Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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.

Read more
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 …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

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

Popular Features

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

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all 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…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Product Demos

Why I Recommend SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

YouTube
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is SolarWinds NPM?

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

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

Network Performance Monitor helps IT Pros:

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

SolarWinds NPM Features

Network Performance Monitoring Features

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

Additional Features

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

SolarWinds NPM Screenshots

Screenshot of Network monitoring software used to reduce network outages and detect, diagnose, and resolve multi-vendor network performance issues.Screenshot of See relationships for routers, switches, interfaces, volumes, and groups, updated automatically without user intervention to maintain the network, not network maps.Screenshot of Reduce visibility gaps into critical network switches, firewalls, and load balancers with Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, Cisco ASA, and F5 BIG-IP.Screenshot of Reduce the flood of unnecessary network alerts. Create alerts based on simple or complex nested trigger conditions, defined parent/child dependencies, and network topology.Screenshot of Identify dead zones and improve wireless coverage. With its network monitoring tool, users can access out-of-the-box wireless reports, including wireless availability and rogue access points.Screenshot of Configure alerts by calculating dynamic baseline threshold data with network performance monitoring software.

SolarWinds NPM Video

Network Performance Monitor overview

SolarWinds NPM Technical Details

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

SolarWinds NPM Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Reviewers rate Alerts highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of SolarWinds NPM are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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.

Another important use case for this product is for educational purposes. Teachers and students alike have found value in using this product to enhance their learning experience. With its interactive features such as animations, videos, and quizzes, it enables educators to create engaging lessons that capture students' attention and facilitate better understanding of complex concepts. Users appreciate the product's collaborative capabilities, allowing for seamless group projects and real-time feedback.

Furthermore, this product has proven to be a valuable tool for businesses in creating impactful marketing materials. Users have reported that the product's drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to design eye-catching brochures, flyers, and social media graphics. The ability to seamlessly integrate images, text, and various graphic elements ensures that businesses can create visually appealing marketing materials that effectively communicate their brand identity.

