History of ipMonitor
For a good SolarWinds ipMonitor review, some history about the product helps to understand the product and its future. In 2004 ipMonitor was a spun-off from DeepMetrix as a stand alone product. In April 2007 ipMonitor was acquired by SolarWinds and ipMonitor fills in the gab for the Orion NPM platform. SolarWinds NPM didn't have WMI, services and application monitoring capabilities in the past. SolarWinds is using the knowledge from ipMonitor to build the Application and Service Monitoring module for the Orion platform. ipMonitor is sold by SolarWinds as an entry level monitoring tool.
Core capabilities
ipMonitor is capable of monitoring SNMP, ICMP and WMI enabled devices. Basically it is doing availability monitoring and alerting. It is using a web interface and runs as a Windows service. The strong part is Quality Assurance (QA) testing like: SQL (ADO), Active Directory, HTTP, DNS, SMTP, POP3, IMAP and more.
Installation
The installation and configuration is very fast. You are up and runningin 15 minutes.
Pricing SolarWinds ipMonitor
Originally ipMontor was sold by ipMonitor for 995 US$ (500 monitors). After it has been acquired by SolarWinds the pricing of ipMonitor followed a rollercoaster path. In 2012 the pricing was changed again from 1,995 US$ unlimited monitors to 1,995 US$ for 500 monitors. At this moment (February 2014) the price setting is 1,995 US$ for 500 monitors. The pricing per monitor is simple, it is 4 US$ per monitor.
The Pro's and Con's
Pro's
- Installs very fast
- Good User interface and fully web based
- NOC view, Basic Maps with drill down possibilities.
- Good alerting
Con's
- Scalability (approx 5.000 monitors)
- There are no historic or trending reports
- Drill down possibilities and integration with other monitoring data such as IPFIX, etc.
- Monitoring stops when maintenance is not active anymore (not verified yet)
- Future of ipMonitor is uncertain
Verdict
ipMonitor is a good product, it is still under development. For small organizations looking for a mixed monitoring solution (SNMP, HTTP, Services and WMI) it fits perfectly. If you need more monitors, the product can become a bit expensive (8,000 US$ for 2,000 monitors). SolarWinds wants to move customers to their Orion NPM platform with this new pricing model. If you need a strong focus on network monitoring (SNMP, NetFlow, IPFIX, IPSLA etc.), ipMonitor is not the right product for you.
If you have additional suggestions / remarks, I will happy to update and include these in this review
Alternatives
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