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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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Popular Features
- Alerts (228)8.989%
- Hardware health monitoring (215)8.888%
- Network monitoring (231)8.787%
- Customizable reports (212)7.979%
Pricing
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…
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- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Why I Recommend SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
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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
SolarWinds NPM Video
Network Performance Monitor overview
SolarWinds NPM Integrations
- SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
- SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
- SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
- SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
- SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
- SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor (SRM)
- SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD)
- SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM)
SolarWinds NPM Competitors
- LogicMonitor
- OpenText Network Node Manager i (NNMi)
- Broadcom DX Unified Infrastructure Management
- Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
- ManageEngine OpManager
- Nagios Core
- Progress WhatsUp Gold
- DX Infrastructure Manager (formerly CA Unified Infrastructure Management)
- Paessler PRTG
SolarWinds NPM Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Windows® Server 2016; SQL Server 2016 SQL Server 2016 SP1 SQL Server 2017 (including installations on Linux) |
| Mobile Application | No |
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.
LogicMonitor, OpenText Network Node Manager i (NNMi), and Broadcom DX Unified Infrastructure Management are common alternatives for SolarWinds NPM.
Reviewers rate Alerts highest, with a score of 8.9.
The most common users of SolarWinds NPM are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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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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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
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October 19, 2018
SolarWinds NPM is a win for us
NPM is used by our IT Department to monitor numerous server and network metrics and alert us when certain alarms are triggered. It is used primarily for monitoring servers, virtualization and network infrastructure devices.
- Monitor storage utilization of servers.
- Monitor virtualization performance metrics.
- Trigger alarms when metrics fall below specific limits.
- The time required to fully configure for even basic benefits could be reduced.
- Setting up more advanced features is difficult with a large learning curve.
- Finding affordable consultants to assist with deployment is difficult.
October 15, 2018
SolarWinds NPM for the win
We use it to check bandwidth constraints and also to troubleshoot outages to trace back to the root cause. Also to check what times of the day the util is the highest to assess new hardware, etc.. This tool is very valuable with the features it has, although licensing can become expensive depending on how you use it.
- Finding which sites uses the most traffic, what type of traffic and where they are traversing to and from.
- The GUI interface is relatively intuitive and easy to customize.
- The integration to the Orion Platform is good, kind of a one-stop shop.
- The licensing model can become expensive, because they are based on port count.
- We find the best bang for the buck to put them on the uplink interfaces.
- Sometime the GUI gets too into the weeds from the default config. You have to modify to see what you want to see. Needs are different for each company.
October 15, 2018
Solarwinds within Education
NPM is used by the Technology Department to monitor our infrastructure, I need to know in advance if a switch is having hardware or network traffic issues. Our facilities manager also uses it to monitor power outages throughout the district.
- Real-time monitoring of crucial network areas.
- Network mapping of our district which extends over a 20-mile radius.
- Server analysis - the majority of our servers are virtual, this helps us keep up with deploying server resources.
- I would like to see an option to embed switch configuration within the mapping tools.
October 12, 2018
Great product for any company that have an IT infrastructure!
Solarwinds NPM in combination with NTA, NCM, and VNQM gives us an integrated intelligent data correlation for smart M&C. It helps to isolate non-performing links or track traffic shift in medium size network. The alerting and reporting functions are robust. The SDK/API allows us to combine other tools for a complete monitoring solution at the network and application layers.
- NPM-friendly GUI with robust out of the box SNMP statistics collection.
- NCM Router Configurations Management.
- Netflow - long data retention periods.
- SolarWinds is too dependent on the Microsoft operating system. Patches and updates easily breaks the SolarWinds application. Appliance based model may work better.
- Upgrades are painful and becomes almost a 24 hour marathon in our large scale installation.
- Support time for high urgent severity crash is slow. It seems like it's more dependent of when we call in as oppose to what the actual severity level of the ticket opened is.
October 11, 2018
Solarwinds NPM is Great!
We use Solarwinds NPM within the Information Technology department as a way to identify highly utilized ports and devices, along with tracking down end-user device usage, and the possibility of end-users abusing service such as music streaming, video streaming, social media in general, etc. It has allowed us to troubleshoot, enforce policies, and complete capacity planning for the company.
- Showing the top-10 talkers is extremely helpful when hunting down bandwidth issues and hogs on the corporate network. This has assisted in resolving connection issues for many locations at once.
- Interfaces with high percent utilization has been a very large help with a NOC view that I have built, along with identifying devices that may be misbehaving (e.g. completing a backup outside of the schedule), along with end-user network usage.
- The switch stack view showing errors, discards, and usage also helps in troubleshooting network issues and improving performance via hunting down issues prior to end-users experiencing loss in performance and/or connectivity.
- Getting to a map involving a device can be a bit cumbersome, as you have to go into the device's page itself to pull up a map. Being able to go into a map section and look up a device would be a great help; just an idea for an improvement.
October 05, 2018
NPM Keeps Us Informed and Ahead of Compaints
SolarWinds NPM is being used to monitor servers and equipment at remote sites. It allows us to react faster to issues at those sites as well as understand why our other systems may being acting strange.
- Identifies machines with issues.
- Identifies overloaded machines be it processor, memory, or storage.
- False positives due to VPN connectivity.
- Licenses used up based on monitored logical disks does not make sense. We partition several drives to ease other management tasks and have stopped monitoring disks because of this licensing practice.
October 05, 2018
NPM is well worth a look at if you care about your network
We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor and evaluate our network links between different sites and establish if there are any errant applications running across the wire. We have over 70 county offices with 5Mbps links that need all of that bandwidth for business traffic. We used this across our whole organization from the local offices to the remote offices. We are able to tell when someone or something is clogging up the various pipelines and can address it with the end user quickly.
- Quickly and easily helps us find bandwidth hogs on the remote networks that are using the pipe for personal needs.
- Giving us a good history of usage in a site or the state office to let us know if we have over allocated or provisioned bandwidth and can possibly reduce payment somewhere.
- Sometimes the GUI is a little slow to load depending on the amount of data that it is trying to present.
- We wish that it could detect the available bandwidth available so we don't have to manage each interface individually to set a max speed.
September 28, 2018
2 Decades for network motioning experience.
When I started at my current company the previous engineers had used Nagios but never trained anyone on their specialized configurations or how to duplicate their work. Since Nagios no one on the team that was left had experience with Nagios. I brought in SolarWinds NPM to quickly bring a handle on basic networking monitoring which was not being done. Management bought into my plan and we've migrated all monitoring to SolarWinds products as a core single pane of glass.
- Easy templates can be made to train everyone on adding and managing nodes.
- Reporting Reporting Reporting
- Constant upgrades to features to keep up with the changing times.
- Better email controls. Right now we can do everything to control different groups getting emails but it could be easier.
- NTA needs to be part of NPM they should not be separate products.
- Filtering/searching options on syslogs and alerts.
September 24, 2018
Monitoring large to small, NPM will not disappoint.
We use NPM to monitor our network traffic and to help us trend data and diagnose spikes is traffic and then help track down those sources. It is used mainly in the IT department of our company.
- Current state of nodes in the organization.
- Amount of data transferred by certain processes and applications.
- Availability or up time of devices.
- For me managing alert status notifications could be a little easier to setup.
September 11, 2018
Yes to SolarWinds!
Our IT Operations group uses SolarWinds NPM daily. It helps us identify and mitigate issues such as circuit saturation and high CPU as just a few examples.
- Proactively alerts our team for hardware issues, failures
- I am unable to think of anything at this time.
September 10, 2018
You can never go blind while NPM is deployed in your environment
It is used by network support, network deployment and customer service desk to monitor the health of the infrastructure resources and for troubleshooting. It has been very useful and it provides the best insight into our network without which we feel blind!
