Solarwinds – Ultimate Network Performance Monitor
- Kashif Asrar
- Sep 22, 2016
- 2 min read
http://www.itcentralstation.com/node/29134
Solar Wind is vivid, scalable, comprehensive and reliable software for monitoring any SNMP enabled devices with auto detection feature supporting across the board in operating systems diversification.
Strong Areas:
It gives you, SMB to enterprise level accompaniment in managing layer 2-3 level network and monitoring of server’s performance and availability grapple through support of several hardware vendors like Cisco, HP and Motorola.
Timeless , easy configuration and management of Solar Wind for propriety operating systems and compatibility with open source OS (Linux) has coupled its influence in management and monitoring of wireless network to virtual servers monitoring with seamless integration to Active directory with efficient network devices snapshot (layer 3 catalyst switches to routers) and firm view for directory structure maps and network designs for troubleshooting in efficient and shortest time.
Possible Cons:
Cost effectiveness is one of the arbitrary perspectives when comparing this software with freeware and open source available in IT market like cacti, MRTG, Nagios, NetXMS etc. The price and license cost is one of the major and great concern. If you can bear the expense for purchase of license then this is bare metal for you and for your network. One of the second observation can’t be con is the leading dashboard complexity for novice users and compatibility with few browsers like Opera and Google Chrome are might be the possible cons of the software.
I had experienced a remarkable difference in managing network performance of gigabit network of 467 active nodes spanned across 29 catalyst 2900 series switches and inter-VLAN routed through Catalyst 4500 series layer 3 switches with fiber optic backbone. In consideration and feature comparison I found Solar Wind is the best SNMP based monitoring and management software with comprehensive support, easy and interactive web interface, all in one unlike Cacti, Nagios, and MRTG. One of the major disadvantage of freeware like MRTG with RRD tools which I myself tried and configured through apache web server is they take ample time for configuration and lack the intuitiveness, wizard base installation and configuration at all, while Solar Wind is a NPM with bundle of beneficial areas like mapping, active directory integration, reports, and many more with easy to approach for configuration and maintenance.
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