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.
The way to monitor your network.
NPM is a great tool for your networking team!
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM): A Great Tool Including NetPath
Network monitoring made easy using SolarWinds NPM
SolarWinds NPM brings all your Network Tools into a single Toolbox
Single Window Network Performance Monitoring
An honest review of SolarWinds NPM from a Network Operations Manager at a major US Airline
Complete network monitoring for large organisations
Easy, Big and Mostly Reliable Network Performance Monitoring for Large Organizations
If you're looking for advanced monitoring, NPM has it - but it falls short
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) - Know Your Network
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor provides clear insight and usable information
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) Review
Not impressed but not disappointed either.
Reveal Positive Solutions to Hidden IT Issues with SolarWinds NPM!
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
- Alerts (228)8.989%
- Hardware health monitoring (215)8.888%
- Network monitoring (231)8.787%
- Customizable reports (212)7.979%
Pricing
NPM
$1,638
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Why I Recommend SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
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.
- 7.8Automated network device discovery(210) Ratings
Automated network device discovery allows all devices in the environment to be found and tracked
- 8.7Network monitoring(231) Ratings
Monitoring network device availability and performance indicators like bandwidth, packet loss, CPU, WAN links, etc.
- 8.1Baseline threshold calculation(201) Ratings
Calculation of baseline thresholds so to establish warning thresholds
- 8.9Alerts(228) Ratings
Alerts warning of critical infrastructure component failure can be sent via email or SMS or other channel
- 7.8Network capacity planning(188) Ratings
Capacity planning analyzes interface utilization, disk usage, etc. and allows identification of capacity problems well in advance of threshold breach
- 7.2Packet capture analysis(130) Ratings
Interception of data packets provides performance-related information such as network and application response times, and traffic type analysis
- 7.1Network mapping(190) Ratings
Dynamic mapping tool allows the network topology to be mapped showing performance metrics, and link connection and utilization
- 7.9Customizable reports(212) Ratings
Ability to schedule, generate, and deliver custom performance and availability reports
- 7.2Wireless infrastructure monitoring(153) Ratings
Ability to monitor wireless access points, controllers, and connected clients
- 8.8Hardware health monitoring(215) Ratings
Ability to monitor key hardware metrics including temperature, fan speed, and power supply
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
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
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
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(600)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
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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
- 9.3Likelihood to Renew27 ratings
- 10Availability2 ratings
- 9Performance2 ratings
- 9Usability21 ratings
- 8Support Rating28 ratings
- 8Online Training2 ratings
- 10Implementation Rating7 ratings
- 9Configurability2 ratings
- 10Product Scalability2 ratings
- 7Ease of integration2 ratings
- 9Vendor pre-sale2 ratings
- 9Vendor post-sale2 ratings
- 7.2Solarwinds Premier Support Rating11 ratings
- 1SolarWinds Smart Start Support Rating1 rating
Reviews
(26-50 of 236)Best Value
- Alerting
- Reporting
- Baselining
- Wide vendor support of network elements
- Cloud and on-premise element support
- Should be easier to customize UI
- Integrate inline dynamic network diagramming from within the UI (create & maintain)
- Simplify top menu in UI
Orion Review
- Alerting.
- Great dashboards.
- Scalable, you can control how much you do/don't monitor.
- Could have more options for integration.
- Learning the terminology can take some time.
Good system to have
It is a customized application that monitors and reports the performance and availability status of our network and other critical components to us.
Think of it as a 24x7 guard to keep an eye on our network. It also can run automatic processes to react to certain tasks, so it can be a 24x7 fireman to put out small fire in our network.
- Automation.
- Monitoring.
- Reporting alerts.
- Creating logs.
- Presentation.
- Pre-packaged monitoring items with other manufacturers.
- Lower the cost.
We have a map of our district on our Orion, it shows all 90 buildings. Green dot means good, yellow dot means partial issue, red dot means critical or down.
This simple presentation and all the automatic data collection are done behind the scene. Orion pulls data and creates a nice presentation front end for people like me to understand the health of our network. It is powerful and you must configure it right to explore its potential on [how] it can help you daily.
- Perfstack is a feature we have started using heavily and our resident programmer/script expert is working on a script to pick out a FLOW conversation, get all the switch ports between the two endpoints and generate a perfstack of them. This is looking like it could be very useful for troubleshooting.
- The modern dashboards have real potential and I like how they auto-refresh each widget independently.
- SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager and Netflow Traffic Analyzer are great as always. NCM in particular makes my life so much easier.
- Please work on the Universal Device Poller to get it on the web.
- Consistent sorting would be really nice. There are places where things are sorted alphabetically and other places where they're sorted by creation date (which makes no sense).
- Live maps. I like the direction you're going, but it still needs a lot of work just to get it on par with Network Atlas, and I hope you're aiming higher than that because Network Atlas is just not that great.
SolarWinds NPM
- Ease of use
- Highly customizable
- Works well
- Learning curve
- Confusing UI
- Expensive
SolarWinds NPM Review in a Nutshell
- Out of the Monitoring of almost all Network Devices.
- Build custom pollers to monitor which is not supported out of the box.
- Further you can alert on these custom metrics and Out of the box metrics.
- It provides you great dashboards, Reports features.
- You can integrate it with any MoM layer tools either using its API or sending out traps.
- Out of the box Integration with Service Now ITSM Tool.
- Limitation on no of elements we can poll from one poller.
- Complicated API - There is not much doc around API, and it could be hard for a beginner to work around the automation.
My SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Review
- Real-time monitoring
- Instant up/down of network devices across all networks
- Top talkers in different ways (IP, application, and others)
- Auto-discovery is very easy for devices.
- inbuilt scanner from LAN network to get auto network discovery.
- This should work with minimal hardware and work with any server OS.
- This should not depend on latest SQL Version. Clients have to arrange latest licence which is additional cost for client.
- During installation, the application crashed in many scenarios. This should have rolled back instead of crashed.
- Please include a device backup option and live monitoring of any change in device configuration.
- One tool for all network devices--monitor, manage, backup, utilization, and change all in one
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a user-friendly tool for easy installation and configuration and use in NOC. This is very well suited for MAP configuration and to create multiple MAP.
A highly recommended network management tool.
- Alerting
- Auditing and Search
- General Monitoring
- SNMP Montioring
- Reporting
- Less resource hungry
- Writing reports could be a little simpler
- Can get on the expensive side
NPM in PNW!!!
- Network Mapping. The Network map is an absolute must for any multi regional organization that requires a holistic view of how the networking SLAs are being met.
- Network Atlas should be a process added to the console instead of having to access it to build the maps on the servers.
- 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.
- We also like the alerts that le us know when there are upgrades available.
- 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.
- Email alerts sometimes go wonky after an upgrade.
A must have monitoring tool for infrastructure
- Flexible and dynamic monitoring
- Customizable
- Easy to Deploy
- Industry standard
- Add features such as logging in addition to SNMP
- Better pricing
Value for Money
- It basically visualizes everything about our network
- Great UI
- Reporting is good
- Lacks lot of advanced things
- Just does very basic functionality
- Not all devices are supported
An EKG for your servers
- Alerting with custom thresholds
- Dashboards to give you a real-time view into the health of your systems
- Reporting capabilities are well sorted
- Need a more intuitive way to configure interfaces between nodes in map editor
- I would also like to see an improved method for auto-provisioning of server monitoring tools
- Cost
How NPM replaced several products at much lower licensing cost.
- Provides very detailed insight into Node performance and troubles.
- Features a VERY useful API that is able to drive all of the application.
- Event and alter management is easy to use.
- Offers many extra modules that are very well integrated.
- It does not support hardware inventory for H3C/Comware based devices.
- It does not really understand aggregate links.
Monitoring at its finest
- NPM is a great tool for alerting us when servers have a high CPU or memory utilization.
- NPM monitors our firewalls to make sure they are not being over utilized.
- NPM alerts us if any of our equipment happens to go down which is extremely beneficial.
- When we had Cisco ASAs, NPM was able to gather information on those. We now have Cisco FTDs and wish we could do the same.
Level 1 user who appreciates the power of NPM more every day.
- Clean and logical layout means you get in and out quickly
- Easy to set up the status monitoring (SNMP, pings, etc.)
- Easy to make a graphical presentation of the network
- It takes a long time to load when I ask for the monitoring UI.
- It would be nice to have links to tutorial videos within the UI.
- I wonder if Atlas could be cloud-based so we don't need to host it.
SolarWinds NPM
- Alerting with custom thresholds.
