Item: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
Rating: 7
Author: David Dyck

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it on customer's networks for monitoring, alerting, and reporting. We have too many devices to monitor manually. We also use NCM, but I don't believe that is included in the scope of this review

Pros and Cons

Granular and custom alerting.
OID Monitoring and historical data / SNMP.
Support for all devices or custom devices.

Online support articles (KBs) could be better.
Perfstack isn't great.
Documentation for detailed things is lacking or non-existent.

Return on Investment

I currently don't have any knowledge regarding this.

Alternatives Considered

Zabbix and PRTG Network Monitor

I much prefer Zabbix in most cases, but SolarWinds NPM is easier to set up and use for end-users. PRTG is fine, but I'd use NPM or Zabbix over it.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would rarely suggest NPM to someone I think is familiar with SNMP and willing to do more manual configuration. Zabbix is free and provides essentially everything NPM does, just with a lot more manual configuration required. However, for a business requiring support contracts and easy use/setup, I would recommend NPM over anything else.

Good product, and excellent to use it if you don't want to configure Zabbix

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros and Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings