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Filter 400 vetted SolarWinds NPM reviews and ratings
Reviews (1-25 of 170)
January 18, 2020
NPM is a valuable tool for Network Monitoring
Our organization uses SolarWinds to gain visibility into the performance of the Network and to alert us to problems an outages. This helps us be proactive in identifying issues within the network and quickly address them. NPM offers high visibility into our network with a user-friendly interface. The product offers a high level of customizability allowing us to hone the monitoring and alerting to meet our needs. Getting the product up and running is pretty straightforward. The learning curve comes in when honing your monitoring. Support is responsive and reliable. The Thwack community also offers helps for deployment and management questions. The interface offers loads of charts and graphs allowing you to show how your network and key interfaces are performing. This is especially helpful when you are presenting to senior-level management and team member who may not fully understand Networking.
- Easy to Navigate Interface - The user interface is laid out very clearly and it is intuitive to navigate.
- Highly Customizable Alerts - You have the ability to fine-tune alerts to meet your needs.
- Detailed Graphs and Reports - NPM does a great job of translating raw analytical data in to easy to read graphs and reports.
- Ability to Monitor a Wide Range of Devices - There are built in MIBs for a wide range of device vendors and you have the Ability to configure more.
- Creation of Custom Charts and Reports - Charts and graphs can take a little time to tweak to get the data that's relevant to you. Creating custom reports also isn't intuitive however the SolarWinds support is great at assisting you when needed.
- Licensing Model - You definitely need a good knowledge of what you're trying to see. Licensing is based on the number of elements being monitored (devices and interfaces). This can get costly so you want to have a good understanding of what areas you wish to target if Cost is an issue in your organization.
- No Real Integration with SD WAN Tools - Solarwinds NPM allows you to link with SD WAN APIs but due to API limitations, you only get surface level info. I would like to see them partner with some popular SD WAN vendors.
- Network Atlas - this is the software you use to upload maps into the system. Currently, its a standalone piece of software on the server. I would like to see this integrated into the online console.
We use the Orion Summary page for all senior admins - we get alerts if things are coming down, if servers are running low on disk space, if memory is over utilized. Many different uses. I like the additions of NetPath services. I have also used reports and the network Atlas to create visual representations for our active links. Diving into a node is helpful to establish response time issues, trends and even capacity forecasts. I use this on servers, SANs, switches, Wireless controllers, and alert monitoring services.
- NetPath services are a godsend when you are trying to explain to ISPs, etc. about where traffic is congested or stopping. Sometimes seeing is believing for them.
- The other BIG deal is anticipating disk capacity - when volumes get to full, servers crash. With NPM, we can and create set thresholds for warning us before we run into issues, and then we can add storage, memory, and CPU, (especially on our Virtual environment.)
- Alerts are great - instead of hearing from our users that a server is offline, we are aware of it right away.
- It would be nice to be able to set up SNMP3 for some of our systems in an easier fashion. But it is not a show stopper.
- Sometimes the support refers us to the Knowledge base and Thwack. Not a huge deal, but I only end up putting in a ticket when I have spent a great deal of time searching for a solution.
January 17, 2020
SolarWinds NPM - "Nice, Practical, Modular"
As a consultant SolarWinds NPM allows me to recommend and implement a quick, industry standard solution for my customers that adds value immediately. With an ever increasing number of add-on modules it is scalable to meet the needs of a variety of businesses/organizations.
- Ease of configuration. SolarWinds NPM is easily configured initially with discovery auto-populating the majority of equipment.
- Ease of management/use. SolarWinds NPM is easily understood by those with less training, allowing them to gain visibility in to and troubleshoot problems that would otherwise require additional assistance.
- Pricing. While there are alternate solutions to SolarWinds NPM, this offering sits in a well-priced space easily adding more value than the sticker price. With the module-based approach the product offering often scales well with company size as well.
