The best network management software money can buy, if you need it.
March 03, 2020

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

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

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

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

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

Automated network device discovery
5
Network monitoring
9
Baseline threshold calculation
Not Rated
Alerts
9
Network capacity planning
Not Rated
Packet capture analysis
Not Rated
Network mapping
8
Customizable reports
8
Wireless infrastructure monitoring
Not Rated
Hardware health monitoring
9

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