Used For

• +**Your network goes down at 2am and nobody knows why** → Get alerts before users start complaining, see exactly which switch or server failed
• +**Managing 200+ servers manually is impossible** → Automated discovery maps your entire network, tracks performance without you babysitting dashboards
• +**Your CEO wants to know why the website was slow yesterday** → Historical data shows exactly when performance dropped and what caused it
• +Custom application monitoring beyond basic server stats — tracks database queries, application response times, custom business metrics

Best For

• >IT teams at mid-to-large companies who need to monitor hundreds of servers and network devices
• >Organizations that have moved past the 2020 breach and want enterprise-grade monitoring
• >Companies already invested in the SolarWinds ecosystem who'd rather not rip everything out

Not For

• -Small teams under 50 employees — you're paying enterprise prices for monitoring 3 servers
• -Companies in highly regulated industries who can't risk another supply chain attack — the 2020 breach stigma isn't going anywhere
• -Organizations wanting simple plug-and-play monitoring — this requires dedicated IT staff who know networking

Pairs With

• *Microsoft SCOM (for Windows-heavy environments where SolarWinds handles network gear and SCOM does servers)
• *Splunk (where SolarWinds sends logs for deeper security analysis after you've learned from past mistakes)
• *ServiceNow (to automatically create tickets when SolarWinds detects outages)
• *VMware vCenter (to monitor virtual infrastructure that SolarWinds can't see inside)
• *PagerDuty (for smarter alerting rules so you don't get woken up for every minor blip)

The Catch

• !The 2020 breach will follow this company forever — every security audit will bring it up
• !Pricing scales quickly with device count — monitoring 500+ devices gets expensive fast
• !Requires significant setup time and networking knowledge — not something your junior admin can configure over a weekend

Bottom Line

The network monitoring tool with the most notorious security breach in corporate history — ironic doesn't begin to cover it.