Item: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
Rating: 9
Author: quoc nguyen

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor all nodes on our network. Only IT uses SolarWinds NPM and we (IT) use it for monitoring, baselining and troubleshooting.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Complete picture overview of the network: useful for monitoring and identifying issues.
Hardware monitoring: useful for identifying hardware issues.
Detail level analysis: allows you to dive deep into interfaces.

Cons

Transmit Discards: We noticed the "transmit discard" showing on SolarWinds NPM doesn't get updated correctly. We had "transmit discards" errors on Cisco interfaces, after clearing the errors on the interfaces, no matter how long we wait, we still see the counters on SolarWinds showing old information. We had to delete those interfaces and re-add them for the display counters on the NPM to show correctly.

Return on Investment

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor definitely made a positive impact on IT because the tool allows us to be more efficient at what we do, which I think is hard to measure but definitely invaluable.

Alternatives Considered

We have used OpenNMS and Nagios but found that NPM is much more intuitive.

It is well suited for troubleshooting bigger network issues. For example, when you have multiple users reporting slowness, you need to be able to quickly glance at your network to identify more specific areas of potential issues. NPM assists with narrowing the scope and the specific areas to look at, saving available time and resources in identifying the root cause.

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

SolarWinds NPM: a must have tool for any network