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How NPM Helped Us
November 16, 2015

How NPM Helped Us

Jim Arendt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is being used by the IT department to monitor the up and down states of the equipment that we have attached. We have workstations, servers, printers, switches and miscellaneous equipment that we monitor. It also shows us transmission errors within our network which aids in the troubleshooting of our network.
  • We are able to diagnose switch errors by monitoring the receive errors, receive discards, transmit error and the transmit discards.
  • The ability to visually monitor ports through the port details, average response times and packet loss and the network topology on the switches is a great asset.
  • Monitoring ports used in order to better balance the network across all switches.
  • Would like to be able to see complete end to end mapping in the network topology. We are able to get all of the answers but not in one quick dashboard.
  • Would have liked to see more information on the ports detail screen especially on the switches. It showed only the port number for us even though it listed host name, IP, MAC, & VLAN especially the VLAN for quicker troubleshooting.
  • Sometimes the devices would not be found on the first connect.
  • The most important factor for us was the increased efficiency of our staff to get where they needed to go to begin the troubleshooting process or remote into a PC to resolve an issue.
  • A negative for us was when it came time to renew, the renewal costs for our size of property became a negative impact on our ROI and therefore cost prohibitive.
  • In the end the use of the Network Performance Monitor software provided our staff the ability to improve the customer service to our end users.
  • MRC
When looking for a complete solution for monitoring our network, we looked at many different applications. We started with Simple MRC applications to provide remote access to our end users workstations to allow our team to assist them in resolving issues. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor provided us with so much more than what MRC alone could provide. We could now monitor more about the network and focus less on the workstation. This allowed for us to see that some of our issues were self inflicted because we were operating with older equipment that was a major source of our latency issues. It allowed for us to still simply remote into a workstation by providing us with a map overlay application to assist us in quickly locating the machine to service resulting in better customer support and staff efficiency.
This is an excellent product for anyone looking for answers and a centralized way of seeing their network. It is a robust application with many components that offer a wide variety of granularity. One feature that we especially liked was the add-on Atlas application and the ability to click on an icon on the map and have it open up SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor which allows us to begin the troubleshooting process, launch a MRC application or an admin share session.

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings

Network Performance Monitoring
9.2
Automated network device discovery
9
Network monitoring
10
Baseline threshold calculation
9
Alerts
9
Network capacity planning
9
Packet capture analysis
9
Network mapping
10
Customizable reports
9
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
9
Hardware health monitoring
9

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Support

In all of the times that we called support, someone at SolarWinds had the answer for us in a timely manner. Through thwack and other internet searching, we have been able to resolve all of our issues that arose to our satisfaction. The support staff have always been knowledgeable of their products or had a fellow support staff member to rely on to get the needed answers.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Support understands my problem
Quick Initial Response
None
No - Do not have to call in that often and the internet community usually has the answers to my issues. When we do call in, it is for a simple issue that rarely needs escalation and is usually handled in a couple of phone calls. Frankly, with the cost of the software, the premium support should be included.
This is a tough question as we usually get exceptional support for this product. If I had to choose it would be back in June of 2011 when we first purchased Network Performance Monitor and the SolarWinds suite of products and we were assisted by Matthew Quick. Matthew was a great help in getting the application up and running and patiently attempted to contact us with our varied schedules and we were finally able to set up a GoToMeeting session to get the issues resolved. Thank you again Matthew.