- Reporting capabilities to easily see historical data.
- Dashboards to give you a real time view into the health of your systems.
- Configuring thresholds for your alerts can be a little cumbersome.
- Getting additional details onto the alerts is not as easy as it could be.
- You need to have two servers to run SolarWinds NPM, one for the service and a separate one for the database.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
- Nice single pane of glass view of whole network
- The ability to tailor each department with their own tools to use
- Lots of out of the box features that just work
- Quickly and easily run down issues with lots of different scenarios throughout the network
- The ability to create custom pollers for unique situations
- Some of the tools are a little cumbersome to get the hang of
- The need to learn to use the SWQL language for advanced monitoring and reporting
- The cost compared to other companies out there
SolarWinds NPM: ease of use and single pane of glass
- CPU
- Memory
- Drive Space
- Network Availability
- MIB
- Environmental Controls
Why I spend my day with SolarWinds
- It has amazing alerting that you can customize based on every need.
- It has detailed dashboards that give a very nice overview of what's going on.
- The SNMP capabilities are off the charts.
- User management allows every tech to see what they need to see.
- Ease of setting up alerts
- Better map views
- More hardware information without needing to use the MIB Database
It is very expensive so if you don't have the biggest environment I don't know if it's the best option for you. Also if you have one location with 2 servers you have to determine if it pays to go through the complicated setup.
SolarWinds NPM review from a solution designer
- Modern Dashboards
- Interface details
- Node details
- CPU, MEM & VOL capacity forecast
- Audit log
- Errors dashboard
- API integration with Meraki, Velocloud, Viptella
- Orion DB tables dedicated to Meraki, Velocloud, Viptella data fields
- UML flows for NPM
- Documentation of SD-WAN integration
- Feature requests are very slow to be implemented.
Works great!
- Ticket Auto-creation
- Very detailed without clutter
- Simple for a new user
- A local application so that logging in constantly isn't an issue
- The UI is dashing, user-friendly, yet powerful enough to do almost all the administrative tasks with the click of a button.
- The deployment and configuration is made simple thanks to the step-by-step guiding wizards.
- Reporting and KPI have the flexibility to run both simple and complex queries to get the intended output.
- Sonar discovery is an easy and efficient method for on-boarding devices.
- Dashboards and maps efficiently exhibit the entire topology and metrics.
- Reporting needs to be improved as there are more misses than hits in obtaining the intended output. CA eHealth reporting was much better and robust in comparison.
- MIBS certification is one more challenge as every-time we have to request support for the addition of OIDs. The UNDP option is great but needs to be more flexible and robust.
- Bulk discoveries, especially subnet-based, choke up the entire CPU and memory processing on the virtual infra. The discovery Wizard stalls in between without showing any error message for a considerable amount of time.
- Having multiple APEs makes administration (Patch, Upgrade, etc.) more difficult and complex. Any change in permissions on Application Folders and AV exclusion takes time in diagnosing and isolating the APE.
- Rabbit MQ and Cortex services frequently get corrupt, and we are unable to find a permanent fix for that.
My journey with Solarwinds NPM
- Easy and efficient to monitor network devices.
- We can deploy large number of devices for monitoring in a short duration.
- Has very good additional modules like Perfstack and Netpath.
- Syslog viewer was more useful and easy to use tool. But it has been depreciated in the newer versions and Log viewer has some bugs and cannot be used effectively.
- Trap viewer was more useful and easy to use tool. But it has been depreciated in the newer versions and Log viewer has some bugs and cannot be used effectively.
- It would be great if we get a feature to monitor nodes for SNMP availability, currently we cannot monitor this parameter through polling.
Through Network Performance Monitor tool, we can create very fine and effective alerts to the end users about their device or infrastructure status.
SolarWinds NPM Customer Review
- It pulls SNMP data well, in particular it allows us to capture port level information with a decent amount of historical data. This is true for user ports or trunk ports.
- It does a good job of keeping an up-to-date stable of configurations. This is invaluable for recovery operations.
- Syslog collector is also very useful to again correlate performance data against what errors the box itself is processing.
- I would like to see the robustness of the database and pollers improved. It seems like we often need to do system upkeep or the application seems to grind along very slowly.
- I would also like to see an improved method for auto-provisioning of server monitoring tools.
- I would also like to be able to update maps/drawings directly from the web interface without having to use a separate Windows client.