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
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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
(1-25 of 57)The way to monitor your network.
- Custom reports building.
- Alert management with conditions constructor.
- A huge variety of data sources.
- Web console requests cashing works quite slow - I assume Redis configuration should be improved.
- Network elements virtualization and clustering monitoring do not satisfy the contemporary requirements (has to be more functional and provide a wider list of vendors).
- WiFi heatmap is available for Cisco Meraki equipment only.
- Alerting network device status down/up
- Monitor devices for hardware status
- Monitor bandwidth usage
- No improvements needed
An honest review of SolarWinds NPM from a Network Operations Manager at a major US Airline
- Monitor uptime and create alerts for nodes which are down.
- Collecting Syslogs and Traps
- NPM is very slow at drawing charts and historical data from the SQL database.
- Notify us when a network device goes down and comes back online.
- Reports for network interfaces.
- Fairly simple to add or remove a network device.
- The software upgrade process is a little hairy and has caused me trouble on occasion.
- The server that it needs to run is a bit of a resource hog along with the SQL server.
- Some additional features like the network map are a bit clunky compared to some other products that we use.
Robust Network Performance Monitoring Solution
- Very scalable for large environments
- Agent and agentless monitoring available
- Robust SNMP monitoring, realtime MIB updates by the vendor
- Integrates seamlessly with other SolarWinds products
- Support more vendors, checkpoint and storage vendors
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
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
SolarWinds simply works!
- System monitoring
- Application monitoring
- Update node properties
- Certain query functions in reporting
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Review
- Detailed Statistics
- Reporting
- Configurability
- Doing anything in bulk needs major improvement
- Network mapping displays
- Be more reactive to customer requests
- Cover ALL technology vendors, not just a select few
SolarWinds NPM is the magic bullet!
- The software is very in-depth. You will be able to get metrics and data on things you never thought possible.
- SolarWinds has a vast array of products in its database so we have yet to add anything that wasn't already included.
- The reporting is wonderful. It is in-depth and allows us to provide documents to business partners when asked.
- Sometimes there are too many things to look at. It may be hard to find just what you are looking for. I would prefer a more dumbed down interface or even a guided wizard.
- It may be our implementation but it seems a little sluggish at times.
- Upgrading it can be a pain since there may be multiple updates needed to get current.
SolarWinds NPM: Good, but not great
- Identifying down nodes in network.
- Identifying neighbor adjacency changes.
- Graphing feature to give a quick look at interface bandwidth trends.
- "Network Top 10" to identify issues in the network.
- Support is almost non-existent. Almost always solved by Googling for a solution.
- Care and feeding sometimes requires direct database interaction. For example, when neighbor adjacencies are removed, they will show up on the alerts page. But deleting them from alerts won't work. Changing the auto delete timeout is not a workable solution as sometimes real links are down for extended periods of time. One needs to go into the database to delete the routing neighbors that are no longer valid to permanently remove them.
- Upgrades almost always have unforeseen issues. Whether a package isn't installed/ configured correctly to additional polling engines not able to be simultaneously upgraded, etc.
- No Linux version. Windows requires many patches that required reboots on a monthly basis.
- Good aesthetics in graph-rendering, etc.
- Handles a large number of monitored elements
- Fine-grained control of user permissions
- Polling engine requires windows
- Database only accepts MSSQL--requires license
- No templating of user permissions
My go-to performance monitor is SolarWinds.
- Alerting
- Reporting
- Easy navigation
- Page load speed
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.
SolarWinds- makes going home easy
- 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.
NPM watches our servers and switches so we don't have to
- 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.
SolarWinds has been helpful in managing our infrastructure
- 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.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Review
- Customizable to my needs.
- Reliable.
- Managing alerts is terrible
- You must manage your own server, and database for the solution.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
- 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 Review
- 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) .