- Ease of modification. It is sometimes difficult to understand how to properly modify the details of individual components. This comes with the territory given the constraints of SNMP, etc. but I feel that SolarWinds could streamline the end-user experience.
- Dials. For some things dials are a good indication for system status but I've never liked them for network monitoring as they take up a lot of real estate where a simple color-coded number would suffice in most cases.
January 14, 2020
SolarWinds NPM - the backbone of network monitoring
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is our backbone for monitoring all network infrastructure for our company. We use it for all devices currently deployed in the field, as well as all data center device monitoring. The ability of NPM to monitor large scale environments such as ours, and the integration with other SW products such as NCM and SAM work very well with NPM.
- NPM polls devices consistently for status
- NPM gathers statistical data for logging
- NPM also has reporting and alerting features that aid in logging historical data and diagnosing issues
- NPM can be a bit hard to tame on resources in a large scaled environment
- NPM needs some finesse when running large scaled jobs/reports
- NPM could stand to be more efficient on the back end. It can be a hog.
August 28, 2019
SolarWinds is our recipe for success
We are using SolarWinds as a SNMP monitoring tool for all of our switches, routers, UPSs and other misc devices. It is the primary monitoring tool of our networking team and is utilized remote technicians as well to be informed through the alerting engine. SolarWinds has been instrumental in proactively addressing network and power issues prior to end users calling us. This level of support has enabled us to minimize downtime saving our company a significant amount of money.
- I think the shining example that sets SolarWinds apart from the rest is the approach it takes with SNMP. I have served in the Managed Service field and monitored devices for over twelve years and SolarWinds SNMP monitoring design is bar-none the best I have used.
- I appreciate how different aspects of NPM flow togeher. An example of this is when you monitor a wireless controller and how it will automatically populate all of your access points along with statistics into the system. Using this feature along with the Network Traffic Analyzer has been a powerful troubleshooting tool.
- The user community is a large part of the success of NPM. SolarWinds provides a forum that allows others to share their successes and discoveries with others. It is both friendly and professional and has been a major help to me.
- I'm not a big fan of the licensing model which can quickly become bloated as your consider adding additional modules. It would make sense to me to cover device counts in your maintenance contract and then simple pay a straight fee for your modules.
- Getting assistance for setting up monitoring templates is primary found through the user community (especially for unique devices). I would love to see a section in thwack that has a more organized approach to monitoring scripts that are organized by device (perhaps even company).
- Make all functions required for monitoring templates available through the web GUI. Having to configure use the Universal Device Poller for configuring SNMP templates is a nuisance.
August 27, 2019
SolarWinds for K-12
We are a K-12 school district that has 11 schools and 2 administrative buildings. We have around 80 logical switch stacks and around 9000 physical ports in addition to almost 600 access points. We use NPM extensively to monitor all of our infrastructure equipment as well as our servers and IT appliances. NPM gives us a single pane of glass to quickly be alerted to any issues that our equipment may have.
- Single pane of glass for my entire infrastructure.
- Configurable text and email notifications if systems go down or have errors.
- Port Utilization with errors and discards.
- It would be nice if there was a way the interface details could give you a report of ports not in use based on the life of the switch, not the last reboot.
August 27, 2019
SolarWinds NPM - Good product, but watch out for the add ons
We utilize NPM to monitor our global network and server infrastructure. It provides us with basic monitoring and alerting capability, as well as historical trends. Until recently, it was used exclusively for our network environment (and sparingly) because we did not have the license capacity to do more. Once we upgraded the licensing, we were able to leverage it for our server environment, monitoring Windows and Linux VMs, as well as our vSphere hosts.
- Generally speaking, NPM does alerting very well. It has a lot of flexibility in how to build and deliver the alerts.
- Being able to do HTTP POST on alerts helps integrate it with modern tools like Slack and OpsGenie, even if it's not a baked-in integration.
- The ability to get all relevant device data from one page (and a couple of tabs) is nice, and there is customization available within that view.
