SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

Score9.4 out of 10

57 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

IP Address Management: Several users have found the product's IP address management feature to be very helpful for comparing Cisco configurations. This has made it easier for them to identify discrepancies and troubleshoot network issues.

Ping Sweep Functionality: The ping sweep functionality of the product has been particularly useful, with many reviewers mentioning that it allows them to quickly check the connectivity and availability of multiple devices on the network. This saves time and effort in troubleshooting.

Debugging Tools: Many users appreciate the debugging tools offered by the product, as they find it convenient to be able to perform tasks like ping, telnet, and SSH right from the console. This streamlined approach makes user management more efficient and enhances overall productivity.

Reviews

11 Reviews

It's like having a Snap-On toolbox full of all the tools you need.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 12, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use [SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset] mainly to react to problems that we detect from our SW Orion. When we set up ne networks its great for Ping sweep and the subnet calculator[.] We are a big users of the Cisco Config Viewer

Pros

Compare cisco configs
IP address management
Ping sweep

Cons

[The] Bandwidth gauges could use some updating

Likelihood to Recommend

[SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset] helps you get to the RCA quicker and saves time guessing. You don't have to go to 20 different vendors to get the products

Jacob Garrett

Senior System Engineer in Information Technology at CASTO (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

View profile

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is a must for Enterprise environments

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 2, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

There are many features that this SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset provides. We use this toolset for stress testing on our network. We also use it for discovering devices on our network automatically. Also, and a huge one, keeping track of device configuration and log management. There is more [than] this toolset provides that we use within our [organization], but these are the main ones.

Pros

Network Discovery
Monitoring
Device Configuration Management

Cons

UI could be smoother
Integration
More features

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is well suited for any organization that wishes to gather more information about [its] network. When you have a small environment, this might not be as important. But, when you get to 20+ routers, multiple switches, and more, this toolset is great to keep track of what's going on.

Thomas Osborne

Network System Administrator in Information Technology at CentralSquare Technologies (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Many useful tools all contained in the same suite.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 1, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use quite a few of the tools in the toolkit. We use the MIB Browser, the Config Uploader and Downloader, Ping, TraceRoute, network Port Mapper, MAC Scanner, network discovery tool, etc. They've all solved their individual problems, but the fact that we have them all in a central location with any of the admins available to access makes troubleshooting and being proactive very handy.

Pros

Multitude of tools in one set.
Wide variety of uses for the kit.
Addresses proactivity and reactivity well.

Cons

I wish it looked a little better on the eyes. It looks a bit dated in some of the tools.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's well suited for a wide variety of things just because there are so many tools included in the kit. You really have most everything you would need in troubleshooting or being proactive with everything included. To some it can seem overwhelming though based on the amount of things in one area though, so it does take some getting used to getting around and finding what you want before diving in to fully use it all.

Steven Tom

Public Safety Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Ada County Sheriff's Office (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

A bit out dated and not fancy - but gets the job done

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Some of the modules included with the toolset are invaluable, such as the bandwidth interface monitors and other monitoring modules. It's useful to have locally installed software that engineers can use without the need to be logged into monitoring or jump servers, or rely solely on using the monitoring system.

Pros

interface monitoring
real time bandwidth monitoring
mib walk

Cons

outdated ui
refresh of features is needed
some tools should be EOL and new ones introduced

Likelihood to Recommend

It's tricky to determine if you should recommend or not recommend the Engineer's Toolset because there are SolarWinds modules that might be already running on the monitoring system that people can use, however, the real time bandwidth monitoring and the ease of being able to run these tools locally on your machine instead of through a browser is definitely a win.

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Hidden Gem in SolarWinds Tools Suite

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is used in some of our customer's SolarWinds environment as an adhoc utility for quick debugging of some of the issues which requires user's to login manually on SolarWinds NMS servers and then test it. These toolsets helps suer to allow basic checks right from the SolarWinds orion console such as for ping check of the devices, SSH connectivity, Telnet connectivity of devices from SolarWinds NMS servers.

Pros

Debugging Tools
Saves Time for basic checks
Ping, Telnet, SSH right from the console and hence easy user management from console itself

Cons

Licensing structure
More debugging commands support
CLI based automation for script based checks

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is well suited in dynamic environments where monitoring teams and network teams requires to login to the server again and again for basic troubleshooting such as Ping Check, Telnet logging and SSH Logging. However most of the users just purchase this product but never use this since the way its licensing is designed is not cost effective.

