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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
- Recommendations
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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
(151-175 of 236)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 10, 2019
SolarWinds NPM is the best
- Pulling network utilization reports was piece of cake.
- Monitoring all the sites on a single pane of glass is just Awesome!
- I was able to pinpoint any lag or slowness issues on the network with the help of NPM tool.
- Last I heard, SolarWinds NPM does not support MS Azure platform. It would be a huge plus if they can come up with some plan for this limitation.
- Technical support process can be improved and can be more efficient.
- Our new platform where we are using AUBA SDN does not support SNMP. It would be great to see if the NPM tool can fix that with ARUBA and the other vendors in our market.
January 10, 2019
SolarWinds NPM suits our needs
- It performs SNMP monitoring well.
- It is fairly easy to use even with minimal experience.
- It provides useful graphs and reports.
- Alert configuration is not the most intuitive.
- Automated mapping would be beneficial.
- The wireless summary review is really awesome you get a lot of data, how many people are on each access point how many bytes are being transferred etc.
- The network top 10 summary view is also great you get the top 10 wireless clients by traffic, top 10 interfaces by traffic, top 10 node’s by current response time and much more.
- Another great future is interfaces with high percent utilization where problems are identified early.
- The ability to work on a mobile phone and still manage everything with an adaptive website would be great.
- The mobile admin app starts at $695 it should be included for free.
- Alert text messages get sent with a different number each time and It would be better if it was the same number.
January 08, 2019
SolarWinds is a so-so monitoring system
- Highly customizable
- Very adaptable - you can use it in many different ways
- Scalable - Capable of managing ten devices or ten-thousand
- Inconsistent reliability
- Support is horrible and ineffective
- Expensive licensing
December 19, 2018
Solarwinds; An all-in-one Powerhouse
- The main reason we use Solarwinds is so we can keep an eye on our entire network. The Network Summary page gives us a convenient view of our entire network and any issues that might be occurring.
- Another huge reason we use Solarwinds is to see if there's any network congestion. This allows us to jump on situations where network speeds at remote offices are being impacted. For this we use the Router Utilization page.
- And finally, Solarwinds has a very in-depth reporting as system. We can use the historical data that NPM captures to look for trends and consistent trouble areas.
- This isn't so much a negativity, but Solarwinds is a very complex system, so expect to be learning a lot.
- Solarwinds can get very expensive depending on how many nodes you want to support or how many modules you want to use.
- If you are planning to upgrade -- read the articles carefully. You can call customer support any time, but you cannot schedule a dedicated tech.
December 07, 2018
A better alternative to open-source
- Easy-to-customize dashboards.
- Granular alerts and reporting of numerous issues.
- Multi-vendor compatible.
- Easier integration with Microsoft System Center.
- A Windows widget for a quick glance of active alerts.
- iPhone and Android apps.
December 02, 2018
SolarWinds NPM can handle anything you throw at it
- Provides a single source for monitoring, managing, troubleshooting, and backup.
- Supports a wide range of vendors and equipment.
- Can be as simple or as detailed as you want to configure it.
- Licensing could be more straightforward. It seems like there are too many separate products.
- Once you start making use of a lot of features it gets more complicated to manage.
- Server/SQL requirements increase quickly as you scale up.
December 02, 2018
SolarWinds tells us before the users do!
- A great way to map your whole network to be able to pinpoint the device causing the problem.
- Tracking hardware errors has never been easier, we get alerted the second a redundant power supply fails and can replace it right away!
- Watching storage trends to be able to plan for how much more storage we will need for the next 5 years is amazingly simple.
- With so many features, it can be hard to use them all to their fullest potential, although the training videos help.
- Built-in event log will log every time an interface changes speed, so auto interfaces will sometimes cause bulky logs.
December 02, 2018
Sharpest Tool in the Shed
- Very easy to implement and use. SolarWinds might be the only company that is constantly improving small things like the installer. As a system admin that has to perform a lot of installations, this is important.
- SolarWinds is also known for actually listening to their customers and taking their recommendations into consideration.
- I'm a huge fan of NetPath. As most admins struggle to visualize data for upper management, NetPath is the best thing since sliced bread.
- NetPath has one thing that bothers me. After going from the main NetPath page into a test, one has to use the browser's "back" button to return to the list of tests.
December 01, 2018
SolarWinds NPM best bang for your buck!
- NPM provides detailed information like availability, health, performance monitoring, and bandwidth analysis.
- NPM is a very useful tool for performing network discovery.
- NPM's reporting capabilities offers pretty good granularity.
- Speed of the application
- Ease of grouping business application infrastructure together
- End to end business application performance monitoring
December 01, 2018
SolarWinds NPM review
- Tracking network inventory and uptime.
- Extensibile to include other functions if needed.
- If something does not exist, the Online help can show you how to do it, and the system allows you to write a lot of different custom reports and even database calls.
- Some things do need to be set up custom. Even some things that have been asked for a many years.
- Many functions and very Cisco-centric. The industry has a wide array of network devices, and they are not all Cisco.
- Pricing can still be very high.
November 25, 2018
SolarWinds Network Monitor Review
- Allows for monitoring of network traffic and utilization.
- Customized alerts and notifications.
- Allows you to inventory all devices on the network.
- It can be difficult to set up initially.
- Better initial documentation and on boarding would be very useful.