- We build maps using network atlas and the NPM dashboard is very useful with site maps, with monitoring available at our fingertips
- NPM is very versatile and is good in SNMP MIB databases, even for unpopular vendors
- NPM is the base for all other add ons
- I have no complaints
September 07, 2018
SolarWinds
We use it to track bandwidth utilization on out various internet connections as well as a preemptive tool for network problems. It is used solely by the IT department.
- Provides proactive alerts to possible network issues such as switches rebooting and interfaces being over utilized.
- It provides excellent pre-scheduled reports on network bandwidth utilization allowing us to plan for resource expansion.
- It serves as a method for us to see out network inventory
- Creating reports can be a bit tedious.
- The system is extremely powerful, but the result is a difficulty in finding the correct screen for the various functions.
We currently use NPM for enterprise wide monitoring of network gear, up down status, general health. The network operations center uses the application every hour of every day to watch for outages or trends that could involve other teams. It creates a single place to view important information across the entire network.
- Provide a single pane of glass to see the health of the network in one place, great for the NOC team and our network team as well as any other group looking for one place to see how things are doing.
- Entire network is monitored once initial install is configured so there are fewer surprises.
- Displays information in an easy to read fashion.
- If you do not setup your dashboards correctly the information can be overwhelming.
- There is a period of learning to get used to the tool.
September 05, 2018
My NPM review in a nutshell
NPM is being used by the IT Dept.
We mainly use it for up/down and performance monitoring of our networking gears. This includes all switches, firewalls, critical servers (also being monitored by other software), MPLS connections, etc.
We mainly use it for up/down and performance monitoring of our networking gears. This includes all switches, firewalls, critical servers (also being monitored by other software), MPLS connections, etc.
- Main dashboard
- Decent support of various vendors
- Browsing to the target right from the main dashboard.
- There's no back button on each section when you edit (e.g. Edit under Device info.)
- Some platforms still not supported for SNMP management.
- I'd like to see a search button in the main [dashboard].
- Some text does not align under "Network Top 10" dashboard
August 31, 2018
SolarWinds keeps a good eye on your network weather.
We are using it to monitor network connected devices across our whole organization. We use it for alerting and monitoring. It allows us to know the current state of network devices so we can be more proactive than reactive.
- Easy to use/deploy
- Supports a wide variety of devices from an SNMP MIB perspective
- Has some customizable features for each device
- Integration with AD
- It's bloated from a software standpoint, the installs are huge.
- Performance can be sluggish at times.
- No way to install MIBs yourself at this time, so if they don't support it you have to submit it, wait, and hope they add it.
- The scales of graphs and reports are usually not great by default; it requires some tweaking.
- Pricing and sales teams are always changing.
August 28, 2018
SolarWinds Proves Time and Time
Solarwinds NPM is current being used in my organization's network throughout. As for access to the platform it is restricted to the IT team at the moment but are working to get real-time statistics to display on our SharePoint portal for all organization users to see the real-time health of our network and services. NPM has solved a couple of problems that were important to identifying root causes for network or network related issues. This was accomplished by utilizing the built-in features of NPM such as device polling (SNMP/PING) which gives us a status of the health of a device or the reachability to it, and NetPath has helped in cases where we have had ISPs failover and increase latency or increase the amount of network hops to a configured resource.
- Easy to navigate UI while still providing powerful monitoring features.
- Wide range of features to monitor just about any network/service.
- Configurable (eye candy) reporting for upper management.
- alerting features are very good for just about of any type of alerting you need
- With many services moving to the cloud monitoring can be a challenge depending on your cloud deployments.
- Pricey but much less work to do than open source / free tools.
- If not configured to its full potential or to your organization's needs it can appear to be useless for it's price.
- Alarms in a device can only be acknowledged individually and not on a incident affected basis.
- For newer devices/platforms you have to customize pollers as the built-in pollers may report incorrect data.
We are currently using SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) to provide enterprise-wide monitoring across a physical campus location in Irvine, Satellite WAN locations (MPLS) and Meraki managed sites. We also utilize NPM in conjunction with Netflow and Voice Network Quality Manager (VNQM) to get a complete picture of our entire Enterprise infrastructure.
