SolarWinds NPM is our robotic NOC
January 11, 2019

SolarWinds NPM is our robotic NOC

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

We use NPM in 2 ways. Firstly we use it to correlate application incidents we see in our NewRelic monitoring. When we receive a NewRelic alert we then consult our NPM dashboard to fill in the context of the NR alert. Secondly, we use NPM to report metrics that we use for quarterly capacity planning of our platform systems.

Pros

  • NPM has a great interface for organizing top-level information on a single page so that we can reference it quickly.
  • NPM has a nice NOC feature that allows us to create custom dashboard pages that cater to different constituents.

Cons

  • The report generator is good but gets cumbersome when we try to generate multi-factor reports that blend more than two metrics.
  • The fact that the advanced report writer is a separate module poses challenges for our users.
  • Since our environment is 100% in the cloud we must not only monitor high utilization but also low utilization to prevent unnecessary expenditures. NPM has helped us to create an analysis that directs our attention to the most needful areas.
  • NPM charts have proven useful when creating justifications for upgrades or changes to our compliment of systems. When combined with the cold metrics we can visually show through the NPM charts how we can get better.
NPM rose to the top of our list based on how easy it is to deploy and how quickly we were able to bring up dashboards. We later found that the reporting helped us do our jobs and that has since become a criterion for future evaluations and considerations. Integration with our other platforms also became an advantage because in our large environment the ability to segregate different collection tools was very helpful.
We have used several products over the years and in fact, our current implementation of NPM is side-by-side with other products like SCCM. NPM is the one platform that people can look at and immediately understand. Many of the other platforms require a significant amount of background knowledge in order for people to consume their information.

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings

Network Performance Monitoring
7.8
Automated network device discovery
Not Rated
Network monitoring
9
Baseline threshold calculation
Not Rated
Alerts
6
Network capacity planning
Not Rated
Packet capture analysis
Not Rated
Network mapping
Not Rated
Customizable reports
7
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
Not Rated
Hardware health monitoring
9

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