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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)
    8.9
    89%
  • Hardware health monitoring (215)
    8.8
    88%
  • Network monitoring (231)
    8.7
    87%
  • Customizable reports (212)
    7.9
    79%
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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 8.9.

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

(600)

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!

Users have found this product to be extremely versatile and useful in a variety of situations. One key use case is for professional presentations. Users have praised the product for its ability to create visually appealing and engaging slides that captivate audiences. The ease of use and intuitive interface allows users to quickly create polished presentations without the need for extensive design skills. Additionally, the product's extensive library of pre-designed templates and customizable options provide users with a wide range of choices to cater to their specific needs.

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Lastly, users have praised the product's ability to simplify personal projects such as photo albums or event invitations. The variety of customization options allows users to personalize their creations and add their own touch. Whether it's creating personalized greeting cards or designing stunning wedding invitations, this product has been a reliable choice for users seeking high-quality results without the need for extensive design knowledge.

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

(76-100 of 236)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use NPM across our entire IT department. Our network engineers use it to proactively identify network configuration issues and hardware health problems. Our incident management team uses it to hone in on the problem when an outage is reported to the Help Desk. Our IT field support staff use it to get a sense of what is at their site and if the WAN bandwidth is getting saturated. IT leadership even peeks in on NPM to get a simple dashboard on the network. It's the heart of our SolarWinds server cluster.
  • Easy-to-configure NOC-style dashboards for almost anything on a network you want to monitor.
  • Customizable reports for any network metric.
  • Customizable email alerts on dozens of different network issues.
  • Centralized discovery and inventory for routers, switches, analog gateways, UPSs, access points, and other network hardware.
  • SolarWinds is slow to integrate features that users suggest, even when dozens of users have made the same suggestion over time.
  • The charts aren't as customizable as we would like (y-scale, plot size, etc.).
  • The reports feature has a combination of legacy ReportWriter reports and new reports. They should all be migrated to the new style. The old reports are hard to modify and the output is less usable than the new style.
NPM is well suited to a mid-to-large size IT department that needs to keep track of a large or complicated network in one place. You could run an entire NOC from NPM with all the alarms, reports, and dashboards that it has. NPM would be less appropriate for a small IT shop that runs a small or simple network.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is being used by the network team to monitor our network equipment world wide. We monitor over 600 devices in SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, most of them Cisco switches and routers. Performance charts and reports are our primary use for SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, but we also get alerts for network outages or failures as well.
  • Alerting
  • Reporting
  • Easy navigation
  • Page load speed
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor does a good job of being a reliable place to generate alerts for devices when they have an issue. The alerts can be built from many metrics all tailored to your organization. You can even set groups of devices and have different alerting rules for each group.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor has a lot of good reports built in that you can use to analyze your network, however, if they do not have the report you need, it is a big learning curve to figure out how to get the report to show what you want since the reports are built on SQL scripts. If you know SQL you are good to go.
Jennifer Aguilar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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!
  • 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!
Network Performance Monitor is well suited for any environment, no matter what size! You need to put a little effort forth to install the product and to manage all your nodes. Once you have the product installed, you can run reports, pull up graphs. The network administrator no longer has to get frustrated pleading that "IT IS NOT THE NETWORK!" Print out a report with visuals to see the problem is not the network. Use NPM to work the OSI model when troubleshooting!
The only place that Network Performance Monitor is not appropriate is in an environment when you do not have permission to monitor!!!
Jon Liedtke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize NPM primarily for monitoring cisco switches. However, we also use it heavily to monitor other network devices as a means to first alert us of an outage or an issue. Our support team lives within the NPM dashboards throughout their work day.
  • NPM does a great job of alerting us to outages, latency, connectivity issues etc...
  • NPM provides historical data for monitored devices to the port level.
  • NPM provides our customers (we are an MSP) with real-time network information for their environment.
  • NPM is ideal for installations where systems are monitored on a local LAN. If you are monitoring over a WAN connection a lot of false positives can be generated based on latency and outages unrelated to the monitored environment.
  • The cost to add additional NPM polling engines is high in my opinion. If I could I would have a polling engine local to each LAN but it is cost prohibitive.
  • Upgrades of NPM in our case have presented some challenged, likely due to the age of our installation. Solarwinds tech support has been helpful in recommending an upgrade path forward.
NPM is a good fit for monitoring of devices on a local LAN. If monitoring over WAN you will encounter some challenges.
Deirra J. Footman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
SolarWinds NPM has been really great with helping us diagnose the causes of network slowness, interface saturation and alerting to outages. It provides a centralized location to analyze the performance of the network and related devices, alerts allowed us to respond to outages quickly and reduce downtime for users. The product delves deep into the network allowing you to spot and resolve minor issues before they become user impacting. The modular approach they use as far as additional products work really well and the components mesh together really well. The data it provides comes in handy for identifying trends and long-term planning.
Brian Anderson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
SolarWinds NPM shines when properly applied to Enterprise scenarios but I actually see more value-for-money in the smaller space where dedicated network personnel aren't always part of the budget. NPM enables these smaller entities to outsource key aspects of network configuration to dedicated consultants and hire fewer staff overall.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
In larger environments it is a must. No way you could manually do what SolarWinds does for you.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Very useful for monitoring large numbers of nodes, and it has great forecasting ability (this server will run out of disk in x days). It does not have detailed application awareness; you will need additional modules for websites, network flow, application monitoring, and log aggregation. Alarm tuning is almost an art form; you will need to spend time tuning alarms or they will become noise and get ignored.
Joshua Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
NPM can be a backbone for monitoring network devices in anywhere from small, to large scaled environments. Keeping historical and statistical data, in conjunction with other SW products such as NCM, SAM, and NTA, you can monitor your network and diagnose issue faster than you'd otherwise be able to. It's helped us keep our systems running.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
If you are a small business there are likely some free tools you could use for basic monitoring of your environment. If you are a medium to large scale business however, SolarWinds is cost effective and a good solution to use to monitor everything. You can set it up to alert different groups of administrators based on all sorts of criteria.
January 14, 2020

