SolarWinds NPM Review

Strengths include steady development and strong focus on Windows but don't install it on a multi purpose server

Solar Winds Orion is a strong contender in network monitoring up to (at least) mid size enterprises. It’s particular strengths are steady development and a strong focus on Windows. This focus gives it the ability to drill deeper into application monitoring with less effort than most of it’s competitors through WMI. SNMP is also supported for non windows devices to round out the mix. The interface is primarily the web console, which is highly configurable and can display completely different options for different users/groups. However, building maps and setting most alerts require a separate installed application for the former and console access to the Orion server for the latter. Orion uses MS SQL on the back end, and with more than a small network requires a separate DB server from the web server and agent server(s). Yes, you can use multiple monitoring servers for large networks. Pricing is tiered, both for the type of monitoring (straight network, application, and specialty items like VMWare are separate SKUs) and # of monitored objects.

Competitors - quite a few. Whatsup Gold was purchased by Solar Winds a couple years ago but is still a separate product. Others include Nagios, MRTG, Cacti, on the open source side, and a host of ‘monitoring’ systems on the paid product side. Keep in mind that some of these are less monitoring than ‘is it up’ ICMP pings, but there is a good range of monitoring. I’ll let you inspect the field - this review is pretty good: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/network-management-software-smackdown . Orion was selected as winner by the site, but keep in mind your needs and resources may vary.

Resist the urge to install monitoring on a multi purpose server, and think very hard before using a ‘spare workstation’ or old server. It benefits from lots of memory, and the DB needs adequate disk performance. Database activity is greater than you’d think from the size (especially when opening a graph or running a report). Also keep in mind the aphorism that when problems occur it’s impossible to always self-monitor; the very tool used may be the problem.