EVALUATION GUIDE

Network Performance Monitor

EVALUATION GUIDE: NETWORK PERFORMANCE MONITOR

Table of Contents
1 PURPOSE OF THE DOCUMENT 3

2 WHY YOU MAY NEED A (NEW) NETWORK MONITORING SOLUTION 4

3 EVALUATORS’ GUIDE 6

Install and configure 6

Planning and prerequisites 6

Installation 6

Discovery 7

Add discovered devices to SolarWinds NPM 9

Explore SolarWinds NPM Features 10

Orion Web Console 10

®

Alerts 12

NetPath™ 15

Reports 18

PerfStack™ 19

More features and functionalities 20

4 VALUE OF A NETWORK MONITORING SOLUTION 22

5 HOW IS NPM LICENSED? 25

6 CONTACTS US 26

7 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES 27

8 ABOUT SOLARWINDS 28

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Purpose of the document

We’re glad you decided to evaluate SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) for your
®

network monitoring needs. You can download the free trial here. The trial version is a fully featured
version of the product, functional for 30 days. After the evaluation period, you can easily convert
your evaluation license to a production license by obtaining and applying a license key.

This document will get you started with Network Performance Monitor and help you explore
for yourself how SolarWinds NPM’s features work in your environment. It will guide you through
installation, initial discovery, and provide an overview of key features and functionalities.

To get a peek at a live install of NPM (and other SolarWinds products) without introducing it to
your environment, take a look at our live demo. It includes guided tours of NPM, where you can
experience the workflow for debugging a node reported down, monitor an interface, schedule a
report, and more.

If at any time you would require further information or troubleshooting, do not hesitate to contact
[email protected] or visit our Success Center, especially the Installation Guide and Getting
Started Guide.

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Why you may need a (new) network

monitoring solution
Common symptoms indicating that you might need to consider a (new) network monitoring tool: Network Performance
Monitor is stupid simple to
»» Unexpected traffic bottlenecks preventing access to key network services
use, yet very powerful and
»» Reactive problem resolution taking up time from more systematic development in-depth.

»» You use multiple tools for monitoring that provide a single meaningful and actionable — IT/Systems Administrator,
information source Large Enterprise
Transportation Services
»» Alert noise
Company
»» You don’t see the return of investment of your current solution

»» Your current solution is cumbersome to use and set up, and doesn’t cover all your monitoring needs

NPM FEATURES NPM BENEFITS

Fault, performance, and availability Quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve network perfor-
monitoring mance issues and avoid downtime.

NetPath critical path hop-by-hop analysis Detailed visibility into nodes both on-premises and in
the cloud to troubleshoot application availability even
over vendor or ISP nodes.

PerfStack cross-stack network data Accelerate identification of root cause by dragging

correlation and dropping network performance metrics on a
common timeline for immediate visual correlation
across all of your network data.

Drag-and-discover network performance Real-time network performance metrics with inter-

charts active charts and graphs.
Customizable topology and dependency- Respond to multiple condition checks, correlated
aware intelligent alerts events, network topology, and device dependencies.

Automated capacity forecasting, alerting, Automatically calculate exhaustion dates using

and reporting customizable thresholds based on peak and
average usage. Plan for critical resources such as
memory, CPU, and interfaces.

Dynamic statistical network performance Dynamically calculate baseline thresholds from

baselines historical network performance data.

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Hardware health monitoring Monitor, alert, and report on key device metrics, NPM is a fantastic tool
including temperature, fan speed, and power
for network monitoring and
supply.
probably the best Windows-
Dynamic wired and wireless network Automatically discover and map devices,
based platform available.
discovery and mapping performance metrics, link utilization, and wireless
coverage. As with any highly flexible,
feature-rich software, there
Customizable performance and availability Schedule and generate custom network
reports performance reports with one of over 100 out-of- is a bit of a learning curve,
the box templates. but the benefits are well
Network Insight™ for Cisco ASA firewalls
®
Complete visibility into Cisco’s next generation worth the time / effort
firewalls: Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). investment.

