mungerman I have NPM and NCM working very well in my environment
Firstly ALL of my switches and routers are managed by NPM, and I use NPM pretty exhaustively for alerting and combined with NTA for traffic monitoring. I have been using these for the past 3-4 years and have seen most of the benefits that they are marketed to provide. I have also see a couple additional benefits like ability to detect real-time attacks\exploits happening in my network, (Thanks NTA). I have started to manage critical servers using NPM as well, so simple up/down alerts.
The real power comes from the reporting capabilities as I have been tasked with preventative maintenance activities on managed assets, primarily critical connections and UPS's. Customized NPM reports are being built to address these PM activities, that would serve as the PM reports, that are stamped and signed when done.
Pretty invaluable management tools that provide critical visibility and management of network resources.
I will focus more on NCM as it is really one of the sweeter SW apps that we have and use to provide critical services.
The main reason that I bought NCM was to do automated config backup of all my managed network assets. This decision was made 1 week into the trial. the trial worked out so well that I decided that NCM was a must have app.
NCM provides the following:
1. Automated config backup of ALL critical network assets - my favourite feature
A. NCM is configured to run monthly jobs for running-config and startup-config downloads which are stored in NCM config database
B. NCM is configured to run monthly jobs to export downloaded configs to a file share
My configs are backed up safely, reliably and without any human intervention (shameless plug for computer replacing human).
2. Automated script execution - my second favourite feature
A. Configuration changes are scripted to execute after hours
B. Configuration updates\changes can be applied to multiple switches simultaneously e.g. creating vlans, changes to trunk ports, SFlow configuration to entire data center network (20+ switches) in a single job saving hours of time if done manually and individually
3. EoL management and reporting on critical network assets
I use this feature to keep track of warranty and create reports on warranty and EoS dates
4. Configuration management by real time config change detection
Summary reports on the NCM homepage that show conflicts between running-config and baseline, backed up devices, startup vs running config mismatches are pretty good tools. They call attention to things that matter to me
5. Configuration comparison
Side-by-side config comparison showing changed lines is a can't live without feature for me
6. Ability to set baseline configs
When I have a know working config, I set it to the baseline so reports and changes to running configs can be detected and compared
7. Reduced recovery time from failure
This only happened twice in the past 3-4 years, but when a switch failed, replacement was super easy, by uploading configs to the new switch
I am available for further discussion if you are interested.