topology and helps with resolving issues quickly. Also, setting up devices to be monitored can be as simple, or granular, as you like. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) may not be as well suited for smaller, less complex networks.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor provides advanced features to monitor network devices, firewalls, access points. It becomes easy to track such issues and resolve them within business objective timelines through the use of email alerts. The tool allows you to create custom dashboards and organize our data in ways that benefit our organization. The SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor also allows our staff to identify network bottleneck issues quickly which in turn results in faster problem resolution times.
  • Provides real-time network performance data
  • Customized reporting
  • Easily create WiFi heat maps
  • Cost when scaling can get expensive
  • Would like to see tighter integration between SolarWinds products
  • GUI could be streamlined more
The WiFi mapping tool is very helpful. This piece was very helpful as we separated employees throughout the enterprise and allowed us to maximize spending when determining the placement of wireless nodes. We also used SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to monitor endpoints and troubleshoot network traffic issues with server traffic. Also, it is well suited to relay beneficial capability when under pressure to alleviate these types of issues.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For several years, our organization has continued to utilize SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) for around the clock performance monitoring of the network and networking systems in the environment. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) solves the issues of continuous visibility, notification, and alerting pertaining to problems or issues that may occur anywhere within our IT environment.
  • Performance Monitoring
  • Network Alerting
  • Troubleshooting Issues
  • Dashboard Graphics
  • Node Licensing
  • 3rd party compatibility
There was a scenario within our organization where all network connectivity was lost internally within the organization. The network team started troubleshooting, researching, and investigating the root cause(s) of the outage. With the help of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), we were able to determine the health status of the Primary Switch was down due to several closed ports. NPM allowed us to quickly identify the problem and resolve the issue.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used to monitor the availability of critical systems of the infrastructure such as Active Directory, DHCP, and servers in remote sites. It's also used to get NetFlow stats on Cisco Routers to get a time slice view of network traffic and bandwidth.
  • Aggregate date
  • All in one interface
  • Supports SNMP and NetFlow
  • Can see route of packet across the internet to destination server
  • Simplify interface
  • Simplify installation
  • Price
Best suited when you need eyes on servers and network traffic. For instance, for network traffic, based on NetFlow, you can see the different categories of traffic that use the most bandwidth. For example, cloud storage. Via SNMP, you get to see server resource usage, i.e., how much CPU is being used throughout the day.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Someone knew. But no one knew who. NPM let us regain control of the who knew and turn it into a measured responsibility. Our Company now has knowledge of what our network resources include and how those resources are utilized daily. We demonstrate processes and services which are hyperextended and leverage available resources for use in our production environment by monitoring the trends and use of our business assets. NPM tools have helped us free up monetary resources for additional pressing projects which provide business growth. The payoff?? Minimizing monetary bleed and maximizing resource utilization. We will renew our NPM licensing allowing us to continuously monitor our IT infrastructure, connect to upstream providers, and monitor many production processes and services. This will continue to maximize our planning capabilities for resources and scalability for continued Membership and Subscriber growth.
  • Identifies IP addresses, hostnames, packet loss, and latency
  • Displays top talkers per each monitored interface
  • Path offers device details and detects configuration changes
  • Detailed (potentially multi-path) map between Windows node and a specified destination
  • Customizing the NPM interface is capable of a multitude of instructions in the Virtual Classroom via the SW website.
  • Customizing the threshold values and which interfaces to monitor are configurable by many videos in the Virtual Classroom on the SW website.
  • Customizing the active alerts' values are configurable by following directions and video instruction guides in the SW Virtual Classroom on the SW website.
By customizing our alerts and monitoring paths out of our Company to popular destinations like Google, Microsoft, Netflix, etc., our NOC has uncovered routing issues external to our network. We cooperate and provide feedback to our vendors and network providers to help isolate and identify potential service-affecting interruptions prior to issues affecting our Subscribers.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a University with 13 locations with 2 employees monitoring all locations inclusive of over 300 Switches and 200 Servers that host various apps. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor allows us to monitor all devices from one console including switches, routers, servers, and even printers. It allows us to monitor for hardware errors and bandwidth issues which is a major help in troubleshooting errors and planning for the future. I use it to view all of the switches and apps and ensure everything is up and functioning at just a glance.
  • Monitors all the switches
  • Alert when a network device is down
  • Monitor bandwidth usage across the network
  • Monitor Hardware health on devices
  • Bandwidth monitoring could be improved, when creating a map we need to either show bandwidth usage or interface speed. I would like to see both
  • Wireless heat maps could be improved. It only works with certain vendors
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is well suited for large organizations with many devices. I appreciate the fact that I can monitor all of our devices very easily. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is great at detecting hardware errors allowing us to react and replace devices at the first signs of hardware errors. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is great at monitoring bandwidth usage which helps determine which links are saturated and allows us to respond and rectify the problem.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have been using SolarWinds NPM for well over a decade. We have setup up hundreds of alerts and notifications that will email us when network notes ranging from servers, storage systems, VMware ESXi hosts, to all kinds of networking switches and gear encounter issues, are down, reset. We quickly are notified when a system is down or has rebooted and or has not come up in a timely manner.
  • monitor up/down status of network nodes
  • sends alerts immediately by email
  • good graphs and widgets to view at a quick glance status of nodes
  • maybe a little easier way to add new network nodes
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is well suited for environments where you need to know quickly when a network node has gone down, rebooted, or never came back up.
January 25, 2022

