Solarwinds NPM from the perspective of a lightly staffed IT department
December 08, 2015
Solarwinds NPM from the perspective of a lightly staffed IT department
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
We use Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor in our IT Department to monitor the health and state of our mission critical network in a 911 dispatch center. We have configured alerts to send an e-mail to myself and/or additional technicians in the event performance falters, when a mission critical server fails, or when a critical piece of network equipment quits working as configured. By using Solarwinds NPM I can usually know about a problem before anyone else even notices it.
- The Virtualization Tab provides great insight into my VMWare and my Microsoft Hyper-V environments. All the important information for both environments is consolidated in a single pane.
- Event Manager is easy and quick to configure especially when compared to other network monitoring systems out there. I was up and alerting in no time with SolarWinds.
- The Thwack user community is another great feature with SolarWinds. If I ever run into an issue, with monitoring or configuration, the first place I look is Thwack. Using this method often saves me loads of time in determining what my issue is and how to correct it.
- I wish there was a way to create a printable network map from Solarwinds, show me what is connected where.
- Features on the administration page can sometimes be obscured or hard to find.
- Great efficiency in a lightly staffed environment. Without this moniitoring and alerting we would be at the mercy waiting to hear from someone when we have a problem. It goes a long way when I do get a phone call letting me know there is a problem and I can say that I am aware and already working on it.
- When I first asked for funding for Solarwinds it was questioned, but our overall performance and general up time speak for themselves.
In the past I have "tried" to utilize a couple of different "free" alternatives, including Spiceworks and OpsView. I found both hard to configure and quick to overwhelm me with what I considered useless information. I have also looked at larger network management systems like HP OpenView and the high initial cost and ongoing maintenance completely took them out of my consideration.