I do like SAM and IPAM, I do not like green eggs and ham.
October 29, 2019

I do like SAM and IPAM, I do not like green eggs and ham.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds IP Address Manager

We use it in our IT department. It's mostly used by a small network management team as well as IT support staff who are responsible for end-user issues at field offices. We are a big SolarWinds shop and have invested heavily in the various SolarWinds monitoring modules (NPM, NTA, NCM, SAM, LEM, etc.). Compared to the big modules, this one is relatively small and of only limited use.

Pros

  • Gives you a graphical dashboard of all your IP ranges, where they are, and what they are doing.
  • Highlights ranges that are close to maximum usage and might need to be expanded.
  • It gives you some ability to control and configure IPs from the console if it has DNS access (ours doesn't).

Cons

  • I can't think of anything missing functionality. IP space management isn't a particularly complicated part of network management.
  • You could argue that IPAM doesn't need to be its own module. Perhaps it should be combined with Network Configuration Manager?
  • We don't use IPAM a ton, so I don't have opinions on the ease of use.
  • We use IPAM mainly to just have a dashboard where we can see IP utilization activity. It is fine for this job.
  • The alerts are overkill for us. IP conflicts aren't really a problem for us. Subnet utilization is a concern, but not the biggest concern on our network.
  • We can't control our DNS servers, so IPAM is read-only for us. We can't use the config features.
The organization that manages our DNS servers uses Infoblox. They seem to be satisfied with this tool. I am not familiar with Infoblox so I can't comment on how it compares to Solarwinds IPAM. But for us, IPAM was a natural choice because we have invested heavily in so many other Solarwinds network management tools. IPAM is good because it complements the other network management tools and centralizes our dashboards in one web application.
Speaking for SolarWinds customer service in general (not IPAM specifically), we have had mostly very positive customer service experiences with SolarWinds. The ticketing process is very straightforward and tech support is responsive, knowledgeable, and courteous. They aren't opposed to keeping a ticket open for a long period of time until the problem is truly solved.

Do you think SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)'s feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM) again?

Yes

IPAM is probably best suited to organizations that suffer from these problems:
  • Many disjointed networks with possible IP address conflicts
  • No centralized oversight of all LANs
  • Organizations that need a way to manage DNS centrally
For others, it's more of just a monitoring tool/dashboard for IP usage. It's good at what it does but is more of a nice-to-have tool than a must-have tool.

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