Cisco SwitchStack View the health of individual Cisco SwitchStack

®

— Network Administrator,
members, monitor power and data connections
Medium Enterprise
between the members, and quickly locate a switch
with issues. Industrial Manufacturing
Company
Comprehensive monitoring of F5 BIG-IP Visualize and gain insight into the health
® ®

family of products and performance of your F5 service delivery

environment.
End-user quality of experience with packet Quickly and accurately identify network and
capture and analysis application reliability with deep packet analysis.

Wireless network monitoring and Retrieve performance metrics for autonomous

management access points, wireless controllers, and clients.

Consultant and services-free deployment Install and deploy in generally as little as an hour,
with out-of-the-box monitors, alerts, and reports.

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Evaluators’ guide
INSTALL AND CONFIGURE
PLANNING AND PREREQUISITES

Before you install SolarWinds NPM, refer to the Plan your NPM production deployment section
As an overall visual
of the Getting Started Guide. insight into the current
Your NPM server sizing is impacted by: network, SolarWinds is
an awesome suite. The
»» Number of monitored elements (nodes, interfaces, and volumes) customizable alert system
makes it convenient to alert
»» Polling frequency: If you plan to collect statistics more frequently than the default nine-minute
those who need to know
interval, system requirements will increase
without causing alert fatigue.
»» Number of simultaneous users: Add 1 GB of RAM for every 25 simultaneous users

NPM installations on VMware Virtual Machines and Microsoft Virtual Servers are supported.
® ®

— Network Administrator,
The virtual machine requirements are identical to the physical server requirements. Medium Enterprise Health
Care Company
For evaluation installations only, installation on a desktop operating system is possible but not
supported. This product is intended for use in a production environment that meets system
requirements.

INSTALLATION

A detailed walkthrough through the installation can be found in the NPM Installation Guide. For
evaluation purposes only, use the Evaluation Installation Guide. In short, follow these three steps:

1. If you haven’t yet downloaded the free trial of NPM, you can get the latest version at this link.

2. Follow the standalone installation instructions, including the installation and configuration
wizard.

»» Select Network Performance Monitor as the product to install.

»» To use the Microsoft SQL Server Express database that installs with the product, click
®

Express Install. To use your own Microsoft SQL Server database, click Advanced Install.

»» Select product language and destination location.

»» Review and agree with the License Agreement.

»» Optionally choose to install Quality of Experience (QoE) Traffic monitoring. You can always
enable this later.

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3. If the login page does not open automatically, launch the Orion Web Console in your
SolarWinds Orion program folder. Log in with the username admin and leave the password
field blank. For security purposes, SolarWinds recommends that you change the password to
your admin account.

DISCOVERY

Discovery is the term used to describe the process NPM uses to identify network elements.
During discovery, NPM scans the network for nodes, and when a node and associated elements
are found, you can add them to the SolarWinds database for monitoring.

Preparation

For a first evaluation, starting with a limited range of IP addresses should be sufficient to try
out NPM features. For a more in-depth look into the monitoring capabilities, you can at any time
run the Discovery Wizard to look for IP ranges, subnets, IP addresses, and Active Directory®
Domain Controllers.

You may need to enable devices you want to monitor for SNMP, if they’re not enabled already.
For Windows devices, we recommend monitoring via the WMI protocol, which also may need
to be enabled beforehand.

When you run the Discovery Wizard, you will be asked to provide IP addresses and credentials
for the devices you want to monitor. SolarWinds recommends that you gather this information
before running the Discovery Wizard.

Discover your network checklist

»» Ensure that you determine what to monitor

»» Enable the networking devices you want to monitor for SNMP

»» Enable Windows devices for WMI

»» Gather credentials for the devices

Discovery process

1. Run the Discovery Wizard. If it does not start automatically after configuration, click
Settings ➔ Network Discovery.

2. Click Add New Discovery and then click Start.

3. On the Network panel, if this is your first discovery, add a limited number of IP addresses.

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4. If the Agents panel appears, you enabled the Quality of Experience (QoE) agent during
installation. The QoE agent monitors packet-level traffic. If there are any nodes using
agents, select the Check all existing nodes check box.

5. On the following panels – Virtualization, SNMP, and Windows, add credentials or

community strings to your devices.

6. On the Monitoring Settings panel, SolarWinds recommends manually setting up

monitoring the first time you run discovery. This allows you to review the list of discovered
objects and select the ones you want to monitor.

7. Go through the Discovery Settings and Discovery Schedule panels. You can use the
defaults for now. Opt for running the discovery immediately and proceed. Discovery can
take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the number of network
elements the system discovers.

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ADD DISCOVERED DEVICES TO SOLARWINDS NPM

After the Network Sonar Wizard discovers your network, the Network Sonar Results Wizard
opens, allowing you to import network elements into the SolarWinds database.

Discovered elements do not count against your license count; only elements that you import
into the Orion database count against your license.

»» Ensure that only the device types you want to monitor are selected, and click Next.

»» Ensure the interfaces you want monitor are selected, and click Next.

»» Ensure the volume types you want to monitor are selected, and click Next.

»» Review the list of elements to be imported, and click Import.

»» When the import completes, click Finish.

»» Click the Home tab to begin exploring your network.

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EXPLORE SOLARWINDS NPM FEATURES

ORION WEB CONSOLE

After a successful installation, you will be sent to the homepage of the Orion Web Console, which
will be filling up with monitoring data. While waiting for it to complete, explore the interface: The following terms will help
as you explore SolarWinds
NPM:

»» Orion Web Console: The

web inter face you see
when you log on to Orion
that is used to view, con-
figure, and manage all of
your monitored objects.
You can access the Orion
Web Console from any
computer connected to
the internet.

»» View: An individual page

in the web console.

»» Resource: The widgets or

informational blocks that
make up a view.

»» Element: Anything that

can be monitored by the
Orion Platform.

The top menu, common to all SolarWinds products running on the Orion Platform, presents the
starting point to drill deep into SolarWinds products. The tab My Dashboards  Network contains
various views to explore NPM; all of them are customizable and you can create your own. At
first, we recommend highlighting the following:

»» NPM Summary – An overview of NPM data in a single pane of glass

»» Top 10 – Selected metrics of your network in a top 10 view

»» NetPath Services – A “visual traceroute” with which you can view hop-by-hop traffic across
your network and into hybrid and cloud environments

»» Overview – Your monitored nodes and their up/down status

»» NOC View – Highly customizable Network Operations Center view

These are starting points that allow you to drill down into specific nodes, view any issues,
respond to alerts, and create reports.

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Other menu items we would like to highlight for first evaluation are:

Alerts & Activity ➔ Alerts – Starting area for managing and creating alerts, with hundreds of
out-of-the-box ones available for you to try.

Reports ➔ All reports – Manage and schedule your reports.

My Dashboards ➔ Home ➔ Performance Analysis – Houses PerfStack.

Features of the user interface

»» You can rearrange resource widgets with drag and drop on any view, indicated by the dots at
the top of the box.

»» Hovering over a resource, link, or a detail changes the cursor, allowing you to drill deeper into
the node details and generating a new view or a customizable report. On hover, you can view
more details without clicking.

»» All pages offer the option to export to a PDF file, via the link in the upper-right corner.

Drilling down into a resource

Exploring the details of a node in your network—a router, switch, interface etc.—is as simple as
clicking on its name from whatever view you are on. Whether it’s on a NPM Summary page, alert
console, or overview of all you network devices, you can access a dashboard with all the details
about the node, the monitored data, current and historical charts, and forecasts when available.

On the left menu, you can view All Details, a summary, listing of vital stats, info about the
network, and you can add a tab of your own with your custom details.

