SolarWinds Observability-Self-Hosted-Fundamentals - SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Fundamentals

The SolarWinds Platform provides distinct tools for visualizing different aspects of environmental health and performance.AppStackis primarily an entity-relationship mapping tool. According to theSolarWinds SAM Administrator Guide, "The AppStack Environment view provides a powerful layer of troubleshooting visibility by exposing all participating objects in your environment, as well as their relationships to one another". It allows administrators to customize whichentities(nodes, applications, volumes, etc.) are visible and how they are grouped to show dependencies.

Conversely,PerfStack(Performance Analysis) is the engine used for metric correlation. As stated in theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, PerfStack allows users to "drag and drop performance metrics from multiple entities onto a single chart to correlate data over time". While AppStack excels at showingwhatis connected, PerfStack excels at showinghowspecific metrics (CPU, Latency, IOPS) across those connected entities interact. Therefore, a combination is required where AppStack handles theentitiesand PerfStack handles themetrics. Specifically, you use AppStack to identify the scope of entities involved in a performance bottleneck and then transition those entities into a PerfStack project to perform a deep-dive analysis of the metrics. This modular approach ensures that troubleshooting is both contextually aware (via AppStack) and data-driven (via PerfStack).

SolarWindsIntelligent Mapsrequire specific functional permissions within the user's account settings to perform modifications. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, the ability to view a map does not automatically grant the right to edit or save changes to it.

The primary cause for being unable to save edits—such as adding new entities or changing the layout—is that theuser does not have Intelligent Map edit rightsassigned to their user account. In the SolarWinds Web Console, map permissions are granular. An administrator must go toSettings > All Settings > Manage Accounts, select the user, and ensure the "Map Management" or specific "Allow Map Editing" toggle is set to "Yes". If this permission is absent, the user may still be able to interact with the map in a "live" temporary session (moving nodes around for visualization), but the "Save" button will either be disabled or will result in an error because the platform's security layer prevents permanent changes to the database from unauthorized accounts.

Groups in the SolarWinds Platform are logical containers used to organize monitored entities for easier management, alerting, and reporting. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, one of the most powerful features of the grouping engine is the ability to automate membership. Specifically,groups can be created based on custom properties.

When defining a group, administrators can choose between "Static Selection" (manual) or "Dynamic Query." By using dynamic queries, a group can be configured to automatically include any node, interface, or volume that matches specific criteria, such as a custom property value (e.g., Department = Engineering or Site = London). This ensures that as new infrastructure is added to the environment and tagged with the appropriate metadata, the groups update themselves without human intervention.

Regarding the other options: groupscanbe members of other groups (nested groups), which is a common practice for creating complex hierarchical views of an organization. The default status rollup mode is typically set to "Mixed" or "Show Worst Status" rather than "Best Status," to ensure that any single failure within the group is visible to the administrator. Finally, rollup options absolutely apply to all members within the group, as they define how the collective health of those members is calculated and displayed on the dashboard.

In advanced alerting scenarios, particularly with performance metrics like disk fragmentation or temperature, the "Trigger Condition" and "Reset Condition" often require different thresholds to prevent "flapping"—a state where an alert rapidly toggles between triggered and reset states because the metric is hovering right at the threshold line. According to theSolarWinds Platform Alerting Guide, while the default behavior is to reset when trigger conditions are no longer true (Option D), this would reset the alert as soon as fragmentation hit 29.9%.

To satisfy the specific requirement where the issue is only "resolved" at 10%, a customReset Conditionmust be defined. By selecting "set reset condition to reset when condition is below a set percent," the administrator can explicitly define a separate value ($10\%$) from the trigger value ($30\%$). This creates a "deadband" or hysteresis effect, ensuring the alert remains active and visible until the database maintenance has successfully reduced the fragmentation to the desired healthy level. This configuration is essential for AppInsight applications where returning to a "not-critical" state (e.g., 29%) does not necessarily mean the underlying performance bottleneck has been sufficiently remediated.

In the SolarWinds Platform, groups are more than just static lists; they are logical containers that allow for the inheritance and management of settings across multiple entities. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, when configuring a group, you can define specific "Member Settings" that apply to the objects contained within that group.

The two primary settings that can be integrated as member settings within the group configuration arealerts (A)anduser accounts (D).

Alerts: This allows administrators to associate specific alerting logic directly with group membership. For example, you can configure group-specific alert thresholds or suppressions that apply only to the members of that group, ensuring that critical infrastructure groups have more sensitive alerting profiles than development or test groups.

User Accounts: This refers to the ability to link specific user or group account permissions to the group itself. This is often used in multi-tenant or departmentalized environments where a user account is granted a "Group Limitation." By adding user account settings as a member setting, you can define which users have the rights to view, manage, or edit the specific entities within that group.

