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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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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
On Premise
per year
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.solarwinds.com/products/pric…
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Why I Recommend SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
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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
Network Performance Monitor overview
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
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, OpenText Network Node Manager i (NNMi), and Broadcom DX Unified Infrastructure Management are common alternatives for SolarWinds NPM.
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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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!
- Business Problems Solved
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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
(126-150 of 236)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
- Gives you one place to view many interconnected systems.
- Support is lacking.
- Software does not do a good job of monitoring itself and alerting you to problems.
- Does not scale well in some cases, and costs can stack up as you have to build out more servers for the bloated software.
- SolarWinds NPM has built-in support for a wide array of device types out of the box.
- It is easy to add new nodes to your environment with the Network Sonar Discovery.
- There is a large community of users that can help you when you're in need.
- Account representatives are always changing and sales people are always harassing you to buy more. They don't listen to you when you bring this up.
- The user interface is very dated and a pain to navigate.
- The ability to format your alerts is very limited. This can cause problems, especially when alerting external services with a REST API due to invalid JSON.
- The ability to track nodes by IP address or DNS name
- Custom Property control (ability to give nodes new categories/types/locations, etc.)
- Customizable pages for viewing only important information about a device, several devices, or scope of devices
- The DNS-tracking node feature takes some time to update. This can make outages look longer, not fail to notice them at all
- The license count can be too easily eaten up with tracking interfaces. In a switch-dense network, NPM can be an expensive tool
- Every module (network mapper, configuration management, etc) is another purchase. I appreciate the ability to not pay for what you don't need, but some things should be a given that they are needed by network administrators
March 02, 2019
Solarwinds NPM is awesome!
- The product does a great job of discovering devices in our network as well as identifying what they are.
- This product is easy to install when you follow the installation guide and meet the system requirements.
- The ability to drill down into switches, routers, servers and wireless devices is beneficial to the support of our environment.
- I would like to see the product run on a Linux server platform such as RHEL instead of a windows server platform.
- Support for open source databases as a repository instead of MS SQL.
- If the product was sold as an appliance.
February 22, 2019
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a hit.
- Keeping Infrastructure Inventory in an organized place.
- Alerting on Issues with devices and providing performance trends.
- Providing hardware health for devices.
- Basic integration for Juniper devices such as node details is lacking.
February 22, 2019
SolarWinds works well for us!
- NPM works very well for a standard up/down monitoring using with SNMP or their agent packages.
- NPM works well for customized SNMP polling of devices. For example, we use it for polling specific MIBs to pull temperatures from various devices so they can be graphed.
- NPM makes network mapping very easy.
- Annual maintenance is brutal.
- We used to have LEM, but we found we could only get implementation support or troubleshooting when we were up for renewal. Otherwise, we would just get told to go to the Knowledge Base and figure it out for ourselves or pay a third party contractor.
- Backward compatibility for old versions of SQL and Windows Server are not supported. This causes some hiccups. Right now, we don't want to upgrade even though we have problems because it's not inside the support model.
February 19, 2019
Kudos SolarWinds for NPM!
- Quick to set up new nodes.
- Simple to navigate across different components.
- Very good documentation on any of their components and the ability to customize a lot of stuff.
- Nothing that I can think about.
February 15, 2019
SolarWinds NPM is a great tool for the price
- We had an all-hands meeting a little bit ago, and the video was choppy and sound quality was horrible. We were able to log into NPM and look at our primary site and see the transmit was at 99%. We were able to click on the node and drill down to the top 5 conversations and see what was consuming the pipe. From there we were able to remediate the issue.
- We have a small site that users were complaining of slow internet traversing. We came to find out the traffic of SAN replication was running longer than normal due to a massive amount of intake of new data from the previous day, causing replications to run longer than normal.
- The ability to save configurations into NPM is a great feature in case of failure.
- The tool could be a little easier to do initial setup and discovery with.
February 10, 2019
NPM good for Small IT Departments
- The alerts are on point. You can set up any type of alert you might need.
- I like the mapping tool, although if you use the automap feature make sure you have all your information correct.
- it's very easy to use and navigate.
- I would love for it to have a "NetBrain" kinda of functionality to build network Visio drawings.
February 08, 2019
Solarwidns NPM
- Response time threshold and alerting
- Network tracing over public connections
- Individual switch port error and discard reporting
- NetPath alerts can be improved for changing conditions. The "Unknown" state alerts aren't very useful
- Better categories of internal resources to isolate and track specific segments
February 07, 2019
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, shines light into the darkest corners of your network.