- What I deem as some of the better features in NPM come from integration with other paid SolarWinds tools, such as NTA, NCM, etc. It can be a bit disappointing to look at the marketing material, find something you really want to do, only to discover it requires buying yet another product.
- SolarWinds licensing isn't great. Some of the caveats around "you need x number of interfaces licensed for NPM, so you need that many for this other product" make the suite less and less attractive and the total cost continues to climb.
- There's essentially 3 generations of User Interface built into the current product. Some tools, like syslog, still exist on the old Windows-application-run-from-the-server model and are in the web interface, most things are in the web interface that's been around for a while, and now they are integrating new features only in the newer-style web UI. There's no consistency to those UIs, so it looks and feels like 3 different products.
- The Universal Device Poller is a great way to get functionality out of NPM for products without baked-in support. But there are still some things that seem like table stakes that require the Universal Device Poller - monitoring APC UPS devices for example. Other products (including open source) do this really well since just about everybody needs to monitor stuff like that. Years later, NPM still relies on the pollers.
- Sorry, but I hate the graphs. I prefer rrdtool-style graphs, and there is some hope for the future in the new style web UI.
December 10, 2019
SolarWinds NPM is a great tool to make IT admins look good!
We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor everything in our environment (routers, switches, servers, VOIP speakers, cameras, etc.). We monitor and know the moment any important device loses connectivity, and it is documented and emailed to the admins. We also monitor bandwidth and health environments of our equipment, giving us a warning if anything could give us a future problem.
- Alert configurations have mulitple options, giving us the ability to get notified for any defined event we choose.
- Monitors all of our devices in one interface where even the average user can be granted access and take a look at our overall environment.
- Integration with VMWare in the past has been difficult to get working properly.
- In the latest version, it seems to get slow frequently until I reboot the services on the application server.
November 20, 2019
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
AVOXI uses SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor across the organization. It is used by the Customer Support and Productions Ops departments. Production Ops uses it internally to monitor the uptime and performance of all network objects in our environment. Customer Support uses it primarily to prove the availability of resources and also to monitor some customer equipment and proactively alert customers to problems on their end.
- Monitor performance. Receiving alerts for latency issues in real-time enables us to track down the root cause more quickly. Recently it helped us discover that an off-site backup copy was not being properly throttled, thereby causing call quality issues weekly at 3 AM.
- Drill down to find details. In the previous example (weekly performance hit) we started at an edge device, saw the traffic spike, traced it to the access switch, and then the switch port. That made it easy to correlate the source of the traffic with the perceived symptom.
- Graphs over time. Again, using the previous example, we were able to use the graphs and look back over the history of the two ports involved (inbound to the edge of one datacenter and outbound from the offending application) to prove correlation as opposed to a one-time coincidence.
- The hardware resources are a bit steep. We have had to restart services a few times when website performance deteriorated over time.
- Being tied to Microsoft is a negative for us. It just seems wrong to have to run one MS SQL Server along with a few dozen MySQL boxes.
January 17, 2020
SolarWinds- makes going home easy
We use it to monitor network equipment and servers throughout the whole school district. It lets us easily see outages and heavy load issues. And it was recently set up to monitor certain stations used by security personnel to make sure they are up and running.
- Notification of equipment down before the user usually even notices there is a problem.
- Insight into processor and memory loads on equipment to allow adjustments before failure.
- Better tools to clean up database bloat.
I am responsible for the network, security, performance and overall data network for my organization. I have used NPM to achieve several objectives, along with overall daily performance monitoring. When I first implemented it 7 years ago, we had multiple encrypted tunnels running over T1's which degraded the performance for the end-users. I used SolarWinds NPM to draw a baseline (in red), which eventually went away with a better-configured piece of hardware.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor points our discrepancies; I feel like NPM is my left hand at work. it has definitely paid for itself many times over. It allows you to take baselines and look at performance in real-time and historically. I find hardware that is going to fail before it fails due to the statistics. The saying, you get what you pay for? You get more with NPM! I will say, you get out of the tool what you put into it! I have a standard for every device so it is very easy to see anomalies on the NOC!