solarwinds npm

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using the solarwinds npm to monitor the network availability of our networking devices like routers, switches and servers. We are monitoring the link utilization and device performance and availability uptime and downtime of the devices and their links. We are also monitoring the physical and virtual storage of our devices along with reporting and alerting.
  • Resource performance monitoring.
  • Link monitoring.
  • Alerting.
  • Reporting.
  • New devices are not supported.
  • IPSec VPN tunnel monitoring of the FortiGate firewall is not supported.
  • Creating custom pollers does not provide the required information.
It is well suited in an environment where vendor-specific devices like cisco, juniper etc are deployed and we can easily configure and start to monitor our network infrastructure. Some new devices are not supported and for those Solarwinds does not do a great job and needs to support those devices as they are market trending.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
SolarWinds NPM is a comprehensive tool for administrators to have an overview of network paths using major protocols (i.e. ICMP, SNMP, etc.). This would help network administrators to be able to pinpoint issues within the network effectively cutting the guesswork on the points of failures and latency issues.
  • Highly customizable
  • Great mapping tools
  • Has an overview of devices and endpoints in an environment
  • Tiering could be more granular.
  • Customization could be made easier for end-users.
It is best suited when you need the ability to monitor multiple products from different vendors in one spot.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a University with multiple locations with one Network Engineer to manage and monitor all locations. SolarWinds NPM allows us to monitor all devices from one console including switches, routers, and printers. It allows us to monitor for hardware errors and bandwidth bottlenecks which is a major help in troubleshooting error and planning for the future.
  • Alert when a network device is down.
  • Monitor device for hardware errors.
  • Monitor bandwidth usage across network.
  • Wireless heat maps could be improved. We have multiple AP vendors and from experience, it only works with certain vendors.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is well suited for monitoring bandwidth usage on network to find bottlenecks. We use the atlas with our switches and view the bandwidth on the links. This has proven very helpful in many occasions to identifying switches sending high amounts of traffic. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is also well suited for monitoring devices for hardware errors. It's very helpful to identify errors that may not be apparent such as one bad fan or failing POE modules on switches. With this info we can schedule a replacement of the device with errors before it becomes a problem for users.
Matthew Plourde | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) for network visibility, uptime, and troubleshooting. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) verifies issues with network devices such as bandwidth allocation, network devices up/down state, and many other things to assist me in troubleshooting to keep the most uptime for my business.
  • Alerts
  • Performance
  • Inventory
  • Free netflow statistics
  • Difficult threshold changes
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) provides the alerts and data I need to keep my business running efficiently on our network. The bandwidth allocation data is especially useful to identify any shortfalls with devices or services that may need an upgrade.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is our primary enterprise monitoring tool used for monitoring the entire infrastructure. This includes servers, N/W devices, storage, databases, firewall, UPS, etc., to list a few of the device types which we monitor. It supports multi-vendor network monitoring and insights for deeper visibility. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) includes intelligent alerting, intuitive dashboards, and reporting features. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is part of the SolarWinds Orion Platform and is the main monitoring component and integrates seamlessly with other SolarWinds modules. It supports SNMP, WMI, and agent/agentless monitoring.
  • Very scalable for large environments
  • Agent and agentless monitoring available
  • Robust SNMP monitoring, realtime MIB updates by the vendor
  • Integrates seamlessly with other SolarWinds products
  • Support more vendors, checkpoint and storage vendors
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is easy to set up and discover your entire network in minutes. It supports different types of polling mechanisms including ICMP, SNMP, WMI and agents. Agents can be deployed from the centralized SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) console. Orion Maps and Network Atlas provide a visual representation of your entire network and alerts can be defined when there are route changes, packet loss, increased latency, etc. Dashboards are easy to configure and provide the NOC team with a holistic view of the entire infrastructure.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds allowed us to consolidate Network Performance monitoring into one tool. It has allowed us to spot issues we would have otherwise missed.
  • Network Maps, Live Maps.
  • Custom Dashboards.
  • Ease of adding new elements.
  • Support for Juniper/Arista devices.
  • Sluggishness and need for a modern UI.
  • Limitation to Windows.
It's appropriate if you have several different disparate tools and you are trying to visualize the network and get quick custom dashbaords. It would not be great if you have a multivendor environment where you need custom OIDs to be added in Solarwinds, you would need a dedicated person to maintain Solarwinds in that case. For a large-scale telecom network, this wouldn't be suitable.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our business is manufacturing, we have a wide campus design network equipment and it is hard to manage without SolarWinds NPM platform to check the status of the alerts it generates when a system is down. it helped us take quick actions in terms of doing maintenance during peak hours of the business and to maintain high availability at all times. NPM plays a vital role in our organization and we like how granular statistics it shows on the dashboard, it is very easy to set up any system to monitor its availability in terms of network, power, CPU usage, and other hardware stuff.
  • NPM Alerts when a network device is down
  • bandwidth issues can be determined
  • hardware issues can also be seen
  • improvements over the WAN
In manufacturing where you have to keep systems up all the time during production
January 18, 2022

SolarWinds

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We monitor status and utilization at 13000 retail locations.
  • Up/Down status
  • Bandwidth utilization
  • Alerting
  • auto discovery
  • UI performance
Easy to use. I wish it was easier to auto-discover when new interfaces were used on existing nodes. I also wish the web interface had a faster response.
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