Nikhil Kumar Sharma

Associate Consultant in Engineering at HCL Technologies (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

View profile

Great collection of tools for a wide variety of needs

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is used as an improved toolset for many common functions that exist otherwise in Windows but with greatly improved features over the native tools. The SNMP tools, ping and port sweep, and DNS tools are especially helpful. Network discovery and WAN Killer are tools that don't exist natively and are often especially useful.

Pros

The SNMP tools are great for discovering and troubleshooting monitoring issues.
DNS audit is great for validating existing records and discovering inaccuracies.
WAN Killer works well for testing out QoS and verifying the WAN circuits delivered are provisioned properly.

Cons

The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.

Likelihood to Recommend

Overall the toolset is a great collection for a wide variety of needs. Some individual tools are the best I have seen and some could use some improvement to become best in class. The monitoring tools, specifically, could use some improvement. The unifying tool front-end is clunky and should be improved.

Verified User

Former Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

An important tool for troubleshooting networks

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is currently being used by a select number of engineers in the networking team. We use it for scanning and discovery, temporary monitoring, troubleshooting and issue analysis. More long term monitoring is done within our SolarWinds Orion server. It has been extremely useful in diagnosing and pinpointing network issues over the years.

Pros

Network Discovery.
Real-time monitoring.
Troubleshooting intermittent issues.

Cons

Slow to load individual components.
Not easily portable to new device.
Single user license model.

Likelihood to Recommend

I have found the toolset especially useful for scanning subnets to discover devices, and for setting up temporary real-time monitors when we are troubleshooting or setting up new connections. The most useful aspect has been the ability to apply the tools to help troubleshoot and pinpoint intermittent issues. More general tools like Orion often do not have the granularity to detect issues like intermittent packet loss which are especially impactful to applications like Voice. The toolset gives us another level of capability to dig into issues.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Perfect tool set for quick returns.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is an essential tool to have in my tool box. It allows me to run on-demand scans of the network without the overhead of adding to the larger management suite. The ease of use allows me to also let junior engineers get their hands dirty without the risk of larger changes. It was also essential to allow us to set up custom monitoring with the MIB walk tool.

Pros

MIB walks on SNMP objects
IP scan of network for discovery
Port scan

Cons

I think as a tool set, it is very solid. If you wanted more, you would be looking for NPM or other management suite tools.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would suggest this tool for discovery phase on network development. It made the basics much easier. The deployment is rather simple as long as you have SNMP values. If you are not authorized, it will cause some alarms within a security group. Overall a solid addition to any engineers tool box.

Eric Stephenson

Manager IS in Information Technology at Crayola (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Great monitoring tool!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use [SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset] on a regular basis to monitor our production database servers. It helps to identify issues, sends alerts and allows to see the historical data up to 2 weeks, which is helpful when you have to research the blocking that happened off hours. The monitoring system is very robust and useful in many ways. Also helps to tune the queries and monitor the instances. Highly recommended tool.

Pros

Various monitoring
Stores history
Suggests indices
Helps to find the SQL query text
Helps to see what machines/users the bad queries are coming from
Shows current blocking session

Cons

Navigation could be better
Please, create the favorite instances links, custom made, that i can create for myself (for those servers that i check the most)
Create RDP button, so i can connect to the instance from the monitoring page

Likelihood to Recommend

[SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is] a great tool for monitoring database servers, highly recommended. The very good thing is that it keeps the history for two weeks, and you can see the time slice for all the server activities. Helps a lot to identify the memory and CPU bottlenecks, research blocking issues and kill the sessions, if necessary.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset, a must for every network engineer

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 15, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the Engineer toolset across the Network Team. It assists us with many daily tasks saving hours of engineering time.

Pros

Ping sweeps
SNMP tools
IP tools including the IP calculator

Cons

Saving outputs in different forms
Walk through on some of the products

Likelihood to Recommend

I use the IP tools primarily. Ping sweeps, IP calculators are always at my fingers, and SNMP tools are also time savers on setting up new devices and SNMP discovery.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

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