SolarWinds NTA (Netflow Analyzer) Review
December 31, 2024

SolarWinds NTA (Netflow Analyzer) Review

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

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

We utilize SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) for a variety of reasons. It does a good job with Bandwidth monitoring by identifying network congestion and potentially what is causing the congestion. It ties in flawlessly with our Cisco gear and environment. We monitor our switches, wireless controllers along with our network Servers. It helps us keep track of the resources our network gear and servers are using and have available. Part of the monitoring function is the alert portion, which allows us to set minimum/maximum alert status, then send us an alert if the device or service exceeds (or fails).

Pros

  • Monitor network device status (up, down, fail state)
  • Help identify network congestion, both cause and location.
  • It's graphical display of our network and the various nodes and levels assists with overall network management and design by giving us a birds eye view.
  • With the monitoring function along with the ability to "see" network devices, service and issues, it helps tremendously with troubleshooting, both performance related issues along with complete outage problems.

Cons

  • Some of the default settings for bandwidth utilization are too low, causing alerts to be generated much too frequently. These can be manually adjusted, which is good, a bit higher tolerance would be helpful.
  • The built in help is good for basic setups, but as you get into the weeds more, it is less intuitive and assistance is required.
  • The initial setup of the product does work, but they should state that the minimum requirements are really not what you want to build it on. You should plan for the higher requirement out of the gate so adjusting and making changes is not required once it is set up.
  • It has been very beneficial for us because we can now monitor our entire network with a single point of reference. It also offers incredible granularity with what you can monitor.
  • It works well with all of our products, we've not encountered a product or device that we can not monitor and log.
  • Because of the large all encompassing monitoring ability, it allows us to better plan for future expansion or maintenance cycles.
To be fair, I am sure I have only touched on a small level of this products capabilities. We had a very specific goal in mind when buying it and that was to monitor WAN links, monitor the switch and router performance and related gear. We also wanted a better view of our servers and what performance they are running at. This product does it very well. As new projects come up we are expanding the role NTA has as we learn more.
SolarWinds NTA is hands down a superior product compared to Wireshark. However, when doing smaller isolated projects the affordability of Wireshark can not be overlooked. Wireshark does a great job of collecting data on ports and circuits. The advantage of SolarWinds NTA is the all encompassing collection of data and management of the multitude of devices. It is designed to do that, and does it very well.

Do you think SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)'s feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) go as expected?

No

Would you buy SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) again?

Yes

We use and depend on it for status state of our network gear, switches and routers. It does an excellent job of getting you the details you need to confirm all devices and products are working at the level needed.

At times, it does tend to flag network switch ports and/or switches themselves as exceeding their rated capacity when frequently it was a quick blip of high traffic due to downloads, or uploads causing the max'ing of the device. Again, you can adjust the settings but then you adjust it too high and miss real activity. It can become nuisance alerting when you tend to then ignore.

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