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

(1-25 of 126)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We choose to use SolarWinds because the legacy Monitor tool was not cover some areas/alerts/vendors. Also, we were looking for a tool able to identify and act in some alerts. We are using NPM to monitor the infrastructure, to provide some stats that can help us to identify possible issues in the future, and to automatize some regular actions.
  • Monitor Cisco devices in general
  • Monitor Azure Gateways
  • Provide different kind of reports
  • Provide different kind of alerts
  • Pollers for Aruba Devices
  • The SolarWinds support team is not familiar with non-Cisco vendors, so it's hard to get some support from them.
  • Bugs sometimes is happening
  • Sometimes the Dashboard delays to show the current status of Nodes/Services
Great tool if you have Cisco-based devices. Not suitable for all vendors like Aruba, HP, Citrix. For other vendors, the Thwack forum sometimes is contributing with something that can help.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is being used effectively throughout our organization. It's being used across different regions of the world with multiple instances setup. It's able to manage and monitor our entire customer infrastructure proactively.
  • Easy to implement
  • Easy to navigate
  • User friendly
  • Nothing as of now.
This is well suited for a company either with medium or large scale infrastructure monitoring. Also, it's best suited even with multiple regions as well.
Ravi Khanchandani | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is used in various ways for us as well as other organizations that we support. Various use cases are as follows - Network availability during business hours Network utilization reports to review all Service provider WAN links Device health monitoring Capacity planning reports for a proactive approach NetPath - very widely used for identifying network issues like latencies, packet drops, config issues, traffic issues using a hop by hop path analysis
  • Device Health Monitoring
  • NetPath - network path analysis
  • Performance monitoring of devices - utilization of resources like CPU, Mem, Interfaces
  • Specific vendor monitoring with Network Insight - Cisco, F5, Palo Alto
  • NetPath scaling for very large environments like Banks
  • Drag and drop functionality in Reporting
  • Drag and drop functionality in Dashboards
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is most appropriate in environments where the traditional network gear like routers, switches, wireless controllers, and firewalls are in place and you need to do monitoring for availability, performance, health, and path analysis - basically all monitoring aspects. In environments where you have more of the recent network components like SD-WAN solutions, no real value add comes in from deploying SolarWinds, though SolarWinds claims that more and more SDWAN vendors will be added to the monitoring bandwagon. Currently, there are only a limited set of SDWAN vendors that are supported directly.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company uses SolarWinds NPM to monitor the health of our network and servers. We have thousands of devices and it's very helpful to know which are functioning properly in one dashboard. Alerting is also a key feature of the SolarWinds NPM and is essential to our job duties. We are all able to keep track of malfunctioning equipment without having to dive through thousands of logs. Setting up alerts to cell phones and emails is also pretty easy to do and we could not live without it during our on-call rotations.
  • Alerting on the SolarWinds NPM platform is straightforward to set up, customizable, and works reliably.
  • Being able to set up basic and more complex monitoring is a nice touch. Even devices that don't support SNMP can be monitored via a simple ping.
  • Visibility of all network and server device health on one dashboard is very convenient.
  • The SolarWinds NPM UI/UX isn't exactly the most modern-looking, but it gets the job done.
  • Updates to SolarWinds can be tricky at times and have broken the system in the past.
  • Configuring and scripting some of the advanced features can be confusing, but the thwack community is always very helpful.
I think SolarWinds NPM is well suited for larger organizations that need quick, easy, and supported visibility into network and server devices across a large network. The ability to configure and customize alerts and reporting, give users role-based access, and have professional support options is ideal for large companies that need minimal technical overhead and just want to provide infrastructure teams with a tool to give them visibility into the health of the network and servers makes SolarWinds NPM a great choice.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor provides advanced features to monitor network devices, firewalls, access points. It becomes easy to track such issues and resolve them within business objective timelines through the use of email alerts. The tool allows you to create custom dashboards and organize our data in ways that benefit our organization. The SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor also allows our staff to identify network bottleneck issues quickly which in turn results in faster problem resolution times.
  • Provides real-time network performance data
  • Customized reporting
  • Easily create WiFi heat maps
  • Cost when scaling can get expensive
  • Would like to see tighter integration between SolarWinds products
  • GUI could be streamlined more
The WiFi mapping tool is very helpful. This piece was very helpful as we separated employees throughout the enterprise and allowed us to maximize spending when determining the placement of wireless nodes. We also used SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to monitor endpoints and troubleshoot network traffic issues with server traffic. Also, it is well suited to relay beneficial capability when under pressure to alleviate these types of issues.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For several years, our organization has continued to utilize SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) for around the clock performance monitoring of the network and networking systems in the environment. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) solves the issues of continuous visibility, notification, and alerting pertaining to problems or issues that may occur anywhere within our IT environment.
  • Performance Monitoring
  • Network Alerting
  • Troubleshooting Issues
  • Dashboard Graphics
  • Node Licensing
  • 3rd party compatibility
There was a scenario within our organization where all network connectivity was lost internally within the organization. The network team started troubleshooting, researching, and investigating the root cause(s) of the outage. With the help of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), we were able to determine the health status of the Primary Switch was down due to several closed ports. NPM allowed us to quickly identify the problem and resolve the issue.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used to monitor the availability of critical systems of the infrastructure such as Active Directory, DHCP, and servers in remote sites. It's also used to get NetFlow stats on Cisco Routers to get a time slice view of network traffic and bandwidth.
  • Aggregate date
  • All in one interface
  • Supports SNMP and NetFlow
  • Can see route of packet across the internet to destination server
  • Simplify interface
  • Simplify installation
  • Price
Best suited when you need eyes on servers and network traffic. For instance, for network traffic, based on NetFlow, you can see the different categories of traffic that use the most bandwidth. For example, cloud storage. Via SNMP, you get to see server resource usage, i.e., how much CPU is being used throughout the day.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
SolarWinds NPM is a comprehensive tool for administrators to have an overview of network paths using major protocols (i.e. ICMP, SNMP, etc.). This would help network administrators to be able to pinpoint issues within the network effectively cutting the guesswork on the points of failures and latency issues.
  • Highly customizable
  • Great mapping tools
  • Has an overview of devices and endpoints in an environment
  • Tiering could be more granular.
  • Customization could be made easier for end-users.
It is best suited when you need the ability to monitor multiple products from different vendors in one spot.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our business is manufacturing, we have a wide campus design network equipment and it is hard to manage without SolarWinds NPM platform to check the status of the alerts it generates when a system is down. it helped us take quick actions in terms of doing maintenance during peak hours of the business and to maintain high availability at all times. NPM plays a vital role in our organization and we like how granular statistics it shows on the dashboard, it is very easy to set up any system to monitor its availability in terms of network, power, CPU usage, and other hardware stuff.
  • NPM Alerts when a network device is down
  • bandwidth issues can be determined
  • hardware issues can also be seen
  • improvements over the WAN
In manufacturing where you have to keep systems up all the time during production
April 01, 2021

