SolarWinds Network Automation Manager (NAM) vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

Solarwinds NAM is well suited if you want following - 1. Monitor multiple vendor devices from single tool. 2. Multiple capabilities from one umbrella tool. 3. Easy and default integration with ITSM Solution. 4. API driven architecture and hence automation can be done easily. If you planning to monitor SD-WAN devices then Solarwinds may not be good solution as it does not have in-built pollers for the same like for devices v-manage, viptela etc. In this case either you have to leverage native solutions and integrate with Solarwinds or use different solutions.

Incentivized

There was a need to find an old configuration of a network switch that was accidentally wiped clean. Fortunately, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) kept and archived a backup copy of the switch device in question! We were easily able to upload the configuration file to the switch and restore the device back on the network in a matter of minutes!

Incentivized

• Fault and Performance Monitoring
• Devices Configuration Backup
• IP Address Management
• Voice Infrastructure Monitoring
• Users Ports monitoring
• Netflow Traffic Utilization

Incentivized

• Integrates with Network Performance Management for Alerting and Reporting.
• NetPath and detects issues due to Configuration Change.
• Keeps a record of which user made the change.
• Which devices are not being backed up, devices where backups are failing, dashboard and alerting available.

Incentivized

• Support for more call infra provider vendors
• Cloud Network Monitoring
• Event Management
• Predictive Intelligence using AIOps and ML

Incentivized

• For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.

Incentivized

Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.

Incentivized

The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.

Incentivized

To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.

Incentivized

Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it

Incentivized

Change management played a key role in our organisation. We didn't have any major downtime but it was crucial for us to get his product.

Incentivized

Solarwinds is cost effective and easy to install and maintain solution. Anyone can install and operate the same whereas other tools like LogicMonitor, Microfocus needs specialized skill. SolarWinds provides rich MIB OID support that means you do not have to worry about devices supportability, in case there are new vendor with new MIBS then also you do not have to worry about this as Vendor itself does that part whereas other tools like Microfocus does not support this and LM do have MIB complier itself. Parameters are already enabled in SolarWinds and hence less chance of customization required. Whereas Microfocus and LM requires customization efforts. Solarwinds does not have SD-WAN so does Microfocus but LogicMonitor seem pretty good in SD-WAN comparatively.

Incentivized

At the time SolarWinds was the biggest player in the space and their whole portfolio was very comprehensive. As time progressed and newer technologies came about (i.e. SDWAN) their products couldn't keep up with the consumer demands and changing market. Security became such a big focus that once Solarwinds got hacked we had to remove all their products from our environment

Incentivized

• Our Network Health has improved with Proactive Monitoring
• Cost reduction on additional products like PowerBI for Reporting
• Service Now Integration was easy enough and hence less efforts and cost

Incentivized

• Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
• Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
• Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.

Incentivized