Item: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Using SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, we monitor our core network and all customer circuits and CPE equipment to proactively plan repair when links degrade or respond to service outages. We also create logins for our customers to monitor their circuit usage and performance. We use reports to upsell customers who are consistently saturating their bandwidth.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Good aesthetics in graph-rendering, etc.
Handles a large number of monitored elements
Fine-grained control of user permissions

Cons

Polling engine requires windows
Database only accepts MSSQL--requires license
No templating of user permissions

Return on Investment

Reduces support workload
Allows customers access to their own usage data, etc.
Significant licensing expense, especially when you consider dependency on Microsoft products

Alternatives Considered

Nagios Network Analyzer, OP5 Monitor, Zenoss Cloud, ManageEngine OpManager and PRTG Network Monitor

I regularly seek out and evaluate alternatives because we would prefer to use an open-source operating system and database. All the other products I have reviewed are lacking features we depend on from SolarWinds. Many products use an inferior graph-rendering package and are not attractive enough to present to our customers. Very few have permissions that are configurable enough for our needs.

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is most appropriate for a large environment with a lot of network elements to monitor and where multiple users need a clean simple interface. For smaller networks, it would be difficult to justify all the required licensing, and free tools would be sufficient.

SolarWinds NPM Feature Ratings

Comments

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The best network management software money can buy, if you need it.