Email alerts a plenty

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Good for servers I guess. When monitoring wireless radios it mostly couldn’t identify them so all I could monitor was ping.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
We like the Intelligent maps that show the status of each location. The Netpath has helped in major troubleshooting, we also like the advanced alerting mechanism. The Netflow Traffic analyzer is another cool feature. In short, NPM helps us detect, diagnose and resolve network issues.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It was implemented to monitor systems and environments for the entire enterprise.
  • Customizable to my needs.
  • Reliable.
  • Managing alerts is terrible
  • You must manage your own server, and database for the solution.
It is appropriate for Enterprise environments, not for small companies. For SMB, there are less expensive options.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor helps monitor core switch performance and bandwidth monitoring.
  • Good technical support
  • Easy to use graphical interface
  • Better support for HPE Procurve/Aruba equipment
  • Flexibility to integrate with other monitoring software.
More ideal for mid-sized to large enterprises with Cisco equipment. The license model is not ideal for small businesses or non-profits with smaller budgets.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a great tool to monitor a large environment spread across a large area.
December 01, 2019

SolarWinds NPM Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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 is well suited for monitoring any size or any type of network. It is very easy to set up and to start monitoring devices in the network. It is very customizable allowing you to set custom dashboards for different departments, NOC, etc. Solarwinds has other products available to cover any type of monitoring that someone is seeking.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor works well at a network level to identify traffic patterns. Having it enables us to spot trends before they become issues. I can identify specific devices that are having or causing problems, but it doesn't help to find the specific problem with the device itself. That's job security, I guess. We can't expect the tool to do 100% of our work.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We mainly use it to manage network performance. We use it across all our sites.
  • Set up is easy. It is not complex to set up.
  • Solar Winds support is okay. I wouldn't say it is the best, but average.
  • NPM does what we need, mainly monitor network bandwidth and critical server (host).
  • We really don't use SolarWinds for more than just checking network bandwidth or performance.
  • Perhaps they need to evaluate their pricing model. Paying per interface can be very expensive.
We're a small shop, with less than 10 nodes. SolarWinds reports what we need for our network to address any latency issues.
November 07, 2019

SolarWinds NPM Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by our infrastructure team only. It is used for our back office and production networking equipment for performance monitoring/tuning.
  • Easy to use interface.
  • Relatively easy to set up SNMP traps, summary, and graphs.
  • Good change management tool for network changes.
  • Better wireless heat maps.
  • Needs better Netmap services.
  • Relatively expensive.
Solarwinds is excellent to monitor networking equipment in any environment. Easily discoverable and tunable for reporting and management of VLANs, load balancing, wireless, errors, etc.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use NPM in our infrastructure department for support and project planning. It helps with bandwidth management and identifying the source of saturated link usage.
  • Dynamic network topology mapping works well
  • Flexible monitoring and alerting capabilities
  • Very detailled networking statistics
  • If topology mapping could be customised for some specific cases, that would be perfect
It's suitable for a big environment. I wouldn't see this used in a small network.
November 02, 2019

NPM to the rescue

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Just the IT department has access to NPM. We have a lot of remote sites, so the system makes it easier for us to identify issues across the network.
  • Ease of use.
  • Constant updates.
  • Quick setup.
  • It can take time to get full use. There are lots of features.
  • Cost is high.
It's great for remote sites to get insight in one place.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
NPM was used only on the DataCenter Department to monitor all the servers, VMs, switches and routers.
  • Trace and monitor your whole network
  • Get important alerts from a lot of case scenarios.
  • Better support for emergencies
  • Add more vendors' functionalities other than Cisco focused utilities.
  • Provide an easy way to make alerts from traps or syslogs instead of working inside of the SQL database or learning SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL) .
Nicholas Drexel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
If you don't know exactly what you need to monitor and if you just need something to hold your hand, it does a great job for entry level network performance monitoring. It is by far not a very customizable option as the restrictions in the programming itself, as well as the lack of updates (OIDs) for an ever changing industry mean that you will need to get into your own customization sooner rather than later, which it does not excel at.
Aaron Oberman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
SolarWinds is specifically suited for network device and SNMP monitoring. While there are other solutions out there that do well for monitoring Windows, SolarWinds is the king of SNMP. It is the best all around monitoring solution that I am aware of. We use SolarWinds for a primarily Cisco network and the ease of adding devices and utilizing out-of-box features was crucial when we first began using the product.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Well suited for monitoring a large number of devices.
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