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor points our discrepancies; I feel like NPM is my left hand at work. it has definitely paid for itself many times over. It allows you to take baselines and look at performance in real-time and historically. I find hardware that is going to fail before it fails due to the statistics. The saying, you get what you pay for? You get more with NPM! I will say, you get out of the tool what you put into it! I have a standard for every device so it is very easy to see anomalies on the NOC!
- Every network has a notorious piece of equipment that runs outside of normal thresholds! You can set up individual thresholds for alert notification. It is very important to find the right balance of notifications from your monitoring tools. You can tweak NPM or run with the defaults. I run the defaults until hardware indicates that it needs individual configuration.
- You can add nodes individually or in bulk. You can have NPM discover your network!
- NPM can set up a wireless heat map - you need to input a floor plan - massage the map with Network Atlas; before you know it you will have a live heat map of your wireless network!
- I love the top XX options to view in the NOC - I have the top 100 network events, the top 100 interfaces showing in the NOC. You can detail the NOC pages to show just about anything you are collecting in NPM. Unbelievable information when looking for anomalies!
- NPM is being driven by the user group THWACK! I love the fact that they just added Network Insight for the Palo Alto Firewalls: site-to-site VPNs: discovery, status, bandwidth, failures reason, and protocols. GlobalProtect VPNs: username, public IP, virtual IP, and status
- I can't complain or really say that SolarWinds Network Performance monitor has any particular flaw to report! I am pleased how Solarwinds used the THWACK community to add additional features to the product.
- I would like to be able to reclassify the Unknown nodes - the LINUX flavored servers running my virtual Avaya phone network are not classified at all. I did name and manage all the nodes. All nodes are properly identified, I just don't like that group called Unknown .. .but am glad it is there to catch unidentified objects!
- Demo NPM from Solarwinds Web site. You will not be disappointed!
September 05, 2019
SolarWinds NPM - Hot or Not?
I am currently in development between multiple teams across IT. I implement real time monitoring systems for Wireless, LAN topology, and an alerting system that integrates for both the server team, help desk team, and the networking teams. It currently monitors the physical network, maintains an IP addressing summary, and integrates with vcenter and vsphere.
- Its web API is easy to use and pretty intuitive
- The customer support has been pretty decent whenever I have needed to go through them
- It has its own database gui that is easy to see and use in order to create custom queries
- Its real-time topology mapper and "Network Atlas" is being moved to a less functional web-based real time monitoring system that is not intuitive and doesnt support integration with real time monitoring of vcenter devices.
- Its pay per node price scale makes expanding your network less attractive.
- It doesn't support every vendor of networking equipment and in such a case requires extensive knowledge of OIDs and the SQL backend in order to implement the necessary monitoring nodes
- vCenter integration is very basic and needs improvement and customization options available to it that the rest of the program has
- the view based pages are incredibly difficult to set up in any sort of hierarchical sense. And getting menu customization to navigate through the pages is a pain in the butt.
August 29, 2019
NPM just works
We have over 40 buildings and we use NPM to monitor traffic between our locations and determine if there are issues at our different sites. We also use it to generate reports for use with determining need and future and past traffic stats. This helps to determine if we need to increase throughput to different sites or if there is an anomaly that needs to be looked at.
- The interface is really well-designed. It's pretty intuitive and easy to work with.
- I like the map editor. It works well in creating maps and having an overall view of your sites.
- I like the customization of the pages where you can change the layouts.
- I don't like building reports. It seems bulky to find what I'm looking for when browsing for different objects.
- I found it impossible to create a custom SNMP check. It may be due to my lack of knowledge, but it was difficult and SolarWinds was no help.
We use it on customer's networks for monitoring, alerting, and reporting. We have too many devices to monitor manually. We also use NCM, but I don't believe that is included in the scope of this review
- Granular and custom alerting.
- OID Monitoring and historical data / SNMP.
- Support for all devices or custom devices.
- Online support articles (KBs) could be better.
- Perfstack isn't great.
- Documentation for detailed things is lacking or non-existent.
There are multiple groups at Microsoft that use SolarWinds NPM, in this case it's being used by the cloud and enterprise organization to keep track of the network and servers for the developer division. It addresses a gap between our server monitoring and the more global IT monitoring done by our MSIT group.
- Easy to use but contains a lot of depth for power users
- Reasonable price point to get started
- Good support model and great community
- Alert set up can be confusing
August 27, 2019
One of the sharpest tools in your toolbox
It is being used in conjunction with NCM and UDT to manage over 3000 network devices in the company and to monitor and backup all devices.
- Config management
- Network monitoring
- Change control
- Quicker polling
- More polling options
- More info on less prolific devices
July 30, 2019
SolarWinds Does it with Style
We use it for our school district. It is used by our IT department. It helps us find issues with switches and any server connectivity issues, from bandwidth to other issues causing slowness.
- The up and down feature is great. Sometimes we missed the things it points out.
- CPU usage information on the virtual systems we use is critical.
- We like the network discovery feature, it does an awesome job.
- Storage resource helps a lot.
- Netflow Traffic Analyzer could really use an upgrade, such as including the ability to do Layer 3 flows not just Layer 2.
- Better job in the update department
- IP address manager takes too long to discover. I use a standalone IP address manager and it works better than the one in the suite.
January 16, 2020
NPM watches our servers and switches so we don't have to
We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor performance statistics and status (up/down) of over 250 servers and hundreds of switch and router interfaces enterprise-wide. Custom alerts are used to notify application or server owners when a system is down or degraded.
- Adding nodes is easy.
- Status monitoring is efficient and timely (assuming your polling and alert settings are appropriate).
- Dashboards are useful and highly customizeable.
- It's a big animal and takes time and expertise to keep it running smoothly and maintain the monitored nodes. Don't assume some IT tech is going to use this in their spare time.
- Because it is very complex, there can be a steep learning curve. Get some training from Loop1.
- The web interface is slow. Probably can't be helped, but it is frustrating at times.
January 14, 2020
SolarWinds NPM is the magic bullet!
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, for us, is used for the monitoring of servers, networking equipment and other devices. The only department that uses it is information technology. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor helps us manage what's going on in the environment and also keeps an eye for any machines that go offline anytime during the day or night. Before SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor it was all hit and miss as to when we knew devices were in trouble.
- The software is very in-depth. You will be able to get metrics and data on things you never thought possible.
- SolarWinds has a vast array of products in its database so we have yet to add anything that wasn't already included.
- The reporting is wonderful. It is in-depth and allows us to provide documents to business partners when asked.
- Sometimes there are too many things to look at. It may be hard to find just what you are looking for. I would prefer a more dumbed down interface or even a guided wizard.
- It may be our implementation but it seems a little sluggish at times.
- Upgrading it can be a pain since there may be multiple updates needed to get current.
January 15, 2020
SolarWinds simply works!
It is being used across the whole organization. The product helps the IT department monitor systems and applications, which would allow IT to respond and address issues more timely and in a proactive manner.
- System monitoring
- Application monitoring
- Update node properties
- Certain query functions in reporting
January 14, 2020
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a Great Tool
We use SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to monitor all of our network infrastructure here in our head office as well as at our colocation, executive office, and a couple remote call center sites. We have hundreds of devices and it helps us to monitor for performance and down issues and has been reliable in doing such.
- Easy to maintain
- Highly customizable interface
- Easy to setup alerts
- Every now and then the web interface starts getting really slow and the server needs reboot
- Licensing needs to be simplified, there are so many moving parts and so many different licenses to maintain
- Has a bug where interfaces show in "unknown" state and you have to remove/re-add the interfaces to make that stop or just ignore them
January 14, 2020
Email alerts a plenty
We use Orion to monitor servers and network devices across our 3 offices and microwave network. I like how it can email alerts when there is a stop in communication across the network. I wish it would let you set a hierarchy so if one thing stops you don’t get emails about everything downstream as well.
