Excellent system for monitoring

Pros

This has to be by far the best networking and services monitoring tool I have ever used. It is rich in features and it just works.

Cons

It is an amazing system and I would recommend to anyone. It is however a little time consuming to set it up, for some people even a little challenging.

My NPM for critical NOC Monitoring and its operations

NPM is the best solution when it comes to performance monitoring as for sure no other product can beat in terms of monitoring like Netflow, web filtering, interface, CPU, bandwidth, disk, servers, DB, etc... and many more. Even though it is best but has complications in learning and budget issues.

Pros

if there is something that everyone is interested in this product is its capability and performance. It makes network engineers' jobs easy and to identify errors quickly and focus on things that were really required. Analysis of network firewalls on a very high basis like bandwidth utilization, Netflow, web filter, etc.. for engineers to analyze and identify when any issue comes up.

Cons

Budget is always an issue so many times after POC clients prefer for alternate solutions as it is best in capabilities of monitoring but its concerns about the budget when it comes SMB customers especially.

Works well overall but can get slow over time

We use this software to monitor our network equipment and servers and for the price it works well for doing that.

Pros

Was easy to setup and maintain and their support seems to be great to work with.

Cons

Over time it gets really slow and the server needs rebooted. Nothing I've tried including putting it on a new server seems to rectify this.

Solarwinds npm

I have used multiple network monitoring softwares and there is no comparison with the support and quality of software with SolarWinds. A perfect monitoring tool with out of the box reporting and alerting with extreme customizations.

Pros

I have been using this software for a very long time and its graphical representations and reporting is so top notch and its very easy to install, configure, and troubleshoot and interact with highly skilled individuals on its Thwack Community and share and discuss new ideas and look for guidance/assistance and documentation with labs and we can collect points to exchange with gifts and certification vouchers.

Cons

Its a bit costly and fortigate firewalls are not supported completely to provide its site to site vpn details like it shows for cisco asa. It would be great to be able to monior our vpn and who gets in and out of our network.

Solarwinds NPM Review

This product is great when tuned and customized properly. We use it for alerting via email and for NOC (Network Operation Center) setups. For those not familiar - this is when you set up a large monitor in a "monitoring " room to view network conditions in real time. Custom NOC views allow you to present pretty much any monitored information on a screen. It also allows you to configure a single display monitor (perhaps a 70 inch TV/Display) that scrolls through multiple screens of valuable information.

Pros

Allows for customized views and alerts to really lock down your essential requirements. (The problem is most users do not customize)

Cons

I do not like that they promote how easily you can roll out this software to start monitoring your network. What they do not tell you that by doing a non customized quick roll out you will receive unlimited number of alerts to the point they will be ignored. By default the system shows you too much irrelevant information and it alerts on way too many general conditions. BE Warned - without tuning the alerts you will get many false positive alerts.