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ALERTS
The most common task of a monitoring product is to draw the user’s attention to a problematic
area of their network that requires action. Alerts, when set up correctly, are the best way to go Alerts are great, as long as
they work with you and not
about it.
against you! Here are some
NPM comes with hundreds of predefined alerts for common problems such as a nodes going examples of common alert
problems:
down, high interface utilization or packet loss, and many more.
»» Too many alerts; they just
Many predefined alerts are enabled by default, so if there are problems, you are alerted as soon
become background noise
as you discover your network and add discovered devices to SolarWinds NPM.
»» Too few alerts; you miss
By default, alerts appear in the Active Alerts resource on the Orion home page. critical events that you
should pay attention to

»» Alerts on the wrong pa-

rameters don’t give you
meaningful and actionable
information

Download the free eBook,

Monitoring 201, to see how
smart alerting saves time
and provides the right infor-
mation at the right time.

If you’re new to monitoring or

want to refresh the key con-
cepts, we very much recom-
mend Monitoring 101—again,
To see all alerts, you can click the All Active Alerts button in the Active Alerts resource, or you it’s free!
can go to Home ➔ Alerts. On this page, you can:

»» Acknowledge an alert that you are working on

»» Click on any alert to go to the Alert Details page for more information

»» Click Manage Alerts to enable/disable, add or edit any alert

Viewing and responding to an alert

When an alert triggers, any associated alert actions also trigger, and the alert appears on the
All Active Alerts page. On the All Active Alerts page, you can view the details of alert by clicking
on it. You can click on the network object that triggered the alert to directly view it. You can also
acknowledge the alert—this prevents all associated actions (e.g., sending an email) from firing.

The alert status view has several resources:

Alert Status Overview: Tells you when the alert happened, its importance, and whether or not
it was acknowledged.

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History: If the same alert is triggered repeatedly, there may be a systemic problem. For example,
if a device frequently goes up and down, it may be a sign of a flapping route.

Other Objects: Sometimes the same alerts occur on multiple nodes because of a single trigger.
For example, if an edge device is having problems, any devices that are dependent on the edge
device might also report problems.

Acknowledge: Acknowledging an alert indicates that you are aware of the issue and the problem SolarWinds’ easy-to-use
is being investigated. web interface can detect
problems before users can
Alert Notes: Each person troubleshooting an issue can enter notes about their activities and even report the issue. NPM
any discoveries. The Acknowledge and Notes features are helpful when multiple people are takes support from a reactive
troubleshooting a problem. mode to proactive.

— Brian Gorham,
IT Director, Hillco

Setting up an alert
You can create your own alerts by modifying a predefined alert or creating a custom alert.
Alerting is very powerful and can be complex, with multiple trigger conditions, reset conditions,
and actions. The trigger condition defines the event that must occur to activate an alert. Trigger
conditions are built using child conditions, which are evaluated in order.

To set up an alert, go to Alerts & Activity ➔ Alerts and click on Manage Alerts on the right.
There you can add a new alert or select an existing one and edit it.

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The Alert Wizard will guide you through the steps of the alert-creating process:

»» Properties – Name, description, evaluation frequency, severity, and others.

»» Trigger Wizard – Condition or conditions to be met before an alert can be triggered. Allows
simple or very complex trigger rules.

»» Reset condition – Default is to clear the alert after its trigger condition is no longer true, but
you have the option to change this. I have tried a few network
monitoring systems and
»» Time of Day – Either set as Always enabled or specify the schedule for the monitoring of the nothing comes close to NPM
alerts’ conditions. in terms of ease of setup and
data visualization.
»» Trigger Actions – What’s supposed to happen when the alerts’ conditions are met? You can
choose from a plethora of actions. — Network Engineer,
Educational Institution
»» Reset Action – Set up actions (if any) that are to be run when the alerts’ reset condition is met.

»» Summary – See and confirm the overview of the alert.

More Resources on Alerts

»» Work with preconfigured alerts

»» Create a custom alert

»» How thresholds work

»» Edit a global threshold

»» Complex trigger conditions

»» Alerts with multi-element triggers

»» Use duration in a SolarWinds NPM alert trigger

»» The “Do Not Alert” alert

»» Send alerts to specific contacts using SolarWinds NPM

»» Alerts with device-specific thresholds

»» Single alert when multiple devices go down

»» Define object dependencies

»» Event correlation alerts (Y after X)

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NETPATH
NetPath answers the following questions:

»» How well is my network delivering applications to my users?

• NetPath discovers the node-by-node network path.

»» Are the paths to key applications or users down?

• NetPath quantifies the performance of each link and node along the path. Prefer to watch? Look at a
video overview of NetPath -
»» Where is the network problem and who is responsible for it?
how to configure and use it
• NetPath isolates the node or connection that is decreasing end-to-end performance.

• If the issue is external, NetPath identifies the name of the company that owns
the node and displays their contact information.

• If the issue is internal, NetPath incorporates data from SolarWinds Network

Performance Monitor, as well as Network Configuration Monitor and NetFlow
Traffic Analyzer (sold separately) about your on-premises gear.

How does NetPath work?

NetPath uses distributed monitoring and path analysis to discover how applications are delivered
through the network to your users. To use NetPath:

1. You deploy agents on Windows computers that act as synthetic users. The
agents use advanced probing to discover and test the network path that traffic
takes to any network endpoint, such as your local file print server, your website,
or external websites.

2. After discovering the path and quantifying the performance of each node and
connection, NetPath enriches the picture with additional data about internet
nodes. If you are monitoring non-internet nodes with the Orion Platform,
NetPath incorporates that data too.

3. The result is a clear end-to-end map of how applications are delivered to your
users, including your network, the network of your provider, and any other
networks you depend on.

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Setting up NetPath

First, review the requirements and make sure you have the resources available—OS, CPU, RAM,
database, ports, and settings for probing public cloud environments.

Next, create a service—that is the destination to which you are mapping. This can be any TCP-based
network service, such as salesforce.com , Microsoft Exchange™, Office 365 , or a file server.
® ®

One word – NetPath. I

Go to My Dashboards ➔ Network ➔ NetPath Services, click on Create New Service, and enter love this new functionality!
the target destination (hostname or IP address and port) and the probing interval.

Click on Next and assign a probe to the service, or create a new one to be assigned. Click on — Larry Herzog,
Create New Probe, enter the address and credentials, and click Create. You can create and IT Manager,
assign multiple probes. Standard Distribution

Using NetPath

Now data has started to collect at your specified interval. To explore the results, click My
Dashboards ➔ Network ➔ NetPath Services. This view displays a list of created network
services. Expand a service and click one of the associated probes to see the network path from
that probe to the expanded service.

You can now see a visual network path from the source (on the left), through all its network
hops right to the destination (on the right).

Objects in the network path include nodes, connections, and interfaces. Point to an object for
a summary, and click it for details.

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The node information is cumulative from the source to that node. When you point to or click a For the cost, SolarWinds
node, the metrics display the performance between the source, along the path, up to this node. monitors your network better
than any other tool.
A connection between nodes shows latency and packet loss between its two nodes. When you
point to or click a link, the metrics display the performance of the specific link. — Chad Fogg,
Network Engineer,
Use the green, yellow, and red color coding to identify the nodes and connections that may be Research Now
performing poorly and affecting the end-to-end connection. If you confirm that a service provider
is responsible for the outage, you can contact them to resolve the issue.

The chart on the bottom shows metrics for the end-to-end performance. Select an interval to
see the network path and its performance that resulted in that end-to-end performance.

Think of this as your network time machine. You can compare performance metrics from today
or a previous time.

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More Resources on NetPath

»» View a network path

»» Troubleshoot a service with external path data

»» Troubleshoot my network with Orion path data

»» Orion integration with NetPath

REPORTS
Reports for all Orion Platform products are located on the main menu under Reports. There,
you can view a list of predefined reports, customize the predefined reports or create your own
reports. This is the place to manage their delivery schedule.