- Large existing MIB database - SolarWinds has an extremely large existing library of MIBs. For devices that are not listed in the library it offers utilities to build your own.
- Customization - With SolarWinds it's easy to customize screens and reports. Creating custom dashboards makes it easy to quickly see what is going on in your network.
- Easy Integration - Integrating with other SolarWinds products is easy and allows everything to be shown on a single screen. When troubleshooting issues I first look at SolarWinds to get an overview of what is going on before I proceed.
- Creating the alerts can be a bit of a hassle, there isn't an easy way to do this.
February 05, 2019
SolarWinds blows away the competition.
- The ability to add custom alerts.
- The ability to change up the dashboard with Orion integration.
- The speed of agent reporting.
- Server performance. The product seems to use a lot of resources.
February 01, 2019
SolarWinds NPM is a great network visibility tool to help identify and minimize outages
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor's dashboards can give you a real quick look at what's going on with your network at a very high level, and then you can drill down into individual nodes for more detail and granularity.
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor's VMware, Cisco, and Windows integration allow you to be able to monitor servers, VM hosts and specialized Cisco equipment (WLCs, firewalls, etc.) with the most relevant information about each according to the type of device it is.
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is able to service a high volume of endpoints, assuming you allocate the infrastructure behind it.
- SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) can require a lot of tailored settings and setup before being ready for use within a mature organization/network.
- If there's anything NPM can't do on its own (IPAM, DNS management, Network Configuration Management) there are add-ons that are available...for an additional cost. Seems like there's always an add-on...
- NPM can have serious performance issues if you don't have the required server/network/database infrastructure behind it and sometimes that can leave you flying blind.
January 25, 2019
Why is SolarWinds NPM my best network colleague...
- Monitoring state of physical and virtual resources on servers.
- Scanning of network devices.
- Monitoring of packets loss and latency on the network.
- Integration with Cisco Voice Gateways.
January 25, 2019
Network Performance Monitor, Monitor your performance, TODAY
- Performance reports based on usage statistics.
- Managing devices, whether they're servers or network components, is relatively easy.
- Real-time monitoring would be the ultimate goal, but that would be resource intensive. Currently, SolarWinds only does it in intervals, depending on what you set.
- Sluggish interface based on older development platforms. Needs to be modernized and updated.
January 23, 2019
Great tool for a large organization.
- Alerting.
- Monitoring.
- Configuration management.
- Log of glitches in the software.
- Slower interface.
- Problems with polling engine now and then.
January 22, 2019
NMP BOOM!
- I like the ease of setting it up.
- I like the alert capabilities.
- I like the visual component being able to map out the endpoints.
- I have some issues getting it to monitor the new HP 2930M switches.
- I have had some issues with the new switch OIDs.
- I would like to try and have it monitor my wifi network as well.
January 19, 2019
One of the Best Tools
- Alerting via email, run jobs, compliance & reporting
- Maintenance mode option to manage & unmanage devices is helpful if there is a planned outage
- While adding new devices, there is a custom feature where we can add and export devices for doing reporting
- The database increases more often and we need to get help from other teams to increase HDD size & memory
January 19, 2019
Solarwinds is like a good employee
- Allows us to see WAN utilization so we can size our WAN links correctly
- Identifies Port errors
- Allows us to centralize WAN link support contacts and line IDs
- Netflow could use some improvement
- UI takes some time to get used to.
- Setting alerts and fine tuning them takes some work
January 19, 2019
NPM -- Making your days (and nights) more about what YOU want to do rather your networks whims.
- The Orion and NPM alerting engine allows us to create simple and complex trigger conditions. It also allows us to nest equipment behind scopes. Getting one alert that a buildings router went down is a great alternative to the hundreds of alerts that could be generated by equipment that isn't actually down just hiding behind that router.
- Initial setup and adding a node is a breeze. You can create a simple view of a device in a matter of seconds or spend hours fine-tuning exactly what you want to monitor on. Discovery helps find the devices that may be lurking deep in closets or above the ceiling grid.
- Orion helps NPM display the aspects of your devices you want to see. Don't care about CPU? Remove that widget. Decide that was a mistake just add the widget back on. Have 100 nearly identical VMs you want to see grouped together? Create a page for the type of device. This aspect does take some serious setup though. While its powerful enough to create templates and scope information to users... it takes time and understanding to make it look just right.
- The broad range of device monitoring endpoints that come boxed with NPM is mind-boggling. Add in universal device pollers and create your own for the devices that aren't included. You can even share these with the community and help the guys using the same equipment.
- Support is great. They are usually quite friendly and knowledgeable. They frequently have issues solved in a single call.
- Orion can be a pain to configure. There are a ton of widgets and they aren't always clear as to what is displayed. There can be dozens of metrics using very similar names
- Cost of SolarWinds products is always eye-popping. Their sales managers can also be incredibly pushy. While the cost-benefit usually comes out positive be aware that it isn't going to be the easiest part to justify.
- The included custom map creation software can be a pain point. It frequently requires a support call to get working. There is a lot of care and headache to get things looking just right -- once a map is created it can be painful to maintain.
January 18, 2019
NPM Was great in our small data Center
- The dashboard is flexible, allowing you to choose what information you see.
- It has a very user-friendly GUI. I found it easy to give instruction on the use of the product to new employees who hadn't seen the product before.
- The drill down into information and point to point NetFlow data was great, and real time. This is a very important ability in any network monitoring tool. Matched with the fact that NPM could also collect from a variety of vendors who supported Netflow, but also vendors or situations where the product wasn't using NetFlow.
- The alert system and how NPM was able to tie into other SolarWinds products to assist with troubleshooting issues, making that process easy and streamlined.
- One thing that bothers me is the aesthetics. They seem a tad dated and not very optimized. While the data it provides is great.
- The amount of information it provides could be overwhelming if someone does not have an experienced engineer to guide them through what information they really need on the initial view.
- Maybe adding an interactive map using Google API would be great, I know some customers have already written a module for this it would be great if SolarWinds supported this in house.
- The database Orian uses ( this goes for any Orion product) can be a little sluggish if you don't have someone who knows SQL to clean and maintain the DB.
January 17, 2019
The All Seeing Eye - Another Fantasic SolarWinds Product (NPM)
- The out of the box features and alerting makes getting NPM up and running incredibly easy.
- The number of widgets available and customization to view aspects of network devices.
- The ability to create a wide variety of NOC dashboard and views to suit the user base. The dashboard can be rotated on a timer, giving fantastic visibility.
- One element we would like to see is a full stack view integration, which includes network devices within NPM. Currently, the stack view will only provide server, host and application stacks only.
- We have UniFi wireless access points across our organization and at the time of writing this, support for them within Network Performance Monitor is currently not native and we have had to raise a feature request to get the MIBS included as a result, we cannot see the same metrics you would, for example, if you had Cisco APs
January 11, 2019
Enterprise scalable and versatile network monitoring tool.
- Comprehensive Network monitoring
- Alerting
- Reporting
- I have seen challenges with NPM in identifying machine type or PID though we update MIBs(it can't identify cat 9k for example; earlier the same thing happened with 3850s ). It may be an NCM function but we use NPM/NCM in a centralized deployment with remote pollers.
- Same case with EOS dates, not accurate and hence we need to rely on offline reporting consolidating data from Cisco and SW.
January 11, 2019
SolarWinds NPM is our robotic NOC
- NPM has a great interface for organizing top-level information on a single page so that we can reference it quickly.
- NPM has a nice NOC feature that allows us to create custom dashboard pages that cater to different constituents.
- The report generator is good but gets cumbersome when we try to generate multi-factor reports that blend more than two metrics.
- The fact that the advanced report writer is a separate module poses challenges for our users.
January 11, 2019
Solarwinds is good monitoring tool to view network.
- Quick view of system health through NOC board on a monitor in IT bullpen area.
- Easy to set up unique alerts that can be applied across the whole company. There are over 100 standard alerts - we have modified 8 to meet our company needs.
- Easy to set up and manage nodes in the network.
- Product upgrades have greatly improved over the years. Use to have to upgrade incrementally in a particular order or the upgrade would crash. Now it is more streamlined and user-friendly.
- The system is stable when set up. Don't have issues when running for months at a time.
- Hard to find some answers with the SolarWinds thwack (users group). When I have experienced issues after an upgrade it was easier and more timely to just create a ticket and resolve rather than drill down into the support community to find answers. Some answers were for similar results but the wrong version fix would not help with current version causing frustration and time wasted.
- The system is typically stable. Only after an upgrade do some new additions cause problems. The number one issue I have experienced is after an upgrade of the modules I have had to open unique company alerts and re-select them to run or they will cause errors. It is annoying but a predictable problem.