could anyone tell simply whats the difference between NPM and SAM , for example i can see in the features that both can monitor hardware components. but i didnt understand why its there for both since they are two different models?
In addition to mrs.alterego's simple explanation, it's important to understand that there is core functionality that all Orion modules share. Orion is a suite of products created by SolarWinds. To understand this you can think of Microsoft Office. Microsoft is the company, Office is a suite of tools. Microsoft makes other products other than Office. SolarWinds is the company, Orion is a suite of tools. SolarWinds makes products other than Orion modules.
A few of the most popular core features that all Orion modules share is the following:
No matter which Orion module you purchase, you will have the above features. In addition to the above, each module will add its own features into Orion.
When you purchase NPM you'll get:
When you purchase SAM you'll get:
If you were to purchase NCM you'd get
And so on and so on for the other Orion modules. Some SolarWinds products, like their old Storage Manger by Profiler (STM), Database Performance Analyzer (DPA), and Virtualization Manager (VMAN) are products that have their own Database and their own unique web consoles with completely separate functionality from Orion. However, they all have their own Orion integration packages that allow you to see some (or nearly all in the case of VMAN) of their data in the Orion web console in addition to the data already in the Orion web console.
For example; with VMAN integrated with Orion's built-in virtualization monitoring module (called IVIM), in addition to the basic virtualization monitoring you already get like CPU usage, memory usage, and up/down monitoring you'll also get under and over allocation monitoring, sprawl, network traffic, datastore usage and performance monitoring, and even the ability to control things like adding/removing CPU and Memory resources, the ability to take snapshots, and the ability to vMotion VM's between hosts and/or datastores right there in the web console without having to go into vSphere. Another example is with DPA integrated with SAM you get to see deep database analysis in addition to the basic database monitoring you already get in SAM, as well as what applications you are monitoring that have relationships with those databases. Also, with integration of these products you can see all of the data together in one spot in their relatively new feature called the "AppStack".
SolarWinds is increasing the integration and "single-pane-of-glass" features with nearly every release now and it's pretty darn exciting to see what else is coming in the future (although I would like them to take a break for one release cycle and work on improving a lot of their older administrative consoles like their "Manage Nodes" page to help make it easier to use for large enterprise level customers to bulk edit, but that's a whole separate thing.).
You are correct, you can monitor servers CPU and memory with NPM. But that's about it. With SAM you can monitor actual application on that server. IIS, SQL server, Exchange, you can run custom scripts and monitor their results etc. Biggest power of SAM is in application monitoring while NPM is focused on network monitoring. they have some small overlap but if you want serious monitoring it won't be enough for target area.
That is correct. The inverse is also true. SAM without NPM provides hardware health for Servers only, not network equipment Similarly, SRM provides Hardware Health for Storage Arrays only, and not server or network devices. if you own and install all three, you receive Hardware Health Monitoring for all those device types.
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