Item: SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
Rating: 10
Author: Wien Dai

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used SolarWinds for long time but just purchased NCM last year. We picked this module because we wanted to be able to manage our Cisco switches and firewall configuration and we achieved that goal.
I just used it in our infrastructure group. Before, all configurations were managed manually and we don't know who made the change at when. Now we can trace down the change. I can also deploy configuration change and pushed out to all switches/firewalls.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy to use. Very straight forward.
Able to trace the changes back.
Can deploy changes to large number of devices at one time.
Can compare configuration before and after.

Cons

Hope to improve the GUI so that I can expand a node and the details stay there.

Return on Investment

NCM saved my time managing my network devices.
NCM gave me clear picture of device configuration changes.

Alternatives Considered

I haven't used other products.

Likelihood to Recommend

This is the module I definitely will recommend. Before that, I can't do large configuration deployment. Now, it's very easy to do.
With NCM, I can compare the configuration of several versions. Look back from previous versions, I can find out what was changed easily. I can open two configurations and run the comparison.

Comments

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