November 20, 2018
Great introductory product
- It is a nice tool that does a good job of monitoring traffic and finding devices on the network
- Tool is very cost efficient and is a great choice for smaller organizations that don't have a ton of capital to invest in a networking monitoring tool
- Great online community of users/developers for support if you have issues
- For a large enterprise, the tool seems to lack some key features and functions that other tools provide
- Agents are not required, but to unlock the power for a large enterprise the are needed. Agents often get blamed for issues in our company, so not having them eliminates a point of blame
- Their support model is mostly via the online community site, which they do a very good job with. That said, this model is not for everyone, so it depends on what you prefer
November 18, 2018
SolarWinds NPM Rocks!
- Monitor network devices using SNMP.
- Automatically discovers new devices on the network using a auto discovery.
- Monitors critical Servers using WMI.
- Network templates per device model.
- CLI integration with devices.
- Pre-build scripts that can help customers to configure some network configurations that SolarWinds uses in order to monitor network devices.
November 09, 2018
Solarwinds Gave me my Life Back!!
- IPAM - helps effective provide history of IP addresses in your organization for audit purposes as well as alerting due to IP address conflicts.
- NCM- effectively being able to configure multiple network devices from a single management point has become a valuable asset
- SAM - Application and Hardware Monitoring is so granular that customization amongst various hardware and software's have been made easy using SAM. Examples: monitoring UPS Battery Life span and Remaining Battery load for multiple UPS across a WAN gives you insight of your backup power situation that can be addressed before it becomes a problem.
- I feel a little more granularity in user permissions for all modules would be an improvement. Give one user a certain right that another user should not have. Right now for the majority, its user or admin...with nothing in between for most modules.
- Customizable views per user, not globally.
November 07, 2018
SolarWinds NPM is a lifesaver
- Network Mapping
- Event and alert management
- Notification or outages and errors
- Time between outage and notification
- Need additional probes for certain equipment
November 07, 2018
SolarWinds
- We have been able to identify issues with our network design
- We have been able to identify issues with our service providers and were able to correct them quickly
- We identified issues with discards and other network-related problems that cause performance issues between our corporate data center and our corporate offices.
- I would like to see NPM show some easier to understand results. As a non-network guy myself, I know the information is useful but I still need a network engineer to help explain things to me.
November 07, 2018
The good, the bad, and greatness!
- The event log in NPM is quite detailed in explaining what take place and at what time. It also allows you to click on the event so you are able to see the exact node which has been affected.
- NPM also does a great job in constructing visual charts from the SQL database. Once these charts have been created you are able to search for a particular date and time to see what took place on the network, such as how much traffic was sent and received, and utilization of the interfaces being monitored.
- The dashboard gives a nice overview of what's happening on the network. It is also customizable which allows you to remove and/or add any information that you want to see right away.
- One of my main issues with SolarWinds NPM is the fact that it only supports Microsoft's SQL Database. Since there are open source alternatives, this adds to the overall cost of ownership.
- I feel that the amount of server resources it requires is quite taxing. This can be a make a break for smaller organizations who have limited resources.
- The GUI is needing a major overhaul as it's becoming a bit dated to look at and could use an update.
November 07, 2018
SolarWinds NPM - not the best, not the worst
- It is excellent at providing uptime/downtime monitoring of devices.
- The interface is clunky and slightly buggy. It is not uncommon to experience bouts of slowness that can't be accounted for by resource usage.
November 07, 2018
SolarWinds - The Batman of IT
- Track network utilization
- Pinpoint bottlenecks
- General overview
- NPM needs to be a bit more fluid from a GUI perspective
- Easier install/upgrade path
- Quicker backup methods for config.
November 06, 2018
SolarWinds NPM - One stop shop for complete network monitoring
- Helps us to monitor our infrastructure in an easy to view customizable console
- PERFSTACK! This feature is extremely critical to troubleshooting problems
- Plays nice with others - Nexus, ASA & F5
- Filtering/searching options on syslogs and alerts.
- Licensing Model - You need a good knowledge of what you're trying to see. Licensing is based on the number of elements being monitored (devices and interfaces). It can get costly so you want to have a good understanding of what areas you wish to target if Cost is an issue in your organization.
- Speed. It can be slow when there are lots of devices monitored.
November 02, 2018
Saving time with SolarWinds NPM
- The web interface is completely customizable. Each member of the IT team uses a view that suits them. The sysadmins use a view that focuses on VMware while my view focuses on network switches and traffic.
- The alerting on NPM is excellent and easy to configure. We even created an alert for a device that is supposed to remain disconnected from the network. The possibilities are endless.
- We have created device pollers combined with custom metering for each Smart UPS on campus. When a building suffers a power outage this poller allows us to inform management how much time is left before the building loses VoIP and WiFi services.
- NPM can work in conjunction with their Network Engineer toolset. But only a few of the tools are available to use this way. If the integration was completed then SolarWinds would have a real winner.
November 02, 2018
Very happy with SolarWinds
- Monitoring of equipment heartbeats.
- Helping to find network bottlenecks and performance issues.
- Keeping me aware of general system health, hard drive space, ram usage etc.
- Make it easier to remove alerts on ports that were intentionally turn off \ unplugged. When I remove equipment from a switch it is given an alert and I have to jump through hoops to tell it to stop reporting it as an error.
November 01, 2018
NPM Review
- Clear reporting
- Ease of use
- Reliable
- Pricing
October 19, 2018
Solarwinds - the eyes and ears of our IT
- SNMP polling. It has a tremendous database of almost any device you can think of available.
- Wireless monitoring. It can pull all our meraki and Aruba info in to the same panel as all our other switch gear.
- Space Monitoring. It keeps tabs on all the space available across all our devices.
- Speed. It can be slow when there are lots of devices monitored.
- Cloud aware. It does have ties to the cloud, but lacks a lot in this space.
- Database. It would be nice if it ran on something other then SQL server. It can get costly given the SQL requirement.