GETTING STARTED GUIDE

Server & Application

Monitor
Version 2024.2

Last Updated: Monday, June 3, 2024

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Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 2

Table of Contents
Get started with Server & Application Monitor 4
Who this guide is for 4
Product terminology 6
How SAM works 7
Navigate through your SAM environment 10
Explore SAM widgets 11
Discover your environment with SAM 14
What should I monitor in SAM? 14
Discover your servers and applications in SAM 17
Add discovered servers and applications to SAM 21
Set up monitoring in your SAM environment 25
Use AppInsight for IIS to monitor an IIS server 26
Monitor your operating system 29
Monitor hardware health in SAM 33
Monitor cloud instances and VMs in SAM 35
Introduction to AppStack 37
Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack 40
Explore alerts and reports in SAM 45
How alerts work in SAM 45
Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM 47
Create a custom alert in SAM 53
How reports work in SAM 56
Run a preconfigured report in SAM 58
Create a custom SAM report 61
Work with SAM application monitor templates 70
Understand the application/template relationship 71
Create custom application monitor templates in SAM 72
Set thresholds in SAM 75

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 3

 Get started with Server & Application Monitor

Get started with Server & Application Monitor

This guide picks up right after the SAM installation process and walks you through the first steps
you need to take to monitor applications, hardware health, asset inventory, and operating
performance in your SolarWinds SAM environment.

After learning how SAM works, you can start exploring the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, which
you'll use to do everything in SAM, from discovering applications to setting up alerts, thresholds,
and application monitoring templates.

Additional sections in this guide include:

l Discover your environment with SAM: Identify the servers and applications you want to
monitor and add them to SAM.
l Set up monitoring in your SAM environment: Learn how to use AppInsight for IIS, monitor an
OS, track hardware health, monitor your cloud infrastructure, work with AppStack™, and use
PerfStack™.
l Explore alerts and reports in SAM: Manage and use alerts, and then set up reports.
l Work with SAM application monitor templates: Explore application monitor templates included
in SAM and create templates for custom applications.
l Set thresholds in SAM: Learn how to set up global and local thresholds to automate
monitoring.

Who this guide is for

New SAM users Existing SAM users
This guide is the best place to start with SAM. This guide provides a high-level view of SAM
When finished, move on to the SAM features but you'll find more advanced
Administrator Guide for more advanced information in the SAM Administrator Guide.
information.

See the SolarWinds Platform Administrator

Guide to learn about common features that
SAM shares with other SolarWinds Platform
products, such as user accounts, alerts, and
agents.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 4

 Who this guide is for

Existing customers: Upgrade via the Settings > My Deployment page in the SolarWinds Platform
Web Console. Alternatively, download the latest SolarWinds Platform Installer from the SolarWinds
Customer Portal. For implementation help, contact Customer Support. See Working with Support to
learn how to open a support case with the correct level of visibility.

Evaluators: To evaluate SAM, download a free 30-day evaluation that is a full version of the product,
functional for 30 days. After the evaluation period, you can easily convert your evaluation license to
a production license by obtaining and applying a license key. If you need assistance during
evaluation, contact sales@solarwinds.com.

Here are additional learning resources for SAM:

l Review the system requirements and release notes before installing SAM.
l To upgrade SAM, see the SolarWinds Platform Installation and Upgrade Guide.
l The SAM Administrator Guide describes how to use product features and related technologies.
It also contains recommended best practices, and troubleshooting tips for common
situations.
l Use SAM online help to explore individual widgets that appear on SAM views in the
SolarWinds Platform Web Console. Online help includes information from the main
SAM documentation set, plus additional troubleshooting topics.
l To learn about features shared by SAM and other SolarWinds Platform products, such as user
accounts, views, dashboards, and alerts, see the SolarWinds Platform Administration Guide.
Use this document to fine-tune your SAM deployment with custom properties, groups, alerts,
and more.
l Visit the SolarWinds Success Center for product guides, training resources, and technical
support articles.
l Use the Server & Application Monitor product forum in our online IT community, THWACK, to
connect with SolarWinds developers, product managers, and other SAM users. Download
templates, reports, and scripts to customize and extend SAM.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 5

 Product terminology

Product terminology
SolarWinds Platform: The common backend platform used by the SolarWinds Platform suite of
products, including NPM, SAM, NCM, NTA, VMAN, WPM, and more. The SolarWinds Platform is the
backbone for navigation, settings, and common features like alerts and reports. It also provides a
consistent look-and-feel across products, giving you a "single pane of glass" for your SolarWinds
Platform monitoring tools.

SolarWinds Platform Web Console: The web interface where you can view, configure, and manage
monitored objects.

SolarWinds Platform server: The primary server that hosts the SolarWinds Platform Web Console
and collects data from monitored objects. Also called the Main Polling Engine.

SolarWinds Platform database server: A dedicated server that hosts the SolarWinds Platform
database that is separate from the SolarWinds Platform server. It stores SolarWinds Platform
configuration data plus collected performance and Syslog data.

Polling engine: A polling engine controls polling job scheduling, data processing, and queries your
monitored devices for performance metrics like CPU, memory, and up/down status. By default, the
SolarWinds Platform server provides one polling engine, that is often called the Main Polling Engine.
You can add Additional Polling Engines (APEs) to provide enhanced scalability and capacity, as
described in the Scalability Engine Guidelines.

Node: A node is an endpoint of a given network. For example, any application, server, device, or
computer on a network is considered a node.

Template: An application monitor template is the blueprint for an application. It is a collection of

component monitors designed to monitor a server or application. You can customize numerous
templates using only the component monitors you need for a specific environment. For a list of out-
of-the-box templates, see the SAM Application Monitor Template Reference. SAM API Poller
templates are also available.

Application: An application or application monitor in SAM monitors a specific application or server

using a collection of component monitors.

Component monitor: A component monitor is the fundamental element of an application or

application monitor. Component monitors return the current status or value of a monitored service
or process. All component monitors return at least one value or one status condition. Click here for
a list of predefined component monitors,

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 6

 How SAM works

How SAM works

Using UDP, TCP, SNMP, WMI, and WinRM calls to your environment and application servers, SAM
provides real-time feedback about applications and trends through statistics stored in the
SolarWinds Platform database. Thanks to the SolarWinds common components infrastructure,
there are no agents installed on your servers and no remote software to maintain. All calls are made
in real time and displayed in the SolarWinds Platform accessible from any supported browser.

As a standalone product, SAM operations can be visualized with the following flowchart:

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 7

 How SAM works

Installed as a module in your family of SolarWinds products, SAM can be visualized with the
following flowchart:

SAM includes many features that are common to all SolarWinds Platform products, including
user accounts, views, alerts, and reports. To learn more, see the SolarWinds Platform
Administration Guide.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 8

 How SAM works

Understand how SAM uses SolarWinds Platform agents

An SolarWinds Platform agent is software that provides a communication channel between the
SolarWinds Platform server and a monitored computer. Agents are used as an alternative to WMI or
SNMP to provide information about selected devices and applications.

SAM uses SolarWinds Platform agents to gather information for component monitors (and their
parent application monitors) from target servers across your environment. Agents are also used to
monitor servers hosted by cloud-based services such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure,
and other Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products.

