SolarWinds Network Automation Manager (NAM) Reviews & Insights

SolarWinds is used internally for our own infrastructure as well as for customers. SolarWinds is been used as the core network monitoring solution suite which does end to end network monitoring and provides visibility around each site and location's network infrastructure for any fault and performance. It also does IP Address Management, Voice Call Quality Monitoring and Netpath Services monitoring for SaaS applications like Office365.

Well Suited Areas -
1. Network Fault and Performance Monitoring
2. Network Devices Configuration Backup and Configuration Push
3. Netflow Analysis
4. Call Quality Monitoring for Cisco and Avaya
5. Users Ports Management
6. DSN/DHCP Monitoring
7. Alerting and Integration

Not Well Suited -

1. Predictive Intelligence based Alerting or data analysis
2. REST API Based Monitoring.
3. SD-WAN Monitoring

We ae using Solarwinds NAM (Network Automation Manager) for our end customers. We implement this product to monitor and manage our end custom Network infrastructure end to end. One of the module of NAM i.e. NCM is used for devices configuration backup and compliances monitoring. IPAM is used for IP Addresses management.

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.