1. Home
  2. Network Performance Monitoring Tools
  3. SolarWinds NPM Reviews
  4. User Review of SolarWinds NPM
SolarWinds for K-12
Updated August 27, 2019

SolarWinds for K-12

Jason Buttacavoli | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

We are a K-12 school district that has 11 schools and 2 administrative buildings. We have around 80 logical switch stacks and around 9000 physical ports in addition to almost 600 access points. We use NPM extensively to monitor all of our infrastructure equipment as well as our servers and IT appliances. NPM gives us a single pane of glass to quickly be alerted to any issues that our equipment may have.
  • Single pane of glass for my entire infrastructure.
  • Configurable text and email notifications if systems go down or have errors.
  • Port Utilization with errors and discards.
  • It would be nice if there was a way the interface details could give you a report of ports not in use based on the life of the switch, not the last reboot.
  • NPM definitely reduces the amount of time necessary for my two man staff to monitor, and troubleshoot our network.
NPM is a much more robust platform
NPM is well suited to monitor devices for businesses of all sizes. It does an excellent job of monitoring, alerting and gathering statistics across your entire infrastructure. It is device agnostic, I have not found a device type that I have that it will not monitor as long as it supports SNMP.

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings

Network Performance Monitoring
7.6
Automated network device discovery
Not Rated
Network monitoring
9
Baseline threshold calculation
9
Alerts
9
Network capacity planning
7
Packet capture analysis
Not Rated
Network mapping
5
Customizable reports
7
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
6
Hardware health monitoring
9

SolarWinds NPM ROI Questions

Not Sure
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
This product was already purchased when I started in this job however, based off of my experience and the features and functionality I would absolutely purchase again if I had to. Network Performance Monitor is a feature rich tool set, and with the limited staffing we have frees us up for other tasks.

Feature Questions

  • Monitor errors and discards on my switches
  • Monitor overall hardware health of hardware
  • Use netpath to monitor external services.

Using SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

5 - Network, server and voice specialist use NPM
2 - We have 2 network admins that support NPM. It could easily be managed by one person.
  • Monitor all voice devices
  • Monitor additional external resources
Great product, easy to use and has alot of excellent information.

Evaluating SolarWinds NPM and Competitors

I was not involved in the initial purchase, however after using NPM for some time I would absolutly select it again.

SolarWinds NPM Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
When migrating to new hardware I opened a support tickets and they were quick to respond with the best way to do it and best pratcies to use.
Great support. Knowledgeable staff. Timely responses.

Using SolarWinds NPM

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Netpath
  • Network top 10 is great
  • Load Balancing monitor
  • None that I find
  • None
  • None
Yes, but I don't use it
NPM is very easy to setup and use, we had to rebuild it form scratch because of a server failure and it took no time at all to get the software up and running and back in use.