Using the SolarWinds Platform agent instead of traditional polling methods can provide many
advantages, including the ability to:
l Poll hosts and applications behind firewall NAT or proxies.
l Perform secure, encrypted polling over a single port.
l Poll nodes across:
o Multiple discrete networks with overlapping IP addresses.

o Low bandwidth, high latency connections.

o Domains where no domain trusts are established.

l Leverage full, end-to-end encryption between the monitored host and the Main Polling Engine,
which is usually the SolarWinds Platform server.

After agent deployment, all communication between the SolarWinds Platform server and the agent
occur over a fixed port. The agent protocol supports Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal
and passing through proxy servers that require authentication.

If an agent is used, all SAM application data is collected by the agent. You can override this
behavior at both the template and application monitor level to use another polling method. For
example, if a SAM template includes a User Experience Monitor but you do not want to measure
response time locally from the server where the application is installed, you can switch to Agentless
polling. To learn more, see Decide between agent vs. agentless polling methods in the SolarWinds
Success Center.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 9

 Navigate through your SAM environment

Agent communication modes

You can configure agent communication modes that determine how the agent and the SolarWinds
Platform server communicate. This is frequently influenced by where the device you want to
monitor is on your network.
l Server initiated communication: Any communication between the SolarWinds Platform server
or additional polling engines and the agent is initiated by the SolarWinds Platform server itself.
To allow communication from the SolarWinds Platform server, the firewall service running on
the monitored device or the network firewall must allow incoming connections through port
17790. If the agent is configured to use another port, update the firewall rules to allow
incoming connections from the other port.

This communication method is also known as "passive agent."

l Agent initiated communication: Any communication between the SolarWinds Platform server
or additional polling engines and the agent service is initiated by the agent service itself; there
are no listening ports on the agent. Update your firewall rules to allow outgoing connections
through port 17778 to enable communication between SolarWinds Platform agents and the
SolarWinds Platform server.

This communication method is also known as "active agent."

Navigate through your SAM environment

As with all SolarWinds Platform products, you can access SAM in a web browser by navigating to
http://hostnameOrIPAddress:port where:

l hostnameOrIPAddress is the hostname or IP address of the SolarWinds Platform server.

l port is the port defined for the SolarWinds Platform Web Console website during initial
deployment. The default port is 8787.

On the Login page, provide a User name and Password, and then click Login to access the
SolarWinds Platform Web Console, where you'll view, configure, and manage monitored objects.

The SolarWinds Platform Web Console includes several pages known as views, of which there are
two main types: high-level Summary views and in-depth Detail views. Views contain informational
blocks called widgets that display data for different aspects of monitoring, usually in a chart or
table. Some widgets are intended for use on Summary views, some are suitable for Detail views, and
some can be useful on both view types.

Watch a video about navigating the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 10

 Explore SAM widgets

This figure shows three widgets in the Application Summary view. To open this page, click My
Dashboards > Applications > SAM Summary.

Some views and widgets are not visible by default, but can be added by editing settings. See
Customize the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

Explore SAM widgets

Most widgets are actionable. For example, click an individual node in the All Nodes widget on the
Summary page to open the Node Details view to learn more about the node.

The following example shows the Management widget on the Node Details view.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 11

 Explore SAM widgets

Click Manage Nodes in the All Nodes widget to open the Manage Nodes view where you can take
action on multiple nodes.

Use the All Applications widget on the Summary page to drill down to individual applications and
component monitors of an application. The Application Details view provides details about the
individual application and actions you can perform on that application. This allows you to manage
templates and applications to node assignments, or "unmanage" (that is, stop managing) multiple
applications at one time.

Click Manage Applications in the All Applications widget to open the Manage Applications page and
display all applications hosted on the node.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 12

 Explore SAM widgets

Expand an application name to show all component monitors associated with that application. Click
a component monitor to access the Component Monitor details page to view detailed information
and perform additional actions.

To learn about individual SAM widgets, see SAM online help. See also Customizing
SAM views and widgets (3:08).

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 13

 Discover your environment with SAM

Discover your environment with SAM

After deploying SAM, identify elements in your environment that you want to monitor and add them
to the SolarWinds Platform database, as described in the following topics:
l What should I monitor in SAM?
l Discover your servers and applications in SAM
l Add discovered servers and applications to SAM

You can add traditional physical servers, AWS EC2 instances, Azure VMs, Nutanix clusters,
applications, and other items (for example, external websites) as nodes to be monitored.
l To automatically discover and add a large number of items, use the Network Sonar Discovery
and Network Sonar Results Wizards.
l To begin monitoring an individual item, add a single node.

See the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide to learn about features and functionality
shared by SAM, NPM, and other SolarWinds Platform modules, such as how to:
l Add nodes using Active Directory
l Choose polling methods for nodes
l Import nodes from a list of IP addresses
l Manage scheduled discovery results

What should I monitor in SAM?

Discovery is a term that describes how the SolarWinds Platform identifies network elements. During
Discovery, the system scans the network for application servers and applications that you can add
to the SolarWinds Platformdatabase for monitoring. For details, see Discover your network with the
Discovery Wizard.

SAM can monitor an application, or you can configure SAM to monitor a custom collection of
application components, process monitors, services, and performance counters. Depending on your
needs, SAM can assess the status of every aspect of your application, and the health of the
application as a whole.

SAM also monitors AWS cloud instances and Microsoft Azure VMs. With access to your cloud
services account, SAM can poll cloud service APIs for cloud metrics and status. This data
aggregates and displays through the SolarWinds Platform Web Console to monitor, manage, and
troubleshoot issues in your cloud environment. See Manage your cloud infrastructure for details.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 14

 What should I monitor in SAM?

SolarWinds recommends adding a limited number of servers and applications to begin

monitoring and gauging performance, including Microsoft Exchange, IIS, SQL, Linux, and Unix.
After monitoring, alerts, and reports are set up, continue adding applications and servers to
expand your infrastructure monitoring.

Discovery checklist
When you run the Discovery Wizard (also called the "Network Sonar Wizard"), you'll be prompted to
provide IP addresses and credentials for servers you want to monitor. SolarWinds recommends
gathering these details before running the wizard.

Determine the devices you want to monitor.

Determine the protocol used to monitor devices, such as SNMP or WMI. See the
Monitoring overview for details.

Gather IP ranges or individual IP addresses you want the system to scan as it discovers
your network.

Collect SNMPv1/2c community strings and SNMPv3 credentials for servers you want to
monitor.

Obtain login credentials for each monitored system, including

l Windows credentials: domain or local admin
l UCS Cisco credentials.
l Nutanix credentials
l Linux/Unix and AIX credentials
l VMware host credentials

For AWS cloud infrastructure monitoring, add up to 10 AWS IAM user accounts with
Account Access Key IDs and Secret Access Keys. See Configure AWS accounts for cloud
monitoring.

For Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure monitoring, configure Azure to interact with the
SolarWinds Platform before adding a cloud account. See Configure Microsoft Azure for
cloud monitoring. .

Monitoring overview
You can configure an application or template to collect data through a preferred polling method as
agent or agentless.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 15

 What should I monitor in SAM?

