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GUI >> CLI
September 06, 2019

GUI >> CLI

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

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager

We use it as an audit tool to ensure that all configurations are standardized across all identical Cisco devices (switches, routers). It can easily generate a report of which devices aren't compliant and how. Given that we have over 1000 Cisco devices across our enterprise, this makes it a hugely valuable tool for us.
  • Replaces CLI with a GUI interface.
  • Manage, compare, and configure multiple devices at the same time.
  • Audit many devices across the enterprise and generate reports on configuration inconsistencies.
  • It would help if NCM could analyze and make recommendations about ways to improve Cisco configs (routing protocols, etc.)
  • NCM could also potentially recommend more architectural changes to LANs and/or WANs on the network.
  • That's it!
  • Positive impact: it has found misconfigurations that would have led to user downtime.
  • Positive impact: it has been able to create reports that saves my network engineers hours of work that would have been done via CLI.
  • NetBrain
We already had a large SolarWinds deployment before we selected NCM, so there really wasn't an alternative we considered. However, we did also demo NetBrain, which we liked a lot. We didn't go with NetBrain primarily because the pricing was exhorbitant for an enterprise our size.
CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Discontinued), SourceForge
It's best suited for big enterprises that have too many devices to manage one-by-one. It's an automation tool, primarily. No need for SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager in small companies.

It also works best when you already have Network Performance Monitor (NPM) and install it as part of a network monitoring suite with other tools such as Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA).