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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

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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!

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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

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Based on my 7-years of experience I am deeply convinced that Solarwinds products (NPM, NTA) are extremely scalable and reliable solutions with customizable user-friendly interfaces. The most important feature for me is the creation of custom reports using a variety of data sources (SQL query, SNMP, OID, etc.). Alerts constructor is a simple and powerful tool as well.
  • 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.
I created a numerous list of custom reports that haven't been presented as out-of-box - IP SLA monitoring, RAID status/information, information about switches virtual-chassis, etc. as well as was able to present reports from another monitoring system in Solarwinds Web console. I also actively use such useful tools as NetPath.
  • Performance Analysis (resources/traffic online monitoring)
  • Easy customization
  • Reporting (built-in, custom)
Network Performance Monitoring (8)
87.5%
8.8
Automated network device discovery
80%
8.0
Network monitoring
90%
9.0
Alerts
100%
10.0
Network capacity planning
90%
9.0
Network mapping
80%
8.0
Customizable reports
100%
10.0
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
70%
7.0
Hardware health monitoring
90%
9.0
  • NPM as a monitoring product has the only score - is to reduce a service downtime all ROI is calculated based on how fast the engineer has been notified about an issue and resolved it.
Solarwinds can successfully combine pros of the other monitoring systems and be more user friendly, simple and intuitive. The list of NPM cons is not so big and most of its point can be compensated by customization (Solarwinds created a great expert community for it). The product price is the last but the significant argument in favor of Solarwinds
15
Solarwinds NPM is tend to be used by our company Network Team as the first step of network issue troubleshooting (key features here are: custom alerts for critical issues with notifications via text messages and syslogs); checking network resources utilization as well as users traffic allocation (we use NTA in a bunch with NPM for this purposes); getting reports.
2
Solarwinds is quite simple solution in term of administration. We are using MS SQL as DB but it does not required a significant DBA skills (just initial installation + backup and daily maintenance (shirnking, re-indexing) settings) + sometime you will want to use SQL query as a data source for some graph or report. The administration of NPM requires creative qualities as only on then dependence how far are you going to go in monitoring jungle - for example, you can create a multiple groups of equipment based on their location, draw a map for each location and put your nodes on them that significant increase visualization of all parts of your network and etc.
  • Alerting (can create or customize almost any alert and notification type)
  • Reporting
  • Monitoring (Performance Analysis is really good)
  • IP SLA (jitter) monitoring
  • WiFi networks monitoring (#of users, traffic and etc.) for multiple locations
  • Performance Analysis
  • RAID disks statuses monitoring (for Dell/Lenovo servers)
  • Reporting
  • Cloud
  • Open source solutions monitoring
In spite of some drawbacks such as lack of possibility to work with open-source solutions (HAProxy, StrongSwan VPN, KVM virtualization and etc.); limited wireless built-in features (for Cisco Meraki only); sometime it takes several second to load a new page (Support wasn't able to advise any solution for it), Solarwinds NPM is simple, intuitive solution with wide range of useful features and tools set as well as great customization possibility.
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.
  • Netpath services
  • Wireless stats & reports
  • Orion Maps
  • Orion Dashboards
  • Orion Network Overview
Network Performance Monitoring (10)
95%
9.5
Automated network device discovery
100%
10.0
Network monitoring
90%
9.0
Baseline threshold calculation
100%
10.0
Alerts
100%
10.0
Network capacity planning
100%
10.0
Packet capture analysis
100%
10.0
Network mapping
90%
9.0
Customizable reports
90%
9.0
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
90%
9.0
Hardware health monitoring
90%
9.0
  • Able to predict the future with the Forecast reports.
  • with NPM I can monitor the WAN circuits then decide if it needs a upgrade or not.
  • Able to provide quick responses for alerts, reducing the MTTR for some services
I didn't test other products
20
Network Operation Team, Help desk Level 1 & 2 and the Management Level (reports only)
1
Knowledge about the current network, Basic Network skills, and familiar with SolarWinds features and Dashboard.
  • API Poller support
  • Netpatch services
  • Orion Maps
  • Orion Dashboards
  • Able to forecast upgrades & downgrades
  • Able to prevent issues
  • Able to be proactive about issues
  • To Determine potential outside network issues (using Netpath services)
  • To share the Orion Maps with Customers/Partners
The tool is delivering all that was promised. All so far so good!
Yes
Nagios - We are replacing Nagios with Solarwinds in order to have more Features provided by Solarwinds, better support, and better/faster learning for the engineers.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
The NPM has fantastic features like Netpath that are helping us to get issues and monitor better our network.
Probably I will increase my scores as I can see the support team is now able to understand and give the right support for non-Cisco devices. So far so good for all other tools/features.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
The change management understands that Solarwinds in most cases is just monitoring the environment and most of the actions made are included previously in a CAB discussion.
  • Orion Alerts (sometimes required more skills to build it up)
  • Vendors not supported
  • MIB SNMP not working for some systems/vendors
Probably if I have the opportunity to implement it again, I would contract a consultant company to help us. More easy and fast to get it implemented.
  • Online Training
The training is good but during the implementation, you can get situations not learned during the training. The trainer was very open to hearing the questions about use cases and always sharing his experience. I really recommend having official training to take advantage of all features that the NPM can bring.
The dashboard is very friendly but sometimes requires good SOalrwinds & Network Skills.
Yes, we followed the best practices provided during the SolarWinds training.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
NA.
Sometimes the support is not able to help with non-Cisco devices or vendors with fewer marketing share
Not yet. Currently, we just have the Network environment under Solarwinds. No reason to have this support for this moment.
Yes
Yes, I have flagged an issue with Orion NOC. It was fixed fast by the support team.
When a opened a ticket regarding NPM, they could sort the issue and in the final suggested running a Performance Tool to get the Health of my SolarWinds installation. Great Suggestion :)
All so far so good! Very friendly dashboard.
  • Netpath services
  • Orion Dashboards
  • Network Overview
  • Orion Maps
  • Orion Reports (sometimes requires more skills to build it up)
  • Orion Alerts (sometimes requires more skills to build it up)
No problems to scale the application for other departments.
Always available. Always is important to plan the software available during the machine/application setup.
The dashboard is friendly, all sessions have intuitive information and links to other Solarwinds modules.
  • Jira
  • Splunk
  • Azure
The documentation on SolarWinds is good but sometimes you need to invoke support to help you.
  • Jira
  • Nagios
For Jira, 100% sure because Solarwinds & Jira have an integration module available. Not sure about Nagios as they are SolarWinds concurrent.
  • File import/export
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Sometimes is easy, and intuitive but sometimes you need to invoke Solarwinds support or/and the other product Support.
Most of the integration as paid. Maybe a good approach leaves available all integrations as it can encourage people to buy and integrate their products with Solarwinds.
No problem with them, just sometimes they are sending e-mails about products that you already have.
They are providing a good pos-sales. Always asking me if there is any challenge with the SolarWinds implementation
SLA for cases;
Discounts to acquire additional modules.
NA
Yes
Yes, all upgrades made were smooth and causing minimal down time to the users
  • Following the current Application version
  • Cover bugs & vulnerabilities
  • Under a code that the support will probably suggest being
  • Fix bugs
  • Fix Vulnerabilities
  • Make the application faster
  • Provide more facilities & tools
No
No
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