Monitor with SolarWinds Platform agents

An agent is software that provides a communication channel between the SolarWinds Platform
server and a Windows, Linux, or AIX server. Products install plugins on agents to collect the data
that the agents send back. For details, see Monitor with SolarWinds Platform agents in SAM.

Monitor with WMI

To monitor Windows servers, use WMI, which is usually enabled on Windows devices by default.
Capable of gathering more data than SNMP, WMI is the preferred polling method because some
SAM features are not available if you use SNMP. For some features, the SolarWinds Platform agent
for Windows is a good option.

Agentless monitoring using WMI is not recommended when the polling engine and the device are
separated by a firewall. To overcome this limitation, SolarWinds provides an optional agent that
allows you to securely monitor Windows servers and applications by WMI. If you want to use SNMP
for Windows, install and configure an SNMP agent.

WinRM is the default transport method for WMI-based component monitors.

Monitor with SNMP

To monitor devices using SNMP, you must enable SNMP on those devices because it is not enabled
by default. SNMP is primarily used to monitor network devices, for example, routers, firewalls, and
switches.

When configuring SNMP-enabled network devices for monitoring, note these details:
l Consult your device documentation for details about configuring SNMP.
l For correct device identification, devices must allow access to the SysObjectID.
l If SNMPv2c is enabled on a device, SNMPv2c is used to poll the device for performance
details by default. To poll with SNMPv1, disable SNMPv2c on the device to be polled.
l The default SolarWinds Platform community strings for SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c devices are
public and private. See also SNMP credentials for the SolarWinds Platform.
l SAM can monitor VMware ESX and ESXi servers versions 4.0 and later.

For VMs monitored on ESXi and ESX servers, VMware Tools are not required but can
provide access to more details, such as IP addresses.

l Linux/Unix servers are generally monitored with SNMP and SSH Script Monitors that require
user credentials. See also Credentials and privileges used on Linux/Unix-based computers.
l For Unix-based devices, use the version of Net-SNMP (5.5 or later) that is specific to the Unix-
based OS.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 16

 Discover your servers and applications in SAM

Deciding between SNMP and WMI

SNMP is typically used to monitor servers and network devices without agents. For Windows
servers, WMI usually provides better metrics than can be obtained through SNMP monitoring alone.
For many Windows-based servers and applications, agentless monitoring via the WMI gateway
provides strong monitoring capabilities.

The availability of some features depends on which SolarWinds Platform modules you're
using. For example, NPM supports polling via WMI, SNMP, and agents. However, interface
polling via WMI and the SolarWinds Platform Agent is not supported without a SAM license.
Use SNMP as a polling method to obtain interface data in an NPM-only installation.

To learn more, see:

l Choose the polling method to use in the SolarWinds Platform (SolarWinds Platform
Administrator Guide)
l Configure servers for SAM monitoring (SAM Administrator Guide)
l Monitor virtual infrastructure (describes the SolarWinds Virtual Infrastructure Monitor (VIM)
feature)
l Monitor with SolarWinds Platform agents (SAM Administrator Guide)

Discover your servers and applications in SAM

Discovery is a term that describes how the SolarWinds Platform identifies traditional physical
servers, AWS EC2 instances, Azure VMs, Nutanix clusters, applications, and other type of items that
already exist in your environment.

Before you begin:

l Review your environment to determine what to monitor. See What should I monitor in SAM?
l Enable Windows devices for WMI.
l Enable the networking devices you want to monitor for SNMP.

Run the Discovery Wizard

The first time you run the Discovery Wizard (also called the "Network Sonar Wizard"), SolarWinds
recommends adding a limited number of application servers, including Exchange, IIS, SQL, Linux,
and Unix. The examples in this guide focus on monitoring IIS and the operating system of your
application server, but the same steps apply to monitoring any application.

1. If the Discovery Wizard does not start automatically after configuration, click Settings >
Network Discovery.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 17

 Discover your servers and applications in SAM

2. Click Add New Discovery, and then click Start.

3. On the Network panel, if this is your first Discovery, add a limited number of IP addresses.
As you scale your implementation, you can use the following scanning options.

Option Description

IP Ranges Use this option when you want the SolarWinds Platform to scan one or more IP
ranges.

If you have many IP ranges to scan, consider adding multiple discovery

jobs rather than including all ranges in a single job.

Subnets Use this option to scan every IP address in a subnet. SolarWinds recommends
scanning at most a /23 subnet (512 addresses max).
Scanning a subnet returns everything that responds to ping, so we recommend
only scanning subnets where most devices are objects you want to monitor.

IP Use this option for a limited number of IP addresses that do not fall in a range.
Addresses
Since a network discovery job can take a long time to complete, SolarWinds
recommends using this option initially.

Active Use this option to scan an Active Directory Domain Controller.

Directory
Using Active Directory for Discovery is particularly useful for adding large
subnets because the SolarWinds Platform can use the devices specified in
Active Directory instead of scanning every IP address.

4. When the Agents panel appears, if any nodes use agents, select the Check all existing nodes.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 18

 Discover your servers and applications in SAM

This setting ensures that any agents you deploy, including those on the SolarWinds Platform
server, are up-to-date. If no nodes use agents, skip this option.
5. On the Virtualization panel, you can discover VMware, Hyper-V host, or Nutanix entities. For
example, to add a vCenter:
a. Select Poll for VMware, and click Add vCenter or ESX Credential.
b. Select <New credential> and provide required information.

If you don't add host credentials, VMs on the host will still be discovered, but you
won't see relationships mapped between the VMs and hosts.

Click here to learn about VMware, Hyper-V, Windows Server, and Nutanix versions
supported by SAM, which sync with versions supported in SolarWinds
Virtualization Manager (VMAN).

6. On the SNMP panel, to monitor SNMP-enabled devices, enter credentials and click Next.
7. On the Windows panel, to discover WMI or RPC-enabled Windows devices, click Add New
Credential and provide the required information.

SolarWinds recommends monitoring Windows devices with WMI instead of SNMP. Also,
note that WinRM is the default transport method used by WMI-based component
monitors.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 19

 Discover your servers and applications in SAM

8. On the Monitoring Settings panel, SolarWinds recommends manually setting up monitoring

the first time you run Discovery so you can review the list of discovered objects and select
what you want to monitor. Otherwise, you can configure Discovery to automatically start
monitoring objects it finds.

9. On the Discovery Settings panel, click Next.

10. Accept the default frequency and run the Discovery.

Discovery can last from 5 minutes to several hours, depending on the number of servers
involved.

If the status of a node remains Unknown after Discovery, see Troubleshoot nodes and
interfaces that are Unknown.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 20

 Add discovered servers and applications to SAM

Add discovered servers and applications to SAM

After the Discovery Wizard analyzes available devices and interfaces in your network, the Network
Sonar Results Wizard opens, allowing you to import network elements into SAM. Discovered servers
(that is, nodes) do not count against node-based licensing; only servers that you import into the
SolarWinds Platform database count against your license.

When you run Discovery manually, the system automatically selects all network elements to be
monitored. You must clear the check boxes for elements you do not want monitored. This example
highlights Windows devices with IIS.

Before you begin, ensure that you discover your servers and applications.

If discovering your network for the first time, SolarWinds recommends monitoring a small
number of critical servers.

1. Make sure that only the device types you want to monitor are selected, and click Next.

After Discovery, if the status of a node is Unknown, you may need to check settings in
SolarWinds NPM. See Troubleshoot Unknown Nodes.

2. Ensure the interfaces you want to monitor are selected, and click Next.
SolarWinds recommends that you do not monitor WAN, QoS, multi-port, and virtual NIC
interfaces.

SolarWinds SAM only discovers interfaces on WMI nodes.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 21

 Add discovered servers and applications to SAM

3. Ensure the volume types you want to monitor are selected, and click Next.
SolarWinds recommends that you do not monitor compact disks and removable disks.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 22

 Add discovered servers and applications to SAM

4. Select the applications to monitor, and click Next.

5. Review the list of elements to be imported, and click Import.

6. On the Results tab, click Finish.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 23

 Add discovered servers and applications to SAM

7. Click My Dashboards > Applications > SAM Summary.

Allow time for widgets to populate with data. Expand applications to display individual
application monitors assigned to specific nodes.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 24

 Set up monitoring in your SAM environment

Set up monitoring in your SAM environment

This section describes how to configure basic monitoring for your environment and includes the
following topics:
l Use AppInsight for IIS to monitor an IIS server
l Monitor your operating system
l Monitor hardware health in SAM
l Monitor cloud instances and VMs in SAM
l Introduction to AppStack
l Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack

For more advanced monitoring topics, see these sections of the SAM Administrator Guide:
l Monitor with SolarWinds Platform agents
l Monitor your cloud infrastructure
l Use API pollers to monitor metrics via remote APIs
l Monitor your virtual infrastructure
l Monitor your environment using AppStack
l Monitor application dependencies
l Use SAM templates, application monitors, and component monitors
l Monitor with AppInsight applications
l Use alerts to monitor your SAM environment
l Monitor processes, services, tasks, and events in real time with SAM

See the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide to learn how to:

l Integrate SAM with ServiceNow®
l Group monitored objects
l Monitor Cisco UCS Devices
l Monitor container services
l Monitor hardware health for Nutanix clusters
l Monitor SNMP traps
l Monitor Quality of Experience (QOE) metrics
l Optimize and scale SolarWinds Platform products
l View events, alerts, traps, and Syslogs in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console Message
Center

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 25

 Use AppInsight for IIS to monitor an IIS server

Use AppInsight for IIS to monitor an IIS server

SAM includes a set of specially-designed AppInsight templates that you can assign to nodes to
monitor key business tools such as Microsoft IIS. These "super templates" include a variety of
component monitors that provide a comprehensive level of detail beyond what other templates can
provide, allowing you to monitor virtually every aspect of your application.

SAM provides the following AppInsight applications:

l AppInsight for Active Directory
l AppInsight for Exchange
l AppInsight for IIS
l AppInsight for SQL

This example explains how to assign the AppInsight for IIS template to any WMI node running IIS,
which provides you with:
l Control over websites and application pools
l Separate, detailed metrics on each website or pool, instead of just a summary level
l Monitoring log space usage on each website individually, ASP.NET requests monitoring
l SSL expiration monitoring

If you added AppInsight for IIS to a node during Discovery, skip to View IIS application data to
get started.

Add AppInsight for IIS to an existing WMI node

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, navigate to the Node Details view of any WMI node
running IIS.

You must know which nodes are running IIS.

2. From the Management widget, click List Resources.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 26

 Use AppInsight for IIS to monitor an IIS server

3. Select Microsoft IIS to enable AppInsight for IIS data collection, then click Submit.
List Resources shows all monitorable features of a node.

4. Click the All Applications widget to verify the addition by clicking the Applications.
5. Enter your IIS credentials when prompted, and click Configure Server.

For troubleshooting information, see Troubleshoot AppInsight for IIS.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 27

 Use AppInsight for IIS to monitor an IIS server

View IIS application data

SolarWinds SAM displays IIS data in views. The type of view determines the level of detail. For
example, the AppInsight for IIS Details view provides a rollup of information about that IIS server,
including statistics about all the sites on the server, application pools, and connections.

Navigate to the AppInsight for IIS Application Details view

1. Click My Dashboards >Applications > IIS to open the IIS Application Summary view.
2. In the All Applications widget, expand a node, drill down, and click Microsoft IIS to open the
Application Details view.
3. Click an IIS application to view.

The Applnsight for IIS Application Details view includes different widgets that display details for
sites, applications pools, and more. Click hyperlinks in each widget to learn more about the data.

For example, click a website link in the Sites widget to open the IIS Site Details view for that
website. To return to the AppInsight for IIS Application Details view, click the Back button in your
browser.

Getting Started Guide: Server & Application Monitor page 28

 Monitor your operating system

Navigate to the Performance Counter Details view

From the AppInsight for IIS Details view, click a performance counter in any widget to open the IIS
Statistic Details view for the counter. For example, click ASP.NET > Requests Rejected.

An Expert Knowledge widget appears on IIS Statistic Details view for each performance counter
general information about the selected counter, along with possible problems and troubleshooting
steps, where applicable. Find expert knowledge on the Performance Counter Details view.

What's next

AppInsight for IIS can help you monitor and troubleshoot IIS. However, a software monitoring
solution cannot detect failed hardware issues, such as insufficient RAM or a failed cooling fan. To
detect hardware issues, enable Hardware Health monitoring.

Monitor your operating system

SAM provides over 250 out-of-the-box application monitor templates that you can use to monitor
business-critical applications. You can assign these templates as-is to nodes, or create copies to
modify settings or add and modify component monitors. SolarWinds recommends deploying a
single template, making necessary edits to customize it to your environment, and then deploying the
edited template on all similar applications. To learn more about templates, see Work with SAM
application monitor templates.

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 Monitor your operating system

The following example shows how to apply the Windows Server 2016 Services and Counters
template to monitor a Windows 2016 OS with the component monitors:
l Service: Distributed Transaction Coordinator
l Service: Security Accounts Manager
l Service: Remote Registry
l Total Available Memory (MB)
l Page File Usage
l Disk Queue Length
l Virtual Memory
l % Processor Time
l Service: Server
l Service: Plug and Play
l Pages per second
l Logical Disk: Average Disk Queue Length
l Physical Disk: Average Disk Queue Length

Before you begin

Ensure you have RPC and WMI access to the target server, plus Windows Administrator credentials
for the server.

Windows Performance Counters use RPC for communication which uses TCP port 445. If
testing fails after assigning the template to a node, use the WMI protocol.

Apply a template to a node

1. Click Settings > All Settings > SAM Settings.
2. Under Application Monitor Templates, click Manage Templates.

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 Monitor your operating system

3. Locate the template and click Assign to Node.

4. Select the Windows nodes you want to monitor for the operating system on the left pane, click
the green arrow to move it to the right pane, and click Next.

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 Monitor your operating system

5. Choose the credentials, and click Assign Application Monitors.

6. On the Finish panel, click Done.

It will take several minutes for the initial poll to complete and widgets to display data.

View the application data

Click My Dashboards > Applications > SAM Summary to view the All Applications widget. The All
Applications widget is an excellent method for at-a-glance monitoring with hover-over information
and icons status to provide a quick overview of data. When software is ruled out as the problem,
check the hardware health.

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 Monitor hardware health in SAM

Monitor hardware health in SAM

You can get immediate insight into hardware issues in your SAM environment by tracking key
parameters for servers such as fan status, power supply status, and temperature. Monitoring
hardware health on supported devices lets you know their status so you can:
l Pinpoint performance issues caused by hardware failure. SAM provides instant visibility of the
device status (Up, Down, Critical, Warning, or Unknown) and allows you to set baseline values
that trigger alerts if levels fall below set thresholds.
l Optimize resource utilization and hardware procurement. Gain deep visibility into usage of
server resources to make informed decisions about hardware purchases.
l Use one interface to manage a heterogeneous IT infrastructure. From a single console,
monitor multi-vendor infrastructure, including Cisco UCS, Dell, HP, IBM, Nutanix, and VMware
hosts.

Get started monitoring hardware health for Dell, HP, HPE ProLiant, and
IBM servers
1. Review hardware health monitoring requirements, including supported devices.
2. Download, install, and configure hardware monitoring agent software from third-party vendors.
Click here for details.
3. Run Discovery to detect third-party agent software and enable hardware health monitoring
automatically across multiple nodes.

You can also enable hardware health monitoring for individual nodes.

When SAM enables hardware health monitoring during Discovery, it also enables Asset Inventory
data collection to track each node's hardware and software. Polling jobs begin immediately, and are
later scheduled to occur at random times over a 24-hour period. If necessary, you can adjust the
default interval for Asset Inventory polling.

Monitor hardware health for UCS devices

Start by adding the parent UCS controller to the SolarWinds Platform. See Monitor Cisco
UCS Devices for details.

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 Monitor hardware health in SAM

Monitor hardware health in Nutanix environments

Add Hyper-V or VMware nodes for monitoring, add the parent Nutanix cluster, and provide Controller
VM (CVM) credentials. See Monitor hardware health for Nutanix clusters.

Documentation about SolarWinds Platform features available in multiple modules is stored in

the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide. Because hardware health monitoring for
UCS and Nutanix is a shared feature, you'll find related information in that document.

Display hardware health in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console

1. Click My Dashboards > Home, and then locate the Hardware Health Overview widget.
2. To view a status, click its label.

3. Click the node you want to review.

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 Monitor cloud instances and VMs in SAM

4. Review the Current Hardware Health widget. Sensors listed as Critical should be investigated.

To learn more about hardware health monitoring, see the SAM Administrator Guide and the
SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide.

Monitor cloud instances and VMs in SAM

This section provides an overview about monitoring your cloud infrastructure. See Monitor
your cloud infrastructure in SAM and the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide for more
details.

Cloud service platforms provide on-demand computing resources to third-party organizations over
the Internet. As organizations migrate systems to the cloud to distribute workloads, deliver
applications, and expand resources for growing databases, infrastructure can become difficult to
map in sprawling environments, leading to lost resources or hidden instances.

To support hybrid environments, the SolarWinds Platform can retrieve data from Amazon Web
Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure cloud service platforms to track availability, performance,
applications, and more for instances and VMs. Examples of data gathered include status, storage
capacity, memory usage, and IP addresses.

After configuring cloud accounts, you can use the Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring feature to:
l Manage hybrid environment metrics and status through a single console so you can compare
performance, locate bottlenecks, and better plan capacity and resource allocation.
l Track end user and business context for performance by gathering extended metrics that
provide visibility into cloud and on-premises systems.

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 Monitor cloud instances and VMs in SAM

l Dynamically monitor cloud instances and VMs to better handle resource churn during
provisioning. Instances and VMs can be removed as needed to support expanding
environments or performance peaks.
l Determine usage trends and troubleshoot issues. Captured metrics over time provide
historical references to track trends for resource consumption (such as CPU spikes and lulls)
and help determine when those trends become issues.
l Use cloud monitoring data, SolarWinds Platform alerts, and the Performance Analysis
dashboard (PerfStack) feature to review historical performance and pinpoint when significant
usage changes began to trigger issues.

For example, add a series of EC2 cloud instances for an AWS account for the east coast. Select My
Dashboards > Cloud to review overall AWS infrastructure data and cloud details. Use the Cloud
Instances Status Summary and Cloud Server Infrastructure widgets to review status and health at-
a-glance. To quickly review cloud status, metrics, and node management details, hover over any
cloud instance name.

The tooltip provides quick information for the cloud service and status.

When managed as a node, the tooltip provides enhanced data.

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 Introduction to AppStack

Cloud instances encountering issues display in the following widgets with linked instances and
nodes to investigate:
l Active Cloud Alerts lists all active alerts affecting monitoring and managed cloud instances.
l Cloud Applications with Problems lists all applications with issues on cloud instances
managed as nodes in SAM.

Select a cloud instance or VM to view its Details page. Exceeded thresholds are highlighted in
warning and critical values, charts, and graphs with hover-over points to compare collected data and
linked alerts. The following widgets provide important data to determine issues, as well as track
performance and usage trends:
l Active Alerts lists all active alerts affecting the cloud instance.
l Min/Max/Average of Average CPU load displays average CPU load collected and calculated
for the cloud instance.
l Min/Max/Average of Network Utilization provides a chart of the minimum, maximum, and
average bits per second transmitted and received over a cloud instance for a custom period of
time.

Introduction to AppStack
A key tool in SAM is the Application Stack, commonly known as "AppStack," an interactive visual
map that displays a detailed view of your environment so you can identify the root cause of
performance and availability issues. Use AppStack to assess the overall health of your environment
and to troubleshoot specific and related problems.

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 Introduction to AppStack

An AppStack view is also available at the application layer that only shows the relationships
for that application. This view is called the Mini-Stack.

AppStack provides a more thorough analysis of root cause problems in your environment if
combined with Storage Resource Manager, Virtualization Manager, and Web Performance
Monitor.

To access the AppStack Environment page:

1. Click My Dashboards > Environment.

The AppStack environment generates categories that show the status of objects in your
environment. Objects on the left are the highest priority.

2. Click an object to highlight related objects and gray out unrelated objects.

3. Click Spotlight to remove unrelated objects.

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 Introduction to AppStack

4. To investigate further, click the selected object.

The relevant Details page opens.

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 Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack

Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards

with PerfStack
See Troubleshoot environmental issues with Performance Analysis dashboards in the
SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide for more details about this SolarWinds Platform
feature.

With complex networks consisting of cloud, hybrid IT, virtualization, storage area networks, and so
on, multi-faceted IT issues can be difficult to pinpoint and diagnose. When an issue surfaces, for
example a badly performing application or server, the investigation can take significant time to
locate the core issue. The problem could be in storage, network connectivity, user access, or a mix
of resources and configurations.

To investigate the issue, create troubleshooting projects with the Performance Analysis
(PerfStack™) dashboard that visually correlate historical and real-time data from multiple
SolarWinds products and entity types in a single view.

