SolarWinds IPAM: Just get it. Ditch the spreadsheet. You won't be sorry.
August 31, 2020
SolarWinds IPAM: Just get it. Ditch the spreadsheet. You won't be sorry.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM)
All IT personnel use SolarWinds IP Address Manager. Prior to our purchase of IPAM, we used a spreadsheet to keep track of our IP addresses. It was a mess and probably did more harm than good. It was often locked for editing by one person when someone else needed to update it. I believe that led to us having more than one version of the spreadsheet. Eventually, no one trusted it. SolarWinds IPAM is always accurate and always available to everyone who uses it. And IPAM is much more than a list of IPs. It is packed with features like scanning, reporting, alerts, and capacity planning.
- With IPAM automated address scanning, we can be confident that we are looking at an up-to-date, accurate snapshot of our network.
- The built-in alerts are a great safety net. We know that even if we aren't paying close attention to our IP address space, IPAM is. If a range is nearly full, IPAM lets us know before it becomes a real problem.
- IPAM's event logging gives us insight into any and all changes made by our network engineers.
- We have been using it for over three years, and the only complaint I have (or have ever heard) is that launching IPAM can be a slow process. It can be frustrating, but I don't think it has bothered anyone to the point that they reported it to SolarWinds support.
- I shudder to think how much time we wasted when we tried to maintain a spreadsheet of IP addresses. I am almost glad that I don't know.
- What I do know is that our support engineers are good at what they do: support. Every minute they waste on data entry is a minute that they aren't doing support work. IPAM has virtually eliminated all data entry related to IP address assignment.
- Before we purchased IPAM, I knew that there were IP address management solutions, but I assumed the cost would be well into five figures, and I thought the ROI would be tough to calculate. Our initial investment in IPAM was significantly less than I thought it would be. It was low enough that I didn't feel I had to justify the ROI.
I hate to admit this, but I honestly did not even consider another solution after we evaluated IPAM. We had already been using DameWare for many years, so I knew that SolarWinds support was outstanding. Pulling the trigger on this purchase was not difficult.