To create a new report, go to: Reports ➔ All Reports ➔ Manage Reports. The easiest way is
to select an existing one. SolarWinds products on the Orion Platform come with a plethora of
predefined reports for you to customize. Click on Edit Report, or Duplicate & Edit to create a copy
and keep the original predefined report. You always can also start fresh with Create New Report.

The Report Building Wizard will guide you through the process:

»» In Layout Builder, you define the contents of the report—what data gets reported, the time
period of the resources you’re reporting on, and objects you’re reporting on. You can edit all
properties of the tables and charts in the report.

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»» Once you have the contents defined, you can move and position them on the layout builder.
You can then preview the look of the reports layout with data by clicking Preview.

»» In Properties, you can describe, categorize, and favorite the report, as well as set a limitation
on who can view, run or change it.

»» Next step in the wizard is Schedule Report, which allows you to add a frequency for the report
to be run and assign actions on what to do with the output—email, print, or save it. Of course,
SolarWinds NPM offers
you can set no schedule and run the report manually at your convenience.
simplicity out of the box for
»» In Summary, you see all the report details for you to verify and submit. most, but limitless deep dives
into low-level customization
Check out our THWACK community for a conversation on reports other users have created
®

for those that dare. It’s

Resources: open, unobstructed, and

encouraged on THWACK.
»» Modify an existing web-based report
Good stuff.
»» Create a web-based report
— Mitch Hirsch,
»» Customize a web-based report layout Senior Infrastructure
Engineer,
»» Add content to a web-based report
Kennards Hire
»» Add a custom chart or table to a web-based report

»» Restrict who can access reports

»» Export and import reports

»» Generate reports on a schedule

»» Schedule a report when creating or editing it

»» Create, assign, and edit report schedules

»» Schedule reports from the Schedule Manager

PERFSTACK
We’ll mention this briefly, as this feature is not exclusive to NPM, but works across most Orion
Platform products and its capabilities are peerless in the monitoring industry.

When it comes to troubleshooting performance issues within your IT environment, your data is
more than likely going to have different data types and come from different sources. Correlating
the various data sources is a key step in finding a root cause analysis for problems.

The Performance Analysis dashboard, PerfStack, allows you to get all the different data sources
from your monitoring environment on a common timeline and compare them side by side. Using
a drag-and-drop feature, you can go back in time to see and analyze issues that may have caused
or cascaded into issues, and make data-driven decisions on infrastructure changes.

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PerfStack works perfectly with NPM alone, but its power truly shines when using other Orion
Platform products: NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, Server & Application Monitor, Virtualization
Manager, Storage Resource Monitor, and Web Performance Monitor.

Explore the PerfStack dashboard by yourself in your trial install by going to My Dashboards
➔ Home ➔ Performance Analysis. To see its full power, we recommend playing with it in our
demo or watching our Head Geeks™ solve real-life issues in an in-depth look into PerfStack.

MORE FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITIES

The above features are just a taste of what SolarWinds NPM has to offer. We invite you to delve
deeper into the Administrator’s Guide, Getting Started Guide, or directly explore some of the
following guides in the SolarWinds Success Center:

»» Monitor devices with SolarWinds Orion agents

»» Monitor fibre channel devices and virtual storage area networks (VSANs)

»» Monitor wireless networks

»» Network Insight for F5 BIG-IP load balancers

»» Monitor Meraki infrastructure

®

»» Monitor Cisco SwitchStack

»» Monitor EnergyWise devices

®

»» Integrate NPM with ServiceNow

®

»» Monitor Quality of Experience metrics with Packet Analysis

»» Monitor SNMP traps

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»» Monitor Syslog messages

»» Create network maps

»» Create wireless heat maps

»» Ensure failover protection with SolarWinds High Availability

»» Monitor capacity usage trends on the network and forecast capacity issues

»» Manage user accounts and access level to SolarWinds NPM

If you have more questions about NPM’s features, capabilities, and limitations, we will gladly
answer them on [email protected], or you can look for answers by searching the Success
Center or asking in the NPM THWACK community.

Are you looking to evaluate the added value of a network monitoring solution to your enterprise?
It’s not a straightforward task, as the benefits are often not directly quantifiable and need to be
approximated.

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Value of a network monitoring solution

Benefits ultimately come down to:

»» Cost savings

»» Avoiding unexpected remediation efforts

For a more detailed view on quantifying the ROI of a network monitoring solution, take a look
at our white paper on this topic. Below you can find a list of areas where the benefits and costs
of network monitoring come into play.

BENEFITS:
Salary/Staff Time Savings
Today’s complex networks require highly trained network professionals to maintain the network,
configure new users, respond to support calls, and plan and support network expansions and
changes. Automated technology that helps maintain or even reduce headcount offers a directly
quantifiable return. In most cases, network management and monitoring solutions free network
professionals to work on more strategic projects, which can help to reduce costs and drive
increased revenue.

Reduced Network Downtime

Network downtime can be directly quantified by simply calculating the cost of the time a
network professional spends troubleshooting and resolving the cause of the downtime. This
cost, however, is simply the tip of the iceberg as far as the total cost of network downtime is
concerned. Lost employee productivity, lost revenue, and lost customer goodwill are all examples
of costs that are harder to calculate but have a much greater impact.

Reduction in Support Calls

Network management and monitoring solutions alert network management and support teams
to potential problems before users start to complain and generate support calls. The cost of
support calls can be easily calculated by looking at the number of calls per week, the time to
resolve a support call, and the cost per hour of support time. By reducing the number of support
calls through proactive monitoring and management of the network, you will be able to directly
quantify the cost savings.

Decreased Time to Resolution

Time to resolution is the amount of time that it takes to resolve an issue once the network
professional is notified. Network monitoring and management systems with real-time diagnostic
data that is viewable through dynamic network maps can greatly reduce the amount of time
required to troubleshoot and pinpoint the source of the issue.

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Managing Service Level Agreements

Network operations teams are typically held to or measured against a quantifiable service level
agreement (SLA) that is typically a percent of network uptime. This SLA can be an internal SLA
or an external SLA with your service provider, for example. If network availability is directly
attributable to a company’s revenue, then the cost of downtime can be easily measured based
on the average revenue that would have been generated during the downtime.

COSTS:
License Cost
Monitoring and management solutions can be licensed perpetually (one-time license fee) or on a
subscription basis (monthly or annual fee). The number of devices, nodes, interfaces, elements,
or applications that are being monitored and managed typically determines licensing costs.

NPM, like all SolarWinds products, has transparent and readily available price lists and licensing
tiers, allowing you to quickly assess the license costs. Read about licensing tiers for NPM below.

Product Maintenance, Support, and Upgrades

These costs are typically optional but need to be factored into the TCO. What level of customer
support is offered? Are product upgrades included or are they separate?

SolarWinds automatically includes one year of maintenance with the purchase of our licensed
products. This allows our customers to experience the SolarWinds difference, including frequent
product releases and 24/7 support for a full year without an additional charge. After the first year,
your annual renewal preserves access to SolarWinds world-class software updates, support,
and virtual instructor-led product training.

There are three easy ways to renew: via the Customer Portal, email, or a SolarWinds reseller.
Read more on product maintenance and renewals here.

Dedicated Hardware or Software

This is the price of the hardware, such as a server or appliance that is required to run the
solution. There may also be additional software components, such as database software (SQL),
virtualization software, or Windows licenses.

Installation/Implementation/Consulting
In some cases, the cost of installation, implementation, and fine-tuning of the solution can be
as high (or higher) than the cost of the upfront license.

SolarWinds products are famous for their ease of install, not requiring any outside consulting.
A NPM install can be up and running typically within an hour.

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TRAINING
Determine if there are any training costs required to implement or operate the solution. Training
costs need to include both the initial training costs, as well as any ongoing instruction that will
be required as staff is turned over.