With Performance Analysis dashboards, you can do the following:

l Compare and analyze multiple metric types in a single view, including status, events, and
statistics.
l Compare and analyze metrics for multiple entities in a single view, including, nodes, interfaces,
volumes, applications, and more.
l Correlate data from across the SolarWinds Platform on a single, shared timeline.
l Visualize hybrid data for on-premises, cloud, and everything in between.
l Share a troubleshooting project with your teams and experts to review historical data for an
issue.

For SAM, the possibilities are endless for application analysis and hybrid environments:
l Visually walk through historical data for applications in your environment.
l Verify resource allocation issues in hybrid environments for a specific application.
l Correlate application data from API pollers, application monitors, component monitors,
hardware health monitoring, and more into a single view.
l Start monitoring a process or service in SAM, and then add collected metrics to your PerfStack
project.

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 Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack

The following example shows how to identify a root cause for a Windows Server 2012 application
performance issue. In this scenario, the application performance has degraded to the point where
users encounter slower responses and access. As you review the Windows Server template
dashboard, you find triggered alerts. These alerts notified your application owner, who escalated the
issue to system and network administrators.

Rather than digging into the alerts and multiple Node Details views to troubleshoot the issue, create
a new PerfStack project to investigate the issue.

1. Click My Dashboards > Home > Performance Analysis.

The PerfStack dashboard opens, where you can build charts and graphs using metrics pulled
from monitored applications and servers in the Metric Palette. Each chart can hold multiple
metrics to directly correlate data.
2. In the New Analysis Project, click Add Entities.
Entities include all monitored and managed servers, applications, devices, services, and more.
3. Select Entities and click Add selected items.
To get started, locate and add the Windows 2012 application in distress. In the search field,
enter Windows to get a list of all monitored nodes, component monitors, and more with
Windows in the name or type. Expand and select Types or Status to filter the list.

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 Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack

From the list, we find the application monitor watching Windows Server Services and
Counters. Select and add it to the dashboard Metric Palette.

Click the related entities icon to display nodes, applications, servers, and other
entities related to the selected node in the Metric Palette so you can check if metrics
are causing issues.

4. Select the Windows 2012 node to view and select metrics to drag and drop onto the
dashboard. You can drag them into the same chart to compare values between metrics.
To start investigating, pull a series of metrics for the IOPS throughput for the server. For this
scenario, add the following metrics to investigate latency and connectivity:
l Logical Disk Average: Disk Queuing
l Average IOPS Read
l Maximum IOPS Write
l Maximum IOPS Read
l Average IOPS Write

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 Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack

l IO Latency Write
l IO Latency Read
l IOPS Total

The charts and graphs show data and alerts for the Last 12 hours of metrics.

5. Add more metrics from the virtual and storage layers to investigate and confirm any
bandwidth spikes.

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 Analyze SAM metrics in Performance Analysis dashboards with PerfStack

For example, add metrics for the IO latency from the virtual and storage layers to locate
issues:
l IO Latency Write
l IO Latency Read
l IOPS Total
l Throughput Total

Analyzing the data, the issue looks to be a noisy neighbor. Basically, another server, service, or
application is consuming higher bandwidth, disk I/O, CPU, and other resources causing issues
for this specific application.
This information gives your network and system administrators a direction for further
investigation and resolving latency issues. To resolve, they can reallocate resources or move
the high-consumption application to another location.
6. Click Save and give the project a name.
The project is saved as dashboard with the selected metrics in the set date and time range.
The URL becomes a shareable link, similar to the following example, that you can copy to
tickets or emails sent to network administrators and product owners so they can review the
gathered data.

After reallocating resources and making network changes, reopen the dashboard to verify
changes and new usage trends for polled metrics.

To learn more about PerfStack, see:

l How to Add PerfStack Widgets to Your SolarWinds Platform Dashboard (THWACK)
l Troubleshoot cloud monitoring with PerfStack
l Troubleshoot environmental issues with Performance Analysis dashboards
l Use PerfStack with WPM and SAM to Troubleshoot Web Performance Issues (THWACK)

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 Explore alerts and reports in SAM

Explore alerts and reports in SAM

This section includes information on working with preconfigured alerts and reports:
l How alerts work in SAM
l Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM
l How reports work in SAM
l Run a preconfigured report in SAM
l Create a custom alert in SAM
l Create a custom SAM report

To learn more about alerts, see Use alerts to monitor your environment in the SolarWinds
Platform Getting Started Guide.

How alerts work in SAM

An alert is notification that there is a problem with a monitored element. The SolarWinds Platform
includes hundreds of predefined alerts for common problems such as a nodes or applications going
down, SSL certificates expiring, and websites failing.

Many predefined alerts are enabled by default, so you are notified about issues as soon as you use
Discovery to find servers and applications in your environment and add them to the SolarWinds
Platform database. Here are some examples of how SAM utilizes the alerting feature in the
SolarWinds Platform:
l Alerting on an application: SAM includes predefined alerts that can notify you if the status of
an application changes (for example: Up, Down, or Unknown) based on whether a component
monitor reached a warning or critical threshold. For an overview, watch Alerting on an
Application
l Alerting on a component: If you create an alert for each component monitor in a SAM
application monitor template, you will receive one alert for each component that exceeds a
threshold. Alerting on a component monitor can be beneficial if you have custom scripts
where you must be notified if the output of the script crosses a specific threshold.

Monitored objects, such as nodes and applications, must exist in the SolarWinds
Platform database before creating or configuring alerts.

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 How alerts work in SAM

SolarWinds recommends that you identify who will receive warning or critical alerts.

By default, alerts appear in the Active Alerts widget on the SolarWinds Platform Home page.

To see all alerts, click the All Active Alerts button in the Active Alerts widget, or click Alerts & Activity
> Alerts. When the All Active Alerts page appears, you can:
l Acknowledge an alert that you are working on
l Click any alert to open the Alert Details page for more information
l Click Manage Alerts to enable/disable, add or edit any alert.

You can create your own alerts, either by duplicating and editing a predefined alert, or by creating a
custom alert. Alerting is very powerful and can be complex, with multiple trigger conditions, reset
conditions, and actions.

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 Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

To learn more about alerts, see:

l Use alerts to monitor your environment with the SolarWinds Platform (SolarWinds Platform
Administrator Guide)
l Add a new alert (video)
l Alerting on an Application (video)
l Configure advanced alert options (video)
l Manage existing alerts (video)

Did you know that when an alert indicates that an application failed, you can use SolarWinds
IPAM to quickly determine if a broken or missing DNS record is at fault?

Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

SAM includes out-of-the-box alerts with preconfigured triggers, actions, and settings to
automatically start monitoring and triggering against events. These alerts provide immediate
notifications through the SolarWinds Platform Web Console as SAM monitors applications, servers,
and other nodes.

These alerts allow you to configure additional options for actions, such as sending an email with
event and alert information, or resetting manually or automatically according to specific settings.
You can also create copies of preconfigured alerts to customize and add triggers, conditions,
actions, and more.

SAM includes several preconfigured, enabled alerts, plus some disabled alerts that you can enable,
as needed.

1. Click Alerts & Activity > Alerts

2. Click Manage Alerts.
3. In the Group by field, select Enabled.

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 Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

4. In the Type field, sort by Out-of-the-box.

5. Review the list of preconfigured, enabled alerts.

To enable or disable alerts, navigate to the Alert Manager and click On or Off in the Enabled column.

