SolarWinds Updates Its Network Management Product Line

SolarWinds has announced a range of updates to its network management product line, including support networks up to four times larger than the previous generation. According to SolarWinds, this increase will make it much easier to consolidate monitoring solutions to a single provider. It will also provide IT professionals with a lot more flexibility when scaling up and supporting larger data center networks as their data grows or when they scale out to address complex distributed networks.

SolarWinds indicates three “breakthrough” features for their updated network management portfolio designed to improve visualization and speed troubleshooting across the complex and distributed networks:

First, the four-fold increase in monitoring capacity allows IT professionals to accelerate and simplify their network management process while reducing the resources needed for monitoring activities, making it easier to consolidate tools.
Second, the latest software adds intelligent, auto-generating, and contextually-aware maps that enable faster and clearer visualization of network performance. These powerful capabilities enable IT professionals to quickly identify issues and speed time-to-resolution when troubleshooting.
Third, SolarWinds is introducing Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, the latest Network Insight, which already includes support for F5 and Cisco ASA. Adding support for Cisco Nexus bridges a huge gap in data center performance visibility with in-depth analyses that go beyond basic hardware health and statistics.

These features allow for a view of the landscape and bottlenecks through a simplified functional model, giving IT staff expert-level insights on Nexus performance no matter their proficiency level.

Updates to the company’s network management portfolio improve other SolarWinds innovations, including NetPath, which measures the performance characteristics of each network node and link across hybrid IT landscapes and into the public cloud. SolarWinds recently started to deploy NetPath onto its Managed Service Provider platforms to provide another means to access this technology.

Here is a rundown of the updates to their software network management product line:

Network Performance Monitor (NPM) 12.3 – Along with Network Insight for Cisco Nexus, including detailed visibility into virtual Port Channels (vPCs), the latest version of NPM provides superior network monitoring capabilities and detailed visibility for multi-vendor environments.
Network Configuration Monitor (NCM) 7.8 – The updated version brings even stronger automation and control of network functions and, like NPM, adds Network Insight for Cisco Nexus switches. It provides configuration snippets and the ability to filter, search, and view access control lists (ACLs), including object groups, and Virtual Device Context (VDC) support.
IP Address Manager (IPAM) 4.7 – A valuable tool that automates management of IP addresses, the latest version now automates IP requests and monitors hybrid environments with Amazon Route53 and Azure DNS support.
NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) 4.4 – With a new Flow Storage SQL database at its foundation and less-demanding CPU and IOPS requirements, the new version offers IT professionals significantly improved speed and performance in identifying network traffic issues and removing bottlenecks, while providing better security.
VoIP and Network Quality Manager (VNQM) 4.5 – The latest version of VNQM adds support for monitoring of SIP trunks, enabling users to manage voice quality and performance across networks using the latest VoIP technologies.

Pricing and Availability

Availability of the above-mentioned updates to SolarWinds’ network management portfolio is slated for May 30, 2018, for the following prices: