A cost-effective yet power-packed tool with great enterprise-level support.
August 26, 2020
A cost-effective yet power-packed tool with great enterprise-level support.
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
There are different verticals (towers) within the organization that are heavily utilizing one or more modules of this product line. My vertical uses it as an MSP where we are selling and supporting these products for 200+ clients scattered in different geographies. Primarily, we are supporting various hosted environments (dedicated accounts as well in some cases depending on the deal type) involving NPM and NCM as the core products. We are in the process of accumulating more such modules and tools to take over complete tooling requirements for our clients. Until now, we have been successful in addressing our customer needs through our centralized tooling but with their growing demand and competitiveness, we have to extend our horizon.
- The UI is dashing, user-friendly, yet powerful enough to do almost all the administrative tasks with the click of a button.
- The deployment and configuration is made simple thanks to the step-by-step guiding wizards.
- Reporting and KPI have the flexibility to run both simple and complex queries to get the intended output.
- Sonar discovery is an easy and efficient method for on-boarding devices.
- Dashboards and maps efficiently exhibit the entire topology and metrics.
- Reporting needs to be improved as there are more misses than hits in obtaining the intended output. CA eHealth reporting was much better and robust in comparison.
- MIBS certification is one more challenge as every-time we have to request support for the addition of OIDs. The UNDP option is great but needs to be more flexible and robust.
- Bulk discoveries, especially subnet-based, choke up the entire CPU and memory processing on the virtual infra. The discovery Wizard stalls in between without showing any error message for a considerable amount of time.
- Having multiple APEs makes administration (Patch, Upgrade, etc.) more difficult and complex. Any change in permissions on Application Folders and AV exclusion takes time in diagnosing and isolating the APE.
- Rabbit MQ and Cortex services frequently get corrupt, and we are unable to find a permanent fix for that.
Though it's a great feature that provides a holistic view of the end-to-end connectivity for the Infrastructure. As an MSP, deployment for all shared clients is neither cost-effective nor simple. In some dedicated accounts, we have set up this functionality and we are reaping its benefits. The best part is that it offers historical data that you can view, allowing you to take a look back in
time and see where some type of network anomaly took place.
time and see where some type of network anomaly took place.
- The impact is largely on the positive side as ROI figures are on the rise.
- The licensing model is appropriately designed to meet every need. We have an XLS license and with the addition of an APE license, we can easily extend our scope.
- SolarWinds has helped in the creation of business use cases for network equipment or bandwidth investments. With capacity planning, we can accurately size our Infra.
I've used various tools in my carrier and each comes with its own pros and cons--CA Spectrum and eHealth being my favorites. However, SolarWinds NPM overshadows them as it alone comprises the benefits we get from the other two. Costing and support are other factors in favor of SolarWinds.
Direct access to most experience support engineers - In the event of a critical breakdown, we need the right people on the job to assist with the best possible options available to restore the environment. The Premier Support is the thing you definitely need in such times. Besides that, there are various advantages of having this support in your entitlements.
Since we inherited the infrastructure from a different vertical within the organization and the infrastructure was having multiple faults, the Premier Support helped us not only in identifying those areas but also in resolving those issues. We now have a much more stable environment thanks to the Premier Support representatives who helped us in this case.
We are an MSP with close to 200 clients onboarded and supported by our monitoring infrastructure running on a legacy platform. With the help of SolarWinds Premier Enterprise Support, we are now able to upgrade to the 2019.4 platform. All nagging issues are resolved and we have a stable and smooth environment.