Orion Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Orion is used by mainly just one department in our organization. A few different teams in that department all utilize Orion, primarily for similar use cases. It allows for easy alerting, monitoring, and helps with general network insights.
  • 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.
Orion is well suited for environments that need to keep high up times on their devices. The alerting and monitoring capabilities it provides have greatly helped our company. Being able to easily track and monitor nodes has additionally helped reduce the amount of time needing to be spent manually searching for specific insights.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, and Network Configuration Manager to monitor and manage our global network infrastructure. It is primarily used by network engineers, although we are starting to make some inroads with stats for other department managers. It is proving very useful for them to correctly size their Internet bandwidth needs. Views are made for each site and used by the local teams as needed.
  • 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 Network Performance Monitor (NPM) provides us with very good insight to our network. I've done proofs of concept for applications costing upwards of half a million USD, and they were not significantly better. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is a phenomenal value. Aside from all the troubleshooting work we do with it, historical utilization is used by management for capacity planning. The Universal Device Poller allows us to get information that is not readily exposed. One of the problems we addressed with it was life-cycle management.
December 15, 2020

SolarWinds NPM

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is used only by the IT team for monitoring core infrastructure services. This resolves our problem of proactively monitoring and alerting us for any issues before they happen. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is highly customizable with their alerts, including automated tasks to resolve issues depending on the alert itself. Also has useful features, such as NetPath.
  • Ease of use
  • Highly customizable
  • Works well
  • Learning curve
  • Confusing UI
  • Expensive
It does the job we were looking for. Adding nodes to monitoring is straightforward, but it can get a bit messy when trying to configure customized alerts since there are a lot of options. Requires some trial and error to get things right, as well all things. Overall a great product!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using SolarWinds for all our networks as well as all client network infrastructures in the organization. This will help us to provide real-time monitoring and IP flow top talkers instantly in a live scenario.
  • 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
This is the best tool I have worked with as a user, as an admin of the tool, as a suggestion to our many clients.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor our whole borough (200+ sites). We use it on a daily basis to manage, monitor, and audit our entire network infrastructure. It keeps us one step ahead on most days and helps us with great insight into our network. If you're looking to get more visibility, better alerting, or help with general monitoring, SolarWinds NPM will help you 'see' your network; we highly recommend SolarWinds NPM.
  • 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
SolarWinds NPM is great for keeping track of all your nodes and making sure they are online. It can help with deeper insight and give you a great inventory for reporting and auditing. We find it helps with both small and larger networks. You can get what you need out of it as it is highly customizable. On the negative, if you're looking for deeper packet inspection or detailed information for more than a few months, then for us we find it very resource hungry and only limit it to 30 days or so.
December 08, 2020

NPM in PNW!!!

Jayson E. Conry | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company currently uses SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to monitor the entire organization's network hardware both physical and virtual. We have multiple regions across the Pacific Northwest. It has been very supportive of all of our processing that ties into third party vendors' SaaS processes and appropriately triages any and all issues within the internal network and external tunnels.
  • 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.
Cisco Nexus switches are better suited for NPM than most other tools.
Dwain Erhart | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Orion Summary page for all senior admins - we get alerts if things are coming down, if servers are running low on disk space, if memory is over utilized. Many different uses. I like the additions of NetPath services. I have also used reports and the network Atlas to create visual representations for our active links. Diving into a node is helpful to establish response time issues, trends and even capacity forecasts. I use this on servers, SANs, switches, Wireless controllers, and alert monitoring services.
  • NetPath services are a godsend when you are trying to explain to ISPs, etc. about where traffic is congested or stopping. Sometimes seeing is believing for them.
  • The other BIG deal is anticipating disk capacity - when volumes get to full, servers crash. With NPM, we can and create set thresholds for warning us before we run into issues, and then we can add storage, memory, and CPU, (especially on our Virtual environment.)
  • Alerts are great - instead of hearing from our users that a server is offline, we are aware of it right away.
  • 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.
If you have a decent sized server farm, you will want to monitor it. If you spend time arguing with ISPs about whether they are at fault, you need NetPath to clarify. If you are a very small business, you may get by without it, but it can really save your team time and effort when you deal with multiple servers. We don't monitor EVERY node on our network - just the high level points - all servers, all network egress/ingress points, keeping ahead of storage space issues, and getting an email if something is happening you would otherwise be unable to check on a regular basis.
November 11, 2020

An EKG for your servers

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor to monitor all of our infrastructure including servers, switches, and applications. It allows us to get alerts when anything is going wrong with a critical system so we can proactively address the issue before it impacts the business. It also provides us a detailed view into the health of our systems via reporting and dashboards.
  • 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
I am very likely to recommend this because it saves the time and trouble of setting up alerts. The alerts can be customized and that makes the value justifiable. It makes my life as an IT professional much more effective. I would use it at any company I work for.
October 02, 2020

Monitoring at its finest

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use NPM mainly in our IT department. We manage all of our servers and networking equipment with Solarwinds. NPM comes into play because it allows us to poll these devices periodically for information. It is a very helpful tool and has become essential to our business.
  • 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.
SolarWinds NPM is well suited for any network administrator. Having the ability to monitor all your equipment is a huge advantage especially if you happen to have any trouble within your network. You can have alerts emailed directly to you and create dashboards showing you all the information you may possibly want to see. It may take a little time getting everything correctly set up but once you get to that stage, life is much easier.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds to monitor the health of our LAN and WAN and to get early warnings when servers are having trouble. The email alerts have been very reliable. Additionally, I have found that the major components (switch stacks, etc.) are easier to see using NPM. The Syslog feature is also very useful as it is much easier than going to the switch to get the syslogs.
  • 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 Network Performance Monitor is ideal for a system like ours where we have one firewall and three discrete LANs. We can monitor every switch and port in one LAN and see the interface to the other LANs, without displaying them. So it offers a simpler troubleshooting and monitoring experience for us. If we had one flat network, I'd probably appreciate it just as much, though
September 25, 2020

SolarWinds NPM

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor all of our infrastructure including servers, switches, and applications. It allows us to get alerts when anything is going wrong with a critical system so we can proactively address the issue before it impacts the business. It also provides us a detailed view into the health of our systems via reporting and dashboards.
  • 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 NPM works well for us as we are a relatively small shop with a limited number of servers/interfaces to monitor. If you were a larger shop the licensing for SolarWinds would get very expensive because they license it per "node" or item you want to monitor. If you want to monitor hardware and network on a single device, that's 2 nodes.
Justin Benner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor as our main monitoring software suite used throughout our whole company. We have it broken out for various departments for their appropriate uses. By consolidating down to the single monitoring system it has made the overall management and implementation of the tools throughout the company much easier and takes fewer people taking care of the system.
  • 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 Network Performance Monitor is very versatile for companies large and small with the need for network and systems monitoring. They have created some great tools for all aspects of the IT world from layer 1 on up. The only complaint I have now is that it requires a lot of customization to use for facilities monitoring, environmental, etc.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by Telstra for offering monitoring solutions to other customers.
  • 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.
SolarWinds NPM is well suited for customers having traditional SNMP, ICMP, & WMI communications. SolarWinds NPM is not an SD-WAN monitoring ready product. A growing trend in recent times is for customers to move into SD-WAN solutions. However, SolarWinds is not changing or adapting to new trends in the market, even the pricing of SolarWinds has increased considerably in recent times.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
There are different verticals (towers) within the organization that are heavily utilizing one or more modules of this product line. My vertical uses it as an MSP where we are selling and supporting these products for 200+ clients scattered in different geographies. Primarily, we are supporting various hosted environments (dedicated accounts as well in some cases depending on the deal type) involving NPM and NCM as the core products. We are in the process of accumulating more such modules and tools to take over complete tooling requirements for our clients. Until now, we have been successful in addressing our customer needs through our centralized tooling but with their growing demand and competitiveness, we have to extend our horizon.
  • 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.
In dedicated mode, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is an excellent tool but while being used on a shared platform, it lacks flexibility. In complex environments, we need to have handy adapters and plug-ins for integrating it with other toolsets. Third-party integration should be made simpler. Overall, it's a good and powerful tool with less maintenance overhead.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's being used across our whole organization. It allows us to use one pane of glass to see both Network and Server issues across our organization. This is important to allow our NOC to watch many systems/interdependencies without watching multiple systems. It also allows us to keep recent configurations of our network gear, for survivability.
  • 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.
It does basic ping and SNMP monitoring fairly well, but again I would very much like to see the robustness of the system improved. We far too often have to call support because the application is running slowly. This is my biggest complaint. Besides this, I see SolarWinds NPM doing very well in a campus environment. I do not believe it is well suited for monitoring cloud applications at this time, though.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
NPM does a great job of establishing baselines and creating reporting that I can show to my management to prove we are out of bandwidth. I like to think of NPM and NCM as one product because they essentially do all the functions you need together.
  • Graphing is fantastic. Trend lines and 95th percentile really make the grade when showing off what your network can do, or where it's limitations are.
  • Alerting works flawlessly.
  • The sales team is relentless and will never stop bothering you. Ever.
  • More vendor MIB's can be put into the standard offering.
NPM is well suited to get a baseline as to what's going on in your network via NetFlow/nbar2. This will not replace an extra hop, or other protocol analyzer products which do a much deeper dive. I really believe that NPM and NCM should be bundled as a single product because having one without the other is hard to work with.
Return to navigation