SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a huge time saver!
Updated March 25, 2022

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a huge time saver!

Brett Organ | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager

NCM is being used as our central device change tracking application. It is used to centralize and control our internal processes related to network device configuration change management. The application helps us know who can and does make changes to network devices. It also plays a central role with internal auditing of device configurations policies. The chief advantage of NCM is in the ability to schedule configuration backups jobs and track device configuration changes. Being able to execute a policy audit report related to DISA STIG, PCI, SOX, or other rule sets is also a huge time saver.

Pros

  • Archiving of device configurations. This is the most basic of features for NCM and provides an easy way to maintain startup and running configurations for all network devices.
  • NCM can execute scripts. Any task that is typically done by a technician from the command line is handled by NCM. This includes the ability to schedule script execution jobs against a single device or multiple devices.
  • NCM provides several types of reports out of the box. These include configuration change reports and inventory reports as the best examples.
  • One can easily perform a "stare and compare" of two device configurations so as to quickly and easily determine where changes have occurred.

Cons

  • For those people who may not be proficient at using regular expressions, NCM needs to evolve to provide more direct contextual help in this regard.
  • The job logs that NCM provides are very utilitarian and do not lend themselves to viewing and searching well at all.
  • The impact of NCM has been huge and quantifiable. I would conservatively estimate that it consistently reduces the man-hours spent on our typical management tasks by more than 50%. The savings in time spent on policy auditing tasks alone are worth the price paid for NCM.
NCM is superior to ManageEngine or Spiceworks in its ability to automate the primary tasks of a configuration management tool. Of course, it integrates well with other applications in the SolarWinds Orion suite of applications. The list of vendors supported by NCM is larger as well. NCM also has a helpful list of ancillary tools or features that assist users who may not be seasoned network admins.
Network Configuration Manager really is well suited to any environment regardless of size or vendor mix. It has out-of-the-box support for a large and growing list of network vendors, and provides a user-friendly tool to adjust the tool to work with the occasional device that cannot be recognized by default. NCM would be of particular value to the small IT shop where only a few busy IT staff are responsible for a large number of network devices. The time that is saved by being able to centrally manage configuration management and reporting tasks is huge.

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