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SolarWinds NPM - "Nice, Practical, Modular"
Updated January 17, 2020

SolarWinds NPM - "Nice, Practical, Modular"

Brian Anderson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

As a consultant SolarWinds NPM allows me to recommend and implement a quick, industry standard solution for my customers that adds value immediately. With an ever increasing number of add-on modules it is scalable to meet the needs of a variety of businesses/organizations.
  • Ease of configuration. SolarWinds NPM is easily configured initially with discovery auto-populating the majority of equipment.
  • Ease of management/use. SolarWinds NPM is easily understood by those with less training, allowing them to gain visibility in to and troubleshoot problems that would otherwise require additional assistance.
  • Pricing. While there are alternate solutions to SolarWinds NPM, this offering sits in a well-priced space easily adding more value than the sticker price. With the module-based approach the product offering often scales well with company size as well.
  • Ease of modification. It is sometimes difficult to understand how to properly modify the details of individual components. This comes with the territory given the constraints of SNMP, etc. but I feel that SolarWinds could streamline the end-user experience.
  • Dials. For some things dials are a good indication for system status but I've never liked them for network monitoring as they take up a lot of real estate where a simple color-coded number would suffice in most cases.
  • Employee efficiency. With SolarWinds NPM, staff can pinpoint network issues much more quickly than without a high-level tool.
  • Issue time-to-resolution. Gaining high-level visibility in to the network at large allows staff to more quickly identify failures and address them.
  • Proactivity. With alerting, issues are often identified prior to them becoming critical allowing staff in some cases to address things before users even notice.
Compared to Zabbix, SolarWinds NPM offers a much simplified administrator and user experience. For the average user, significantly less time is spent accessing pertinent information. On the administration side, the configuration interface is much more user-friendly and has a "task-centric" feel whereas Zabbix has a "programming-centric" feel.
SolarWinds NPM shines when properly applied to Enterprise scenarios but I actually see more value-for-money in the smaller space where dedicated network personnel aren't always part of the budget. NPM enables these smaller entities to outsource key aspects of network configuration to dedicated consultants and hire fewer staff overall.

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings

Network Performance Monitoring
7.2
Automated network device discovery
8
Network monitoring
8
Baseline threshold calculation
8
Alerts
7
Network capacity planning
8
Packet capture analysis
5
Network mapping
6
Customizable reports
7
Hardware health monitoring
8

SolarWinds NPM ROI Questions

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Third-party Reviews
The single most important factor in choosing SolarWinds NPM was the technical capability. Given the historical presence in this sector, SolarWinds is ahead of other vendors competing in the same space. That said, the interface can feel a bit dated because of this, but the most important thing is that the necessary data is collected.

Using SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor