SolarWinds works well for us!
February 22, 2019
SolarWinds works well for us!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
We use Solarwinds NPM to monitor our internal IT infrastructure including servers, switching, etc. We also use it to monitor our SCADA networks including wireless links and endpoint devices. We also monitor temperatures of outdoor cabinets, wireless signal strengths for metrics, and internet connectivity from each of our respective sites.
- NPM works very well for a standard up/down monitoring using with SNMP or their agent packages.
- NPM works well for customized SNMP polling of devices. For example, we use it for polling specific MIBs to pull temperatures from various devices so they can be graphed.
- NPM makes network mapping very easy.
- Annual maintenance is brutal.
- We used to have LEM, but we found we could only get implementation support or troubleshooting when we were up for renewal. Otherwise, we would just get told to go to the Knowledge Base and figure it out for ourselves or pay a third party contractor.
- Backward compatibility for old versions of SQL and Windows Server are not supported. This causes some hiccups. Right now, we don't want to upgrade even though we have problems because it's not inside the support model.
- Within months of fully implementing NPM, we were able to stop some planned upgrades because we realized they weren't going to help us fix our actual issues. This saved the company approximately $30,000.
- We are now able to visually view outages to more quickly determine their causes and more effectively triage and correct.
We evaluated WUG but were not happy with the offerings compared to SolarWinds. Although their licensing is much simpler, and their costs are considerably lower, it made more sense for us to go with SolarWinds.