Configure actions triggered by alerts

You can configure an alert to trigger one or more actions, such as:
l Send an email
l Send a page
l Manage a virtual machine (for example, power on/off)
l Log the alert to send a file

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 Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

A complete list of alert actions is available on the Add Action dialog box when you navigate to the
Alert Manager and create or edit an alert.

Configure the default email action

A common alert action is to send an email. To send an email, the SolarWinds Platform requires a
designated SMTP server that you configure.

1. Click Settings > All Settings, and in the Alerts & Reports section, click Configure Default Send
Email Action.
2. In the Default Recipients section, enter recipient email addresses, separated by a semicolon.

3. Under the Default Sender Details heading, provide the default Name of Sender and the default
Reply Address.

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 Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

4. Under the Default SMTP Server section:

a. Provide the Host name or IP Address of the SMTP Server and the designated SMTP Port
Number.
For example, 192.168.10.124, port 25.
b. If you want to use SSL encryption for your alert emails, select Use SSL.
Selecting SSL automatically changes the SMTP port number to 465.
c. If your SMTP server requires authentication, select This SMTP Server requires
Authentication, and then provide the credentials.
d. Click Use as Default.

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 Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

Manage active alerts

When an alert triggers, any associated alert actions also trigger, and the alert appears on the All
Active Alerts page and in the SAM Summary Page. Through the SolarWinds Platform Web Console,
you can view the details of alert, the monitored element that triggered the alert, and take action.

1. To view the alert details, click the alert.

The Active Alert Details page appears.

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 Work with preconfigured alerts in SAM

2. To view the details of the network object that triggered the alert, click an object.

The details page of the selected object appears.

3. To acknowledge an alert:
a. Click Acknowledge.

b. Enter a note and click Acknowledge.

When acknowledged, the alert will not trigger again.

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 Create a custom alert in SAM

See also:
l Manage existing alerts (video)
l Configure advanced alert options (video)

Create a custom alert in SAM

Alerts give you the ability to trigger actions and notifications according to monitored events and
metrics. In this example, an alert is configured to trigger and send an email to an IIS Administrator
when an IIS application goes into a warning or critical state.

The ${variable} syntax is required for variables. To learn more, see Variables and examples
used in the SolarWinds Platform.

1. Click Settings > All Settings > Manage Alerts.

2. Select an alert, and click Duplicate & Edit.

3. On the Properties panel, enter a name and any other properties, and click Next.
In this example, a group of IIS administrators is identified as the responsible team.

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 Create a custom alert in SAM

4. On the Trigger Conditions panel, select an object to alert on, and then complete the trigger
condition fields.
In this example, the first trigger condition tests for Node status (Down), the second and third
conditions test for application thresholds, and the fourth condition specifies the applications
to alert on (indicated by 5 Objects).

5. On the Trigger Actions panel, click Add Action.

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 Create a custom alert in SAM

6. Select send an Email/Page, and click Configure Action.

7. Modify the alert to email the IIS administrators.

This is an example of creating a custom alert, as opposed to using a predefined default

alert that comes with SolarWinds SAM. You can define additional alerts that can be
customized to email specific users or email groups.

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 How reports work in SAM

8. You can optionally add and configure an action to log the event to the NetPerfMon event log.
9. Enter the required information for each action, click Next, then continue through the wizard.
10. Edit the Reset Actions to send an email to the default recipients, then click Next.
11. Continue through the wizard, review the Summary, then click Submit.
The Manage Alerts page indicates the alert was created successfully.

How reports work in SAM

Reports provide a bridge between detailed views (which provide point-in-time information) and
alerts (which tell you there is a problem). Reports can contain detailed, current state information, or
they can contain historical data.

You can run an ad-hoc report, or schedule reports to be sent to you automatically, as a PDF, a web
page, or email. For example, use a schedule when you want to receive the Asset Inventory report
every Monday morning.

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 How reports work in SAM

SolarWinds recommends that you identify who needs to receive performance or status
reports, and how often they should receive them.

Reports populate when you:

l Discover your servers and applications in SAM
l Add discovered servers and applications to SAM
l There is enough data to include in the report. Depending on the polling interval and data type,
some reports do not populate immediately. For example, it takes two weeks for baseline
reports to populate.

SolarWinds provides predefined reports for each SolarWinds Platform module. Click Reports > All
Reports to see the available predefined reports.

On the All Reports page, click a report to view it.

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 Run a preconfigured report in SAM

You can create your own custom reports by either editing an existing report or creating a report
from scratch. Reports can combine any number or type of SolarWinds Platform widgets, including
charts, tables, and gauges. You can customize the size of the report, the layout, and add a logo and
a footer.

Run a preconfigured report in SAM

This example shows how to run and schedule the Asset Inventory preconfigured report in SAM.

The Asset Inventory dashboard allows you to maintain a current and detailed inventory of your
environment's hardware and software. Automatic inventory data collection benefits those interested
in tracking asset depreciation, gathering information for insurance purposes, or managing and
maintaining your infrastructure.

Enable Asset Inventory data collection

You must enable Asset Inventory data collection before you generate the Hardware Asset Inventory
report.

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > Manage Node.
2. Click Add Node.

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 Run a preconfigured report in SAM

3. On the Choose Resource panel, click Asset Inventory.

Generate the report

The following example illustrates how to generate an asset inventory report.

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Reports > All Reports.
2. Locate the report, and click the report title.

The system generates the report.

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 Run a preconfigured report in SAM

Schedule a report
1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Reports > All Reports.
2. Click Manage Reports.
3. On the Report Manager tab, select a report, then click Schedule Report > Create New Schedule.

4. Configure the properties, frequency, and actions as needed in the wizard.

5. When completed, review the summary, and click Create Schedule.

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 Create a custom SAM report

Create a custom SAM report

You can combine any SolarWinds Platform Web Console widget or chart into a report. In this
example, a custom report for IIS servers is created by modifying a predefined report, then adding a
few more widgets for a complete picture of your IIS servers. To create this custom report, you will
first need to create a custom property to identify nodes running IIS.

This report provides information about:

l IIS servers with disks approaching 100%
l Capacity for all disk volumes from the last seven days
l The percentage of disk space used for all disk volumes from the last seven days
l IIS instances with problems
l Availability of IIS Nodes
l Nodes with problems

Create a custom property to identify nodes running IIS

1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings > Manage Custom
Properties.
2. Click Add Custom Properties.
3. On the Select Object panel, select Nodes, and click Next.
4. On the Choose Properties panel, in the Property Name field, enter Type.
5. In the Format field, select Text.
6. Select Restrict values, and in the Value 1 field, enter IIS.

You can enter more values to identify other server types. This example uses just the IIS
server type.

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 Create a custom SAM report

7. For Usage, select everything except Asset Inventory, and click Next.

8. On the Assign Values panel, click Select Nodes.

9. Select the nodes to which you want to assign the property, and click Add.
10. In the list of Selected Nodes, click Select All, then click Select Nodes.

