SolarWinds NTA - Analyze This!
January 28, 2019
SolarWinds NTA - Analyze This!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
We have regularly had issues over the past years, as our estate has grown, with network performance issues from unknown devices. Lack of overall monitoring, including being able to analyze these packets, has been missing. We have been unable to spot patterns in traffic and applications across our estate, and users have suffered as a result. We now use SolarWinds Network Traffic Analyzer across our entire estate and it has been a fantastic addition to compliment our Orion Suite.
- Reporting and alerting have been key and we have been able to setup trigger conditions linked to Network Traffic Analyzer to tell us when we're having an issue.
- We frequently had users hogging bandwidth and we had no way of seeing who was doing it. After only 24 hours of Network Traffic Analyzer being deployed into our environment, we had found 13 devices controlled by users that were causing problems.
- We have used NetPath to analyze our traffic and the results have allowed us to make a multitude of changes across the network to provide a more sound network base.
- A large amount of storage is required.
- Unless you're familiar with SolarWinds products, there is a considerable learning curve with the deployment of the tool. An understanding of networks is key.
- Needs its own server.
- Capacity planning.
- We were used to our offices telling us the bandwidth was slow - it's now the other way around.
- Alerting on performance issues.
We used Nagios previously and also the Nagios Netflow Analyzer. It did a good job, but SolarWinds Network Traffic Analyzer is far superior and far more feature-rich in terms what you get. The planning it provides and alerting easily outweighs what Nagios Netflow can give. It is heavier in terms of deployment, but its understandable given the features.