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

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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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 8.8.

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.

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

(26-50 of 236)
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June 30, 2021

Best Value

Shahab Razak | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Apart from the recent security breach I still maintain that SolarWinds is the best NOC tool and best value for the money. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor will quickly baseline your network and you can set thresholds and alert quickly after that. The reporting UI contains valuable canned reports and modifying them to create your own reports is quite easy. Building reports from scratch is also easy. Their support for different hardware vendors and products is very comprehensive.
April 01, 2021

Orion Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
March 08, 2021

Good system to have

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Enterprise monitoring is a must.
We have a map of our district on our Orion, it shows all 90 buildings. Green dot means good, yellow dot means partial issue, red dot means critical or down.

This simple presentation and all the automatic data collection are done behind the scene. Orion pulls data and creates a nice presentation front end for people like me to understand the health of our network. It is powerful and you must configure it right to explore its potential on [how] it can help you daily.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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
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
Network devices are the backbone of any organization, so I can say with confidence, to make sure the network is up and functional 24*7, you can deploy SolarWinds which is easy to install and manage. It provides rich sets of metrics and alerts out of the box. The cool thing about this is it is very easy to install and manage.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
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.
Dwain Erhart | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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

Value for Money

Sudharsan Punniyakotti | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor is well suited for our organization because we need very basic network monitoring and we have almost had all devices that were covered in their templates. We don't have any problem implementing or using it currently. Also, I think it would be great to grow more features in new releases.
November 11, 2020

An EKG for your servers

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Reinier Kleipool | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It will work particularly well in a mixed network/server environment. It is very useful for monitoring small to mid-sized networks. I doubt it will work well in in a 10,000+ node network because dependent alert suppression is not sufficient. In large installations eventually the database will become the bottleneck. Do not use it in a H3C/Comware only environment.
October 02, 2020

Monitoring at its finest

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
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
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
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 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is well suited for a NOC that has a lot of resources to monitor, for a big overview. You can choose to monitor only critical alerts or even informational alerts all to your liking. It works well with every vendor to get the correct monitoring. It's amazing to monitor multiple locations.

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.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
August 26, 2020

Works great!

Bradley Friars | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds NPM is great for server and firewall management. We use it for many companies. It makes it simple to know who I need to investigate and who is working perfectly fine. One major thing for NPM is that it would be simpler if all clients could be stacked in the same window so that tab jumping was not needed.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
One of the best Infrastructure monitoring tools we have ever used. We can include other modules into the same Orion environment reduces our hiccups in planning the server requirements.
Through Network Performance Monitor tool, we can create very fine and effective alerts to the end users about their device or infrastructure status.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
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