Observability-Self-Hosted-Fundamentals SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Fundamentals Questions and Answers

Custom properties can be configured as "Mandatory" to ensure data integrity across the platform. According to the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide , changing a property like AssetTag to mandatory after nodes already exist creates an enforcement requirement.

The system does not retroactively block polling or delete nodes (Option B and D are incorrect), but it enforces the requirement during administrative interaction. Specifically:

Requirement after the action (A) : Moving forward, any new node added to the system will require the AssetTag field to be populated before the node can be saved.

Requirement when edited (C) : For existing nodes that do not yet have an AssetTag, the platform will permit them to exist and be polled normally. However, the next time an administrator attempts to edit the properties of that node, the Web Console will block the "Save" action until a value is provided for the mandatory AssetTag field. This ensures that as the environment is managed over time, the metadata is gradually backfilled until all mandatory requirements are satisfied.

Anomaly-Based Alerting is a premier feature of Hybrid Cloud Observability that moves beyond static thresholds to identify performance deviations based on historical behavior. According to the SolarWinds HCO Administrator Guide , this feature relies on cloud-assisted analytics to process complex datasets. To enable this, two specific components are required:

Advanced Machine-Learning Feature : This is the functional logic within the HCO platform that identifies patterns and establishes "normal" baselines for metrics like CPU load or interface utilization.

Platform Connect : This is the essential bridge that links the self-hosted HCO instance to the SolarWinds cloud-based AIOps engine. Because anomaly detection requires significant computational power to analyze long-term historical trends, the heavy processing is often offloaded. Platform Connect ensures that the necessary metadata can be analyzed securely to generate the dynamic thresholds used for these alerts.

Without Platform Connect , the local server cannot access the machine-learning models required to calculate what constitutes an "anomaly" versus standard operational variance. This architecture allows HCO to provide high-level AIOps capabilities without requiring massive localized hardware for every installation.

When