Network Performance Monitor Software

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.

Great network monitoring tool

I use NPM to monitor the health of the network routers and switches and the bandwidth used in the WAN links and switch uplinks. I also use it to monitor several Windows servers, including free disk space, memory and CPU occupation, the load of Hyper-V and VMWare hosts and the load, battery status and runtime of UPS devices.

Pros

It's very easy to setup and use and everything is configurable. It's really easy to configure dashboards and visualize every piece of information the way we want to. It can be used to monitor network equipment from a lot of vendors, as well as Windows systems and virtualization hosts and guests. Basically, anything it can connect to using SNMP or WMI.

Cons

It's not good at all to get information about endpoints. The information is unreliable: it doesn't find a lot of endpoints in the network, reports them with old IP addresses and in places where they are not connected anymore, etc.

Feature rich

We use this to monitor client network. Mostly on the infrastructure side but can also be used to monitor services.

Pros

Excellent software for network visibility. Lots of feature for managing and monitoring your network.

Cons

Older versions we're lacking support for many devices. Fixed with recent updates

NMS Solarwind

Pros

Accurate Performance to every network devices.

Cons

It takes 3 min of time to trigger the device down mail alert.

NPM is a very reliable and powerful network monitoring tool

It can use some improvements, but still, in 8 years we've been using NPM on a service provider scenario, it has solved about 80% of our customers requirements for network monitoring. When complemented with other products from the same vendor, it provides maybe 95%, since there's always something than need a specialized tool.

Pros

In the world of enterprise network monitoring, NPM has one of the shortest learning curves, its web GUI is very inutitive and you can start monitoring your assets almost immediately.
It's support for different monitoring mechanisms (snmp, wmi and agent) provides adaptability to mostly any network.
It possesses a very robust engine to configure thresholds, events and actions, so you can get the proper reaction to different events.
SolarWinds provides a very complete ecosystem of network monitoring and management tools with seamless integration.

Cons

The licensing model is not the best for a service provider scenario and it seems like the vendor doesn't even consider this option.
Reporting capabilities are sort of buggy , specially when exporting complex and large reports. This tasks will also consume a lot of resources. There's an opportunity for the vendor to maybe decouple reporting capabilities to a BI module which can be deployed on an independent server, and maybe use for it a read only replica of the production DB.

IT of NPM

perfect for solving your network issues and live monitoring is awesome

Pros

perfect for monitoring an large scale environment. awesome yearly events to attend. easy to drill down in devices that have been configured

Cons

Difficult to setup initially, UI is abit intimidating at first .

network management in minutes

Pros

SolarWinds NPM (Network Performance Manager) is one of the most gratifying products to use. After installing on a server, you can literally in minutes begin collecting actionable network performance if you have previously configured SNMP on your network equipment. Most of the products integrate, building on each other and adding more value. I have always been impressed with how their new versions add significant features and value for just paying maintenance on the product. Their online training is also very valuable.

Cons

More advance features will take more effort to configure and generate actionable results. You can easily be overwhelmed by alerts and syslog if you do not make an effort to manage what you really need to see.

Monitoring network devices.

Pros

We use Network Performance Monitor because we need deep information about the operation of our network devices. The system works very well in our organization and I can recommend it to others.

Cons

The system is very good and complete, but also very difficult to use, the implementation of the system is also very difficult, it requires an experienced partner.

Looks and works great

Got us through a transitional period where we were short on IT staff.

Pros

It is a really clean solution that was easy to install and use. It is aesthetically appealing and I can better visualize my own network.

Cons

It does not really do anything that I could not do on my own, so it is really 100% bells and whistles. I would not recommend this software unless you are new to networking and you do not have the knowledge or manpower to manage/monitor an existing enterprise network. That being said, it is incredibly expensive for what you really get, but can be helpful if your use-case is a good fit.

I'm an IT Analyst who uses this software to troubleshoot our enterprise network infrastructure.

Pros

The level of detail included about network assets. It provides a wealth of information that makes troubleshooting a breeze.

Cons

Sometimes the user interface seems less than intuitive and can be a little confusing. There is a lot of information presented and often times I find myself forgetting how I navigated to a particular display.

Pretty good software, can be a bit laggy at times

Pros

Easy to setup and get going. Will scan your network and add devices automatically if you want. Interface is easy to read and navigate.

Cons

Can be inconsistent with reporting. Seems to lag up my system a bit and sometimes reports devices offline when they are not.

Great Network Monitoring tool which is always coming out with new features

Pros

This is just one of the many suite of applications that SolarWinds offers to help manage the Network. Ease to use and helps diagnose / troubleshoot issues. Easy to automate alerts to notify you of problems afterhours. Great graphical interface as well.

Cons

Is more costly than other tools but worth the cost as SolarWinds will take less time to manage over time.

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.

Great software for network monitor

Pros

Easy interface for beginner as well as expert level. I like how it displays the characteristics of a network.

Cons

Sometimes it gives lags but still update comes late so it create an issue for a user who requires real time network monitoring.

tool for Networking professional

Pros

Great tool who are interested in Computer Networking and want to explore the background of any network as well as will be aware of it.

Cons

Not for a beginner that is for sure since it requires you to have certain level of knowledge of a network.

Many things are interesting but comes at a huge cost.

Pros

The details that it provides are huge and so many little intricate details to monitor and take care about. Gives peace of mind once installed properly for sure.

Cons

For a network monitoring tool, a little too expensive. Huge customization are needed at some step but not necessary that you might need to too.

The best one in business

Pros

1) Real time health report and a microseconds difference is the competence i was looking for in the monitoring tools out there.

Cons

1) Prices could be cheaper but whatever keeps my servers afloat i can go for it, without much ado.

Simple and to the point, very concise when you need a minimal amount of information.

Pros

I can pull up any piece of networking information in a matter of seconds. There is not a big learning curve.

Cons

Sometimes it seems to be too minimal, some features that are present in other network performance monitors are lacking in SolarWinds' version.

We use NPM to monitor our network stack.

Pros

Fast, clear status of performance and possible outages.
Easy integration with other tools and custom alert mechanisms.
A focused company who is very involved in making great tutorials.

Cons

The GUI is starting to look dated, it could use a complete overhaul.
License needs can be tricky to determine.

Great to have a view of everything

Pros

The dashboards are incredible I am able to troubleshoot the network quickly and efficiently right down to the node.

Cons

I wish there was a way to see what an IP belongs to on the exterior of our environment like a whois this Ip