It address the strong need for a stable and quick network for our Enterprise Services (Proprietary applications created to service Glidewell needs).
It address the strong need for a stable and quick network for our Enterprise Services (Proprietary applications created to service Glidewell needs).
- Summarized network statistics in easy to use out-of-the-box graphs
- Quick and very pretty presentation-quality graph via "PerfStack". A quick-fire comparison graph solution provided only with SolarWinds products.
- Most tools are pre-scripted and work well in most environments. Easier for entry-level positions to learn. No learning to script needed to start.
- Since it summarizes most of the details, it lacks any real-time functionality. If a user complains of network slowness, you'll have to use either a separate tool to drill down in real time after the fact and hope it replicates or if the network issues are quick and intermittent, it will be missed by SW unless you have super aggressive and almost unrealistic polling times (sub-minute) for the SolarWinds platform, particularly the polling engine
- Frequent crashes related to the Orion Platform.
- Some features are released without optimization or cause severe platform issues and ultimately end up being disabled until patched later.
- Updates tend to be on the slow side when it comes to APIs for new technology. Examples: Meraki, Nexus OS(SD-WAN), etc.
September 23, 2016
SolarWinds NPM - A Must-Have for Network Engineers
We use SolarWinds across our entire campus, our corporate remote offices, and our thousands of retail locations. NPM enhances our troubleshooting capabilities for our helpline, the engineering teams, and helps us scale out and manage our infrastructure easily when NPM is combined with NCM. We currently use NPM for monitoring and managing our routers, switches, servers, access points, UPS, point of sale, and several others. NPM is flexible like that, where if there's something you want monitored but it's not natively supported, it takes little effort to create custom monitors and connection profiles for that equipment in SolarWinds.
- Monitoring - The monitoring system is extremely flexible. You can create templates that apply to all devices as a default, and at the same time, create custom polling and monitoring for individual devices. If SolarWinds doesn't natively support the polling of information you're looking for, it's as easy as creating a custom poller and applying to the devices you want that information from.
- Alerting - This is honestly my favorite piece of NPM. The alerting system is so robust and malleable you can do pretty much anything with it. When paired up with NCM, you can even automate configuration changes or initiate the execution of scripts. If you know how to write MS-SQL queries, the alerting system is a must-have because you can literally alert on anything!
- Reporting - Reporting jobs can be run once, or scheduled. The scheduling has a bit of depth to it so you can customize it suit your reporting requirements quite easily. Just like with the alerting, the reporting system is rather robust. NPM comes with a couple hundred report templates right out of the box. If there are custom reports you want, they're easily created through the web portal. Again, if you know MS-SQL queries, this reporting engine is extremely powerful.
- My only Con for NPM is the fact that there are so many features and it's so highly customization that it's difficult and overwhelming for new users to learn sometimes. In our implementation, we've heavily modified the default layout to try and make it more intuitive, but it can still be a bit confusing at times.
December 21, 2015
Great for monitoring disk usage on physical and virtual servers!
Our company purchased SolarWinds NPM 2 years ago because we needed a product that would monitor and notify us regarding disk usage of Windows OS based servers (physical and virtual) as well as monitor and notify us if any equipment in our datacenter lost connectivity or powered off. SolarWinds NPM has been able handle both tasks very well and has been very reliable. The only cons I would have on SolarWinds NPM is I think it could be a more user friendly for those who are new to using the product on registering types of nodes for different types of equipment and I would like the product to notify me when nodes have been restored out of an alert state (e.g. the device has more disk space available or connectivity has been restored). I will say that SolarWinds support has been great on answering questions and I could use more training on SolarWinds NPM as there might be current ways to solve the cons I mentioned that I am not aware of. Overall the product has suited our needs very well and I’m sure we have barely scratched the surface of what it’s capabilities are.
- Monitors connectivity of various types of equipment.
- Monitors disk usage for physical and virtual Windows servers.
- Can create granular rules for disk usage for alerts.
- Reliable email notifications on alerts.
- Large learning curve for first time users.
- First time users may need help from support to set up.
- Email notifications of nodes that are no longer in alerted state.
December 18, 2015
SolarWinds gets the job done faster and cheaper
It's the main screen in the ops center; it's used for netflow and alarms.
- Netflow
- Color indication of up/down
- Receiver and analyzer and sender of e-mail alarms of syslog messages
- Network port error indication
- Circuit utilization and alarms
- Easy management of nodes
- Maps
- Speed and use of storage space
- Need to allocate receivers for each of our large data centers
December 18, 2015
SolarWinds eclipsing the competition
We provide logistic services on our hosted machines and our clients rely on fast, responsive data communications to get their orders processed and shipments sent out. All of our systems are monitored by SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor in multiple data centers to alert any issues that need to be remediated. Any delay in application response can be an early warning of larger issues that could lead to downtime. By having enterprise level monitoring we can address minor issues before they become adverse to business SLAs.
- Automatically map devices to bring team members, upper management and clients up to speed quickly on all potential fault points we watch out for.
- Many out of the box tools and settings ramp up the installation for a fresh environment in a half a day and is very flexible for special case configurations after initial rollout.
- Smart thresholds for capacity forecasting for alerts and timely reporting.
- Active Directory integration for easier user management.
- Alterations of reports would be handy to adjust false alarms, incorrect labeled items and marked scheduled downtimes after the fact.
- Easier database install options and migrations.
- Advance storage monitoring of virtually used/allocated provisions for a better level of confidence on whole systems.
December 18, 2015
NonPlussed Management
We are currently using SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to manage/monitor Windows Servers (including Hyper V) and Network devices such as Cisco. It is used strictly for IT monitoring/alerting/notification, and is not used by other departments.
It provides historical reports/trends on network/storage usage. The main reason for purchasing however, was monitoring/alerting of business critical devices. We did not have a monitoring solution in place and so were often in the dark when an outage would occur. SolarWinds NPM has resolved that issue.
- Monitoring/Alerting.
- Historical Data/Trends.
- Easy to use interface.
- Network Maps.
- Wireless Hotspot - they currently do not refresh to show me actual signal strength.
December 16, 2015
Great multi featured tool for your toolbox
We use SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor in the IT department to help us keep an eye on our network resources, from UPS to routers to servers and wireless radios. We monitor our VMware environment, server resources, VPN tunnels, battery levels and output. We have it send us alerts when things get out of whack, and weekly reports of outages. It's really a Swiss army knife of monitoring. It helps us be more proactive in dealing with issues, like disk space, CPU and memory spikes, failing power equipment or high loads, and network line issues. In addition to real time status, we can also check historical trends to help identify any issues.
- Integrating with equipment to pull the data you want.
- Interface is easy to configure, manage and maintain.
- Threshold alerts and automated reports.
- Would be nice to have integration with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer.
December 16, 2015
SolarWinds NPM Review
Solarwinds NPM is used primarily by our Network department, including Architects and Engineers, as well as our Network Operations Center for monitoring purposes. It monitors the status of our network equipment, including Cisco, F5 and Riverbed, and provides net flow reporting on bandwidth usage. We also use it for configuration management, backup, archiving and auditing.
- The alarms can be customized to meet our monitoring needs.
- The GUI interface is intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Net flow information is clear and concise.
- It needs tighter integration with certain vendors, like Checkpoint.
- It is a little slow to respond when viewing large amounts of data.
- Sometimes the CPU and memory utilization monitoring is a bit off.
December 16, 2015
NPM - definite must when using the rest of the SolarWinds stack
It is being used by IT to monitor network asset performance and availabaility.
- Great high performance SNMP poller.
- Integration with NTA and NCM is invaluable.
- Support for WMI.
- Web UI is incredibly antiquated.
- Different to compare information across data sources.