We performed a comparison between Puppet Enterprise and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Microsoft, HCLTech and others in Configuration Management."I would say the biggest benefit is the single-pane view. There's no jumping around multiple UI's to do your overall management."
"We use a local Active Directory, but we weren't able to manage all our on-site systems without a solution like Intune, and we needed to deploy software like VPNs and other things. It's seamless now to to this through Intune."
"Microsoft Endpoint Manager is not expensive overall, especially for small environments."
"The solution is easy to use, simple to understand for those new to using it, and combined with the other Microsoft products it makes for an overall good package."
"It has helped with compliance. It has helped to ensure that devices comply with the organization's policy. If they are not compliant and secure, they cannot access the resources."
"...Intune itself integrates with that entire Microsoft ecosystem. As an individual product itself, it's okay. It holds up. But when you start saying "I've bought this as part of a wider solution, as a company we are going Microsoft throughout," then it makes more sense to have Microsoft Intune... so you have that single dashboard."
"Conditional access has helped us tailor and enforce our security policies in the mobile space."
"There has been a noticeable increase in productivity for both my organization and clients."
"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."
"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."
"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."
"The versatility is great."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"The feature that I really enjoy is the ability to script changes across all of your devices."
"The most valuable Real-time fault detection is beneficial as it enables the identification of changes made to a device's configuration through the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. This makes it easy to pinpoint which configurations were added or removed, potentially causing network issues. Such changes are saved in logs for future reference."
"Its main functionality is highly beneficial as it centralizes the management of configuration items across the network."
"Configuration refers to the specific settings and options that determine how a device or system behaves. It can include things, such as network settings, security settings, and other options that are specific to the device or system in question. One of the most valuable features of the solution was its ability to track and monitor changes to the configuration of devices on a network. This can be useful for troubleshooting and identifying potential issues. By keeping track of who made changes to the configuration and when it can be easier to determine the cause of any problems that may arise."
"The installation is straightforward."
"The solution's view is very nice, and they have a great customized dashboard."
"I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes down, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power so power backups on the switches, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor."
"It's perfect for network configuration management. It's easy to use."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"I'd like some more reporting so that I don't have to delve into PowerShell and I can pull more of the local device information such as memory, apps installed, etc. It would be nice to be able to see the apps that are present there but might not be managed. For example, if they installed 7Zip, it could report that back via an installed program or feature to see what was currently installed."
"It just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools. The Windows feature updates are very difficult to implement. I would like to see a proprietary built-in remote control tool. I know that they have Team Viewer integrated, but it is not seamless. It would be nice if they had a seamless remote desktop capability directly from the Intune console."
"The current Intune reporting functionality could benefit from some improvements."
"An issue we have run into with Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that we cannot patch third-party products like Adobe and Chrome with it."
"The installation could be improved to be simplified."
"The add-ons must be integrated into the solution."
"The solution could improve its flexibility."
"It's a bit of a pain point to make sure that everything works once we've upgraded it because Puppet has been evolving pretty fast."
"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."
"Releasing a product compatible with operating systems other than Windows would be advantageous."
"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."
"The network logs could be improved. When the error logs come across with those false positive alarms in the error logs."
"The solution could have better integration."
"The only thing that requires some experience, and training doesn't fix, is how to set up your custom policy-based reports to check compliance."
"We want to be able to store it in a data warehouse format and integrate it with Google single sign-on."
"Our experience has shown that most of the problems we've had with SolarWinds NCM are related to software issues."
"When it comes to the way of managing the network devices, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager should provide the simplest way that devices can relate to the server. For example, when we want to get the devices on board, we go by SSH to make the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager create the connectivity with the device. After that, we pull the configuration. It would be helpful if they could combine both so that everything will be done in one step."
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Puppet Enterprise doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Configuration Management with 12 reviews while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is ranked 10th in Configuration Management with 22 reviews. Puppet Enterprise is rated 8.2, while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Puppet Enterprise writes "A set-it-and-forget-it management solution". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager writes "Streamlines network configuration and compliance processes through its centralized dashboard, although its compatibility with multi-vendor devices may present limitations". Puppet Enterprise is most compared with AWS Systems Manager, Red Hat Satellite, Microsoft Configuration Manager, BigFix and Fortinet FortiGate Cloud, whereas SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is most compared with Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Prime, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, OpenText Network Node Manager i and DataMiner.
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We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.