- Email alerts
- Domain integration
- Not subscription
- Hierarchy settings
- Limit email alerts. I don’t like getting 256 alerts on Monday morning
- Web page interface is very slow
January 13, 2020
SolarWinds has been helpful in managing our infrastructure
We use NPM to monitor our various nodes across the company.
- The Dashboard features quickly enable us to evaluate where we are for the day and give a quick look into how clients feel about both the service they receive.
- SolarWinds features a pooling system that lets you install SolarWinds in as many servers as you want besides SolarWinds. You never restrict yourself to the database with this pooling method.
- I dislike its licensing and is a little bit costly as compared to other monitoring tools.
- Not really fair but there is a lot to configure. That is because there is a lot it can do. It is important to spend the time and get full use of it. It can be overwhelming in the beginning while you are setting things up and very time-consuming.
August 07, 2019
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor -- Increases Monitoring, Increases Performance
Within my current organization, SolarWinds is used for monitoring of network devices and servers within our domain. We use it for gathering of performance metrics (interface utilization, processor utilization, etc) as well as device uptime and reachability. Our primary goal for this monitoring is that it helps with understanding the "right-size" of equipment to purchase for an organization, in addition to providing maximum uptime for our end users.
- Monitor Uptime
- Provide Historical Resource Utilization Metrics
- Provide an API for automation
- High Resource Requirements
- Historical Measurements are Averaged-Out (Rather than exact)
- Occasional False Positives
November 30, 2019
SolarWinds NPM Review
SolarWinds is used to monitor the OT side of the network. This includes switches, virtual environment (servers and workstations), RTU's, PCL's, etc across many locations. It monitors devices via SNMP and alerts on issues accordingly. It allows us to do reporting on all our devices and look for historical trends. We can be proactive in the event of issues as we get alerted by SolarWinds rather than users.
- Ease of installation and monitoring.
- The customizability of alerts and reports let you design what you're looking for.
- The bonus of NetPath and PerfStack makes issues that much easier again to work out where the problem may be.
- The upgrade of how syslogs are handled in the GUI needs more improvement to match the old version it replaced.
SolarWinds NPM Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
About SolarWinds NPM
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) delivers comprehensive network fault monitoring and performance management that scales and expands with your 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.
SolarWinds users can get a full NPM installation up and running the same day they download. Implementation does not require a team of consultants. NPM provides quick visibility into the health of network devices and servers on the network, ensuring that users have the real-time information they need to keep their network running at peak performance.
Network Performance Monitor helps IT Pros:
- Quickly 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 an easy-to-use 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 Screenshots
SolarWinds NPM Video
Network Performance Monitor overview
SolarWinds NPM Downloadables
SolarWinds NPM Integrations
SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, Solarwinds® Storage Resource Monitor, Solarwinds Web Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Web Help Desk, SolarWinds IP Address Manager, SolarWinds User Device Tracker, SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager
SolarWinds NPM Competitors
ManageEngine OpManager, WhatsUp Gold, Nagios Core, DX Infrastructure Manager (formerly CA Unified Infrastructure Management), Micro Focus Network Node Manager i (formerly HP Network Node Manager), Paessler PRTG
Pricing
- Has featureFree Trial Available?Yes
- Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
- Does not have featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?No
- Entry-level set up fee?Optional
SolarWinds NPM Support Options
| Free Version | Paid Version | |
|---|---|---|
| Phone | ||
| Forum/Community | ||
| FAQ/Knowledgebase | ||
| Video Tutorials / Webinar |
SolarWinds NPM Technical Details
| Deployment Types: | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems: | Windows, Windows® Server 2016; SQL Server 2016 SQL Server 2016 SP1 SQL Server 2017 (including installations on Linux) |
| Mobile Application: | No |