When you are responsible for monitoring your organization’s IT infrastructure you know how convenient it is to have a specialized application that does all of the hard work for you.
We take two such products and look at some of the features that they can offer you in your day to day work life, as well as what the positives of each one are.
Being able to tell that a service, server or application has started giving issues before any of your users or managers find out is priceless, and also makes you look like an IT super hero, although in most cases you will be happy that nobody noticed an issues at all, leaving you in peace to continue with your actual work.
We will be looking at Paessler PRTG vs SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), and how they compare to one another in this short product run down.
Let’s get started.
Paessler PRTG – FREE TRIAL
Overview & Features
Paessler PRTG sees itself as an application suite that monitors every aspect of your IT infrastructure, and it isn’t wrong.
It allows you to monitor all of your systems such as hardware devices, network traffic, server hardware, and more.
It installs really quickly and easily, and also features mobile compatibility for great multi-platform solution that you can use to monitor your network components from just about anywhere.
It has great vendor support and provides users with out of the box capabilities with companies such as Oracle, AWS, Buffalo, SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, and many more.
On the server hardware end of the spectrum, PRTG offers Dell, HP and IBM support, while your connectivity hardware is looked after with Cisco compatibility features as well, which is great news for anyone that needs to monitor such hardware.
It also features network auto-discovery, Maps for the ultimate in site visualization, alerts, and even has a free version for people to use as a trial.
Pros:
- Uses a combination of packet sniffing, WMI, and SNMP to report network performance as well as discover new devices
- Autodiscovery reflects the latest inventory changes almost instantaneously
- Drag and drop editor makes it easy to build custom views and reports
- Supports a wide range of alert mediums such as SMS, email, and third-party integration
- Supports a freeware version
Cons:
- Is a very comprehensive platform with many features and moving parts that require time to learn
- Custom sensors can sometimes be challenging to manually configure
PRTG Pricing
The pricing varies a bit for the more comprehensive versions of the application, with 500 sensors costing around $1600, and the top of the range package with unlimited sensors costing $60,000.
So it is safe to say that if you are concerned about scaling your monitoring capabilities then PRTG will have you covered.
Official Site for Paessler PRTG: paessler.com/prtg/vs
Start the 30-day FREE Trial Here!
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor – FREE TRIAL
Overview & Features
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is another premium product that will greatly improve your network visibility, especially if you are monitoring multiple departments or sites from one centralized location.
NPM is multiple layers of IT functionality all rolled into one slick package, and they encompass all of the functionality of a network and Systems Management suite, a systems management application, IT security platform, data base management, an IT help desk solution and a cloud solution!
Which elements you decide to incorporate into your environment is entirely up to you, but for the purposes of our comparison we will be looking at the network monitoring functionality. NPM is able to identify all of your network devices via SNMP and it can also identify all related prompts from these devices as well.
Pros:
- Supports auto-discovery that builds network topology maps and inventory lists in real-time based on devices that enter the network
- Has some of the best alerting features that balance effectiveness with ease of use
- Supports both SNMP monitoring as well as packet analysis, giving you more control over monitoring than similar tools
- Uses drag and drop widgets to customize the look and feel of the dashboard
- Tons of preconfigured templates, reports, and dashboard views
Cons:
- This is a feature-rich enterprise tool designed for sysadmin, non-technical users may some features overwhelming
Hardware monitoring is also possible via SolarWinds, which means that your servers, PCs and other network devices can all be looked at and monitored from the application.
Official Site for SolarWinds NPM: solarwinds.com/network-performance-monitor
Start a 30-day FREE Trial Here!
PRTG vs NPM: Feature-by-Feature Comparison
|
PRTG |
NPM |
|
| Network Scanning, Auto Discovery, Mapping & Visualization Maps |
✔ |
✔ |
| WMI ICMP SNMP |
✔ |
✔ |
| DB Functionality and Alerts |
✔ |
✔ |
| SLA Monitoring |
✔ |
✔ |
| Hardware Monitoring |
✔ |
✔ |
| Web Server Monitoring |
✔ |
✔ |
| Active Directory Alerts and Monitoring |
✔ |
✔ |
| Reports and Graphs of Historic Trends |
✔ |
✔ |
| Smart Device App: iOS, Android |
✔ |
X |
| DOWNLOAD: | 30-day free trial | 30-day free trial |
We have a tight race here, with both of these products offering very similar functionality in the network monitoring side of things, and to add to that, there is also a lot of extra features that can be added with additional components from each company.
The solution that works best for you is going to be the one that scales correctly to your organization without affecting performance or your IT budget.
PRTG is a great product suite, and it offers some good network scanning features. Installing the product is easy, and the network detection happens seamlessly when you are configuring your environment.
Once you Setup PRTG, users can look at any aspect of their network without having to do too much work.
Network auto discovery is able to see all of the different segments of your network, and then label them accordingly, making the job of sorting and categorizing your online devices quick and easy.
Maps can also be generated, giving you a visual representation of what is going on within your network.
Alerts can also be setup, so that whenever a specific event happens you can receive notifications as soon as an of your devices come up with any issues.
SolarWinds offers very similar functionality within its Network Performance Monitor suite.
It features multi-vendor support for a wide range of products and devices, and also offers a key feature called “Network Insights” which will give you a detailed breakdown of what is happening on your network.
Intelligent maps is another feature that will keep you well informed, as do the network performance baselines.
Advanced alerting also gives you a heads up whenever any applications, services or devices start to give issues, which is an excellent early warning system to have.
There are no clear winners here as the features and functionality of each are too close to call.
The deciding factor here will be your budget and scalability options that you need to take into account. PRTG offers excellent scalability and will let you add monitoring to your setup for as long as you need, but this will come at a price premium.
SolarWinds offers similar scalability, but in order to find out pricing you will need to request a quote.
If you require a smaller installation size, or just a trial version, then both SolarWinds and PRTG can give you a small taste of what their software offers you for your specific needs.
Official Site for Paessler PRTG: paessler.com/prtg/vs
Start the 30-day FREE Trial Here!
Official Site for SolarWinds NPM: solarwinds.com/network-performance-monitor
Start a 30-day FREE Trial Here!
The best solution is to try both out and see which one works best for you, then make your decision based on the outcomes.
Happy monitoring and good luck!
