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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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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
  • Network monitoring (231)
    8.7
    87%
  • Alerts (228)
    8.7
    87%
  • Hardware health monitoring (215)
    8.6
    86%
  • Customizable reports (212)
    8.0
    80%

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 8.3
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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 Integrations

SolarWinds NPM Competitors

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.

LogicMonitor, Micro Focus Network Node Manager i, and Broadcom Unified Infrastructure Management are common alternatives for SolarWinds NPM.

Reviewers rate Network monitoring and Alerts highest, with a score of 8.7.

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

(596)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 21, 2023

NPM is a great tool for your networking team!

FS
Fabio Silva
Senior Network Engineer
Fexco (Financial Services, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros and Cons
  • 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
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Most Important Features
  • Netpath services
  • Wireless stats & reports
  • Orion Maps
  • Orion Dashboards
  • Orion Network Overview
SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings
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
Return on Investment
  • 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
Alternatives Considered
I didn't test other products
Other Software Used
Users and Roles
20
Network Operation Team, Help desk Level 1 & 2 and the Management Level (reports only)
Support Headcount Required
1
Knowledge about the current network, Basic Network skills, and familiar with SolarWinds features and Dashboard.
Business Processes Supported
  • API Poller support
  • Netpatch services
  • Orion Maps
  • Orion Dashboards
Innovative Uses
  • Able to forecast upgrades & downgrades
  • Able to prevent issues
  • Able to be proactive about issues
Future Planned Uses
  • To Determine potential outside network issues (using Netpath services)
  • To share the Orion Maps with Customers/Partners
Likelihood to Renew
10
The tool is delivering all that was promised. All so far so good!
Products Replaced
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.
Key Differentiators
  • 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.
Evaluation Lessons Learned
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.
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Implemented in-house
Implementation Phases
No
Change Management Lessons
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.
Implementation Issues
  • Orion Alerts (sometimes required more skills to build it up)
  • Vendors not supported
  • MIB SNMP not working for some systems/vendors
Implementation Rating
10
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.
Training Types Used
  • Online Training
Online Training
8
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.
Product Configurability
9
The dashboard is very friendly but sometimes requires good SOalrwinds & Network Skills.
Configuration Lessons
Yes, we followed the best practices provided during the SolarWinds training.
UI Customization
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Extensibility and Customization
No - we have not done any custom code
Additional Customization Considerations
NA.
Support Rating
8
Sometimes the support is not able to help with non-Cisco devices or vendors with fewer marketing share
Premium Support
Not yet. Currently, we just have the Network environment under Solarwinds. No reason to have this support for this moment.
Bug Resolution
Yes
Yes, I have flagged an issue with Orion NOC. It was fixed fast by the support team.
Exceptional Examples of SolarWinds NPM Support
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 :)
Usability
10
All so far so good! Very friendly dashboard.
Easy Tasks
  • Netpath services
  • Orion Dashboards
  • Network Overview
Difficult Tasks
  • Orion Maps
  • Orion Reports (sometimes requires more skills to build it up)
  • Orion Alerts (sometimes requires more skills to build it up)
Scalability
10
No problems to scale the application for other departments.
Reliability and Availability
10
Always available. Always is important to plan the software available during the machine/application setup.
Performance
9
The dashboard is friendly, all sessions have intuitive information and links to other Solarwinds modules.
Systems Integrated With
  • Jira
  • Splunk
  • Azure
The documentation on SolarWinds is good but sometimes you need to invoke support to help you.
Future Integration Plans
  • Jira
  • Nagios
For Jira, 100% sure because Solarwinds & Jira have an integration module available. Not sure about Nagios as they are SolarWinds concurrent.
Types of Integration
  • File import/export
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Ease of Integration
7
Sometimes is easy, and intuitive but sometimes you need to invoke Solarwinds support or/and the other product Support.
Integration Lessons Learned
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.
Pre-Sale Experience
9
No problem with them, just sometimes they are sending e-mails about products that you already have.
Post-Sale Experience
9
They are providing a good pos-sales. Always asking me if there is any challenge with the SolarWinds implementation
Key Negotiation Points
SLA for cases;
Discounts to acquire additional modules.
Dealing with SolarWinds
NA
Upgrade Process
Yes
Yes, all upgrades made were smooth and causing minimal down time to the users
Upgrade Benefits
  • Following the current Application version
  • Cover bugs & vulnerabilities
  • Under a code that the support will probably suggest being
Anticipated Benefits from Future Upgrades
  • Fix bugs
  • Fix Vulnerabilities
  • Make the application faster
  • Provide more facilities & tools
Future Edition Upgrade Plans
No
Migrating Between Editions
No
August 27, 2019

Great Product - Would buy it again and again.