While you can nest "groups" (Option B) within each other, they are considered members themselves rather than a "member setting". Similarly, "Intelligent Maps" (Option C) are visualization objects that cancontaingroups, but they are not a configurable setting appliedtothe members of a group within the standard group management wizard.

Managing user permissions through Active Directory (AD) groups in SolarWinds requires an understanding of how the platform resolves conflicting rights. When a user belongs to multiple groups, the platform must determine which set of permissions takes precedence. According to theSolarWinds Platform User Account Managementguide, there are two primary ways to ensure the "correct" (often the most restrictive or most specific) permissions are applied.

Add users as individual users (A): Individual user account settings always take precedence over group settings in the SolarWinds Platform. If a user needs specific rights that differ from their assigned AD groups, creating a local or AD-linked individual account for them allows the administrator to "override" group-level permissions with 100% certainty.

Re-order groups (D): The SolarWinds Web Console allows administrators to change thesearch orderof groups. When a user logs in, the platform checks the groups in the order they are listed in the "Manage Accounts" screen. The first group match it finds is the one that defines the user's session permissions. By re-ordering the groups, an admin can ensure that the group with the "correct" intended permissions is processed first.

Options B and C are inefficient and unnecessary "nuclear" options that disrupt the benefits of using centralized AD management for the rest of the organization.

For Network Operations Centers (NOCs) that display SolarWinds dashboards on large wall-mounted monitors, maintaining a continuous session is vital. By default, the SolarWinds Platform implements a security timeout (often 15 to 20 minutes of inactivity) that automatically logs a user out to protect the console.

According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, to prevent this for a dedicated NOC account, the administrator mustdisable session timeout default settings (A). This is found within the "Advanced" section of the specific User Account settings. When this toggle is enabled, the platform ignores the global session timeout for that specific login, allowing the dashboard to refresh indefinitely without requiring manual re-authentication.

While granting management permissions (Options B and C) might allow the user tocreatethe view, it does nothing to prevent the session from expiring. Similarly, an "Account Expiration Date" (Option D) only controls the long-term validity of the account, not the duration of an individual active web session. Disabling the timeout is the standard procedural requirement for any "Service Account" or "Display Account" used in a continuous monitoring environment.

The SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability (HCO) Platform is designed for maximum deployment flexibility to accommodate diverse enterprise security and infrastructure requirements. According to theSolarWinds Platform Installation and Upgrade Guide, the platform's architecture is fundamentally self-contained.

Operation without an internet connection (A): This is a critical requirement for many government, military, and high-security financial environments. The platform is capable of "air-gapped" operation, where all polling, data processing, and visualization occur within a private network. While features like "Platform Connect" (for cloud-based AI) may require a connection, the core monitoring, alerting, and reporting functions remain fully operational without any external internet access.

Deployment on-premises or in the cloud (B): HCO is truly hybrid. It can be installed on physical hardware or virtual machines within a local data center, or it can be deployed within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) on platforms like AWS or Azure. This allows organizations to maintain their monitoring infrastructure alongside their managed assets, regardless of where those assets reside.

While HCOprovidesAIOps and machine learning (Option C), this is a feature of specific licensing tiers and configuration states rather than a fundamental "platform" characteristic that defines its deployment capability in the same way its offline and hybrid nature does.

The SolarWinds Platform web-based report builder provides specific layout options to ensure reports are professional and readable. According to theSolarWinds Platform Reporting Guide, customization of a report's visual structure is handled through the Layout tab.

Logo on the report (B): Administrators can upload a custom company logo to appear in the header of the report. This ensures that exported PDFs and web views align with corporate branding standards.

Width of the report (D): The layout editor allows users to define the report width, typically choosing between a fixed pixel width (often used to ensure a consistent look on printed paper or PDF) or a percentage-based fluid width that adjusts to the browser window.

While the platform allows for some styling, granular control over thefont of the report content(Option A) is generally limited to global CSS or predefined themes rather than individual report layout settings. Similarly, theposition of the page number(Option C) is usually a fixed element of the report's footer template and is not a standard customizable field within the primary web-based report layout wizard.

SolarWinds provides several ways to handle maintenance windows, but they have different impacts on historical data. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, "Unmanaging" a node (Option D) stops all polling entirely, resulting in "gaps" in your historical charts.

To prevent notifications whilepreserving data collection, the best practice is toMute the devices during maintenance. When a device is "Muted" (also known as "Pause Actions"), the platform continues to poll the device and record its status and performance metrics (CPU, Memory, Latency) into the database. However, the alerting engine is instructed to suppress any notification actions (emails, scripts, etc.) for that specific entity. This ensures that you have a full historical record of the device's behavior during the maintenance period—showing exactly when it went down and came back up—without flooding the IT team with unnecessary alerts.