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A great time saver!
January 24, 2022

A great time saver!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager has treated us well. All our network equipment is backed up through the Network Configuration Manager module on a daily basis then spits out a report on what has changed day over day. When a device inevitably fails we are able to quickly restore the previous configuration to the replacement device, greatly minimizing downtime. Network Configuration Manager also makes it a breeze to keep configurations consistent across devices. Updating an access list on 100 switches goes from a tedious afternoon to a three minute automated job. The module is also capable of deploying firmware and probably much more but I have not dipped my toe into those waters just yet. Overall a great product for making automation simple!
  • Automating configuration backups
  • Preventing configuration drift
  • Reporting on configuration changes day to day
  • Module can be slow to load.
  • The interface could use a facelift.
  • I'd appreciate more out of the box jobs for common tasks.
  • Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
  • Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
  • Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a great tool and matches much of the functionality of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. Nothing about Ansible will likely be overwhelming to an engineer with a little time to spare, but that spare time combined with SolarWinds already being our monitoring tool made the decision easy. Time is at a premium in small teams and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is very easy to use right out of the box without all the tweaking required by powerful command line driven tools like Ansible.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Infoblox DDI (BloxOne), Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Do you think SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)'s feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) again?

Yes

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is perfectly suited for small teams or single engineer jack of all trades types who have a lot on their plate. This module will let you quickly import any currently monitored devices to poll for configuration backups and pushing jobs. This can save you a lot of time compared to spinning up an open source tool or rolling some DIY solution. Larger teams can benefit as well given how easy it is to learn/teach the tool.