SolarWinds Orion Platform’s intuitive user interface lends itself to discovery. Even without
training, network administrators can start monitoring and creating alerts and reports almost
immediately. NPM’s feature depth and customization options allow for great fine tuning—all the
nuances are well-documented in the Success Center. The very active THWACK community has
over 130,000 members sharing ideas and best practices. On top of this, we offer a SolarWinds
Certified Professiona program.
l®

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How is NPM licensed?

SolarWinds NPM is licensed by the largest number of the three following object types:

INTERFACES
Interfaces include switch ports, physical interfaces, virtual interfaces, sub-interfaces, VLANs,
and any other single point of network traffic.

NODES
Nodes include entire device, such as routers, switches, virtual and physical servers, access
points, and modems.

VOLUMES
Volumes are equivalent to the logical drives that you monitor.

The following list provides the different types of NPM licenses that are available:

LICENSE NUMBER OF MONITORED ELEMENTS

SL100 Up to 100 nodes, 100 interfaces, and 100 volumes

SL250 Up to 250 nodes, 250 interfaces, and 250 volumes

SL500 Up to 500 nodes, 500 interfaces, and 500 volumes

SL2000 Up to 2000 nodes, 2000 interfaces, and 2000 volumes

SLX Unlimited elements. With the default polling intervals, the main polling
engine can monitor approximately 12,000 elements. To monitor over
12,000 elements, you will need to deploy an additional polling engine
(APE)

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Contact us
Generate a quote online—easy and fast!

On our Contact Us page, you can find a listing of toll-free numbers for a number of countries,
as well as a web form to contact our sales team. We will be more than happy to answer any of
your questions.

For direct technical support with installation, configuration, setup, operation or other product-
related issues, you can directly Submit a Ticket via our Customer Portal (even without a
SolarWinds Customer ID).

AMERICAS FEDERAL, FEDERAL RESELLER, RESELLER, VARS, DISTRIBUTORS

Phone: 866.530.8100 AND SYSTEM INTEGRATORS Tel : +1 512.682.9877
Fax: 512.682.9301 Phone: +1 877.946.3751 Fax : +1 855.498.4155
Email: [email protected] +1 512.682.9884 Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]

EUROPE, THE MIDDLE EAST EUROPE NATIONAL/CENTRAL/

AND AFRICA FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Phone: +353 21 500 2900 Phone: +353 21 2330440
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

ASIA
Phone: +65 6422 4123
Email:[email protected]

PACIFIC
Phone: +61 2 8412 4910
Email:[email protected]

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Additional resources

Getting Started Guide

Release notes – latest, historical

Administrator’s guide

NPM Success Center

NPM section on THWACK

»» Product roadmap

»» Product blog

»» User content exchange

»» NPM discussion forums

NPM Customer Resources

TrustRadius Reviews
®

IT Central Station Reviews

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ABOUT SOLARWINDS
SolarWinds provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers world-
wide, from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses, managed service providers (MSPs),
®

government agencies, and educational institutions. We are committed to focusing exclusively

on IT, MSP, and DevOps professionals, and strive to eliminate the complexity that our customers
have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. Regardless of where
the IT asset or user sits, SolarWinds delivers products that are easy to find, buy, use, maintain,
and scale while providing the power to address key areas of the infrastructure from on-premises
to the cloud.

Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our THWACK
®

online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly partic-
ipate in our product development process.

According to the IDC Worldwide Semi-Annual Software Tracker 1H 2016 release, SolarWinds
leads the network management software market with a more than 20 percent share of total
market revenue for the first half of 2016. Strong demand for its network management products
fueled 14.2 percent year-over-year revenue growth during the same period.

© 2017 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

The SolarWinds, SolarWinds & Design, Orion, and THWACK trademarks are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC
or its affiliates, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be registered or pending registration in other
countries. All other SolarWinds trademarks, service marks, and logos may be common law marks or are registered or pending
registration. All other trademarks mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and are trademarks of (and may
be registered trademarks) of their respective companies.

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