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 Create a custom SAM report

11. Select IIS from the drop-down menu, and click Submit.

Create the IIS application server issue rollup report

1. Click Reports > All Reports > Manage Reports, and locate Disks Approaching 100% Capacity -
This Month.

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 Create a custom SAM report

2. Select the report, and click Duplicate & Edit.

3. Enter the report name, for example, IIS Application Server Issue Rollup.
4. For the widget in the first default row, click Edit Chart, rename the chart to IIS Servers with
Disks Approaching 100% Capacity, and click Submit.
5. In the From field, select Last 7 Days.
6. Click Edit.

7. Click the plus sign (+), and click Add Simple Condition.

8. Click Select Field, and then locate and select Node > Nodes Custom Properties > Type.
9. Click Add Column.

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 Create a custom SAM report

10. Select IIS from the drop-down menu, ensuring the query reads Type is equal to IIS.

11. Add another simple condition, and locate and select Percent Used under Volume Current
Statistics.
12. Click Add Column.

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 Create a custom SAM report

13. Select the is greater than operator and enter 70.

The query should read: Percent used is greater than 70.
14. Click Add to Layout.

15. For the widget in the second default row, in the From field, select Last 7 Days.

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 Create a custom SAM report

16. Click Add Content.

17. In the Group By field, select Classic category.
18. Select SAM Application Summary Report, and click Applications with Problems.
19. Click Select and Continue.

20. On the Layout Builder panel, click Edit Resource, and in the Title field, enter IIS Instance
with Problems.

21. Add the following SWQL filter: Application.Name='Microsoft IIS'

22. Click Submit.

23. Click Add Content > Classic Category > Summary Reports > Availability of Each Node.

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 Create a custom SAM report

24. Click Select and Continue.

25. Click Edit Resource, and in the Select a Time Period field, select Last 7 Days.
26. In the Filter Nodes (SQL) field, enter: type='IIS'.
27. Click Submit.

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 Create a custom SAM report

When complete, your report should look similar to the following:

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 Work with SAM application monitor templates

Work with SAM application monitor templates

SAM includes over 250 out-of-the-box application monitor templates that cover a wide range of
common applications. You can think of a template as a blueprint of what needs to monitored for a
particular type of application. It lists all components or building blocks for that application and
recommended, default thresholds.

You can also use API poller templates to capture metrics for PaaS, IaaS, on-premises, and
hybrid environments from Microsoft 365, Azure, VMware, Atlassian, and APIs for SolarWinds
products such as AppOptics, Pingdom, and Service Desk. See SAM API Poller Template Guide
for details.

To display a list of application monitor templates included in SAM:

1. Click Settings > All Settings > SAM Settings.

2. Under Application Monitor Templates, click Manage Templates.

A searchable list appears on the Manage Application Monitor Templates page.

To learn more, see Use SAM templates, application monitors, and component monitors in the SAM
Administrator Guide.

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 Understand the application/template relationship

Understand the application/template relationship

In SAM, an application is a group of component monitors inherited from a template when you
assign the template to a node. A component monitor queries for values returned by a process,
counter, status, or script. SAM uses received data to display vital statistics concerning the health of
the system.

SAM application monitor templates provide blueprints for the applications to be monitored. You can
customize templates, and use only the component monitors you need to monitor a specific
environment. SAM provides several types of templates:
l AppInsight applications are predefined templates that provide detailed information about
business-critical Active Directory, Exchange, Microsoft IIS, or Microsoft SQL instances. Each
AppInsight template is specifically designed to discover and monitor elements of an
application dynamically.
l If you have other business-critical applications, apply one of the other templates included in
SAM, as listed in the SAM Application Monitor Template Reference. SolarWinds recommends
deploying a single template, customizing it for your environment, and then deploying the
edited template on all similar applications. You can also obtain templates in THWACK.
l For proprietary applications that you need to monitor, you can build custom templates.

SAM API Poller templates are also available.

If you make a change at the template level, application monitors based on that template are
affected. Conversely, if you make a change at the application monitor level, only the individual
application is affected. This inheritance relationship is beneficial if you need to make a lot of
changes. For example, rather than making one change to 100 applications (and therefore 100
changes), you can change the parent template and that change is inherited by all applications based
on that template.

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 Create custom application monitor templates in SAM

Create custom application monitor templates in SAM

SolarWinds SAM includes an array of out-of-the-box (OOTB) application monitor templates that you
can use to monitor over 200 applications. You can use pre-built templates "as is" or modify them.
You can also create custom templates to monitor uncommon components or applications that are
not included in the templates provided with SAM.

The following example shows how to create and assign a template that uses the File Size Monitor,
one of the many component monitors included in SAM. You can add as many component monitors
to a template as you need.

To learn more about creating your own templates, see the SAM Custom Application Monitor
Template Guide.

Create a template to monitor file size in SAM

1. Click Settings > All Settings.
2. In the Product specific settings group, click SAM Settings.
3. In the Application Monitor Templates group, click Create a New Template.
4. On the New Template page, provide basic details about your new template, including a name
and brief description.
5. Click Add Component Monitors > Manually add Component Monitors.

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 Create custom application monitor templates in SAM

6. Select the File Size Monitor component, and click Add.

7. Enter the path and the file to monitor.

8. Enter warning and critical threshold values, and click Submit.

Assign the template to a node

1. Click Settings > All Settings.
2. In the Product specific settings group, click SAM Settings.
3. Click Manage Templates.

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 Create custom application monitor templates in SAM

4. On the Manage Application Monitor Templates page, select your new template, and click
Assign to Node.

5. Select the node from the left pane, click the green arrow to move it to the right pane, and click
Next.

6. Choose the credentials, click Assign Application Monitor, and click Done.

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 Set thresholds in SAM

Set thresholds in SAM

Thresholds are markers that indicate certain levels were reached. The SolarWinds Platform includes
predefined thresholds for most statistics, such as Disk Usage and Response statistics for all
monitored nodes, that you can override. Many SAM templates, application monitors, and component
monitors include predefined thresholds that you can adjust.

In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, the color of a statistic indicates if it reached either of two
threshold levels: critical or warning. A value that crosses a warning threshold appears yellow, and a
critical threshold appears red.

If thresholds are set too low, you'll receive frequent alerts. If set too high, problems can occur
without your knowledge.

To customize thresholds, you can set a static value or let the SolarWinds Platform calculate
baseline values.
l Static threshold. A constant value set for your threshold. For example, the warning threshold
for response time might be 500 ms, and the critical value might be 1000 ms. You should be
familiar with the performance of that object to know what a reasonable value for a static
threshold is.
l Dynamic baseline threshold. Data is collected for a week, and then used to calculate mean and
standard deviation. The warning and critical threshold values are defined as 2 and 3 standard
deviations above the mean, respectively. For example, if the mean value for packet loss for a
specific node is 0%, the warning threshold for packet loss would be 3% (+2 standard
deviations) and the critical threshold would be 4% (+3 standard deviations). Dynamic baseline
thresholds are the most accurate way to define thresholds, and can be recalculated on
demand.

To learn more about thresholds, see:

l Manage thresholds in SAM (SAM Administrator Guide)
l Thresholds in the SolarWinds Platform (SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide)
l Use MIN/MAX Average Statistic charts to set thresholds based on 95th percentile data for
component monitors (SolarWinds Success Center)

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