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use SolarWinds Network Performance Manager (NPM) to manage our control system for our public safety radio system and call recording. The NPM allows me to instantly capture the system health at a glance, and be notified in or out of the office of any current or impending issues.
Pros and Cons
  • System monitoring
  • System inventory
  • Notification
  • Better performance of screen refreshes for network maps
Likelihood to Recommend
Inventory and control and system wide health status
SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings
Network Performance Monitoring (10)
60%
6.0
Automated network device discovery
80%
8.0
Network monitoring
80%
8.0
Baseline threshold calculation
70%
7.0
Alerts
70%
7.0
Network capacity planning
80%
8.0
Packet capture analysis
N/A
N/A
Network mapping
80%
8.0
Customizable reports
60%
6.0
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
N/A
N/A
Hardware health monitoring
80%
8.0
Return on Investment
  • By being able to virtualize the NPM server we were able to utilize existing hardware
  • We have been able to capture data showing future imminent failure and take action.
Alternatives Considered
SolarWinds has more features and is easier to set up/install
Products Replaced
Yes
Nagios
Key Differentiators
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Third-party Reviews
The product features and useability we both very important in determining purchase. This product has both amazing features and an easy intuitive interface .
Business Processes Supported
  • Server uptime
  • IP Endpoint uptime
  • Hardware performance
  • Notifications
Usability
8
It’s intuitive yet detailed enough and granular enough to get what you want in a short amount of time.
Users and Roles
4
Information technology, and administrative
Support Headcount Required
2
We utilize the techs
Innovative Uses
  • Checking remote network gateways for our provincial radio system
  • Checking health and uptime of remote radio controllers for provincial radio system
Future Planned Uses
  • Monitoring other agencies in our dispatch radius
Likelihood to Renew
10
It’s what we know, and nothing else comes close
Other Software Used
Evaluation Lessons Learned
Confirm service agreements
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Third-party professional services
Westcan ACS
Implementation Phases
No
Change Management Lessons
Change management was minimal
Implementation Issues
  • Proper server OS versioning
Implementation Rating
8
Needed to make sure the OS had the proper version and the DB was installed correctly
Training Types Used
  • Online training
  • Self-taught
Online Training
7
Would like an in person course
Ease of SolarWinds NPM Training
Yes but to get the full benefit would recommend training
Product Configurability
10
No it is just about right
Configuration Lessons
None at this time
UI Customization
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface
A slight learning curve
Extensibility and Customization
No - we have not done any custom code
Additional Customization Considerations
None at this time
Premium Support
No
Not required at this point
Support Rating
8
Great support. I don’t give 10s unless they pay me!! :)
Bug Resolution
No
Exceptional Examples of SolarWinds NPM Support
Back when I was trying to get a server communicating with the reporting, support went out of their way to assist.
Easy Tasks
  • New Device scans
  • Network maps
  • Node edits
Difficult Tasks
  • Changing contact and alert settings
  • Upgrades
Scalability
8
From the direction and information I have been given it is very flexible and scalelable
Reliability and Availability
9
Has never failed me
Performance
6
Pages load slow, especially the bettors map. Could be that my server is old.
Systems Integrated With
  • Nice recording solutions
  • Avtec consoles
Future Integration Plans
  • Hexagon CAD
  • Motorola P35 radio
yes
Types of Integration
  • Single Signon
Ease of Integration
8
Integration Lessons Learned
Nothing at this stage
Pre-Sale Experience
8
Had to change the billing info, that was difficult
Post-Sale Experience
9
Westcan has always been awesome
Key Negotiation Points
Installation, configuration, testing and as-build ducumentaion
Dealing with SolarWinds
None
Upgrade Process
Yes
Yes, but the new release did slow the system down significantly
Upgrade Benefits
  • Haven’t used it yet
Anticipated Benefits from Future Upgrades
  • Redundant server configuration for high availability
Future Edition Upgrade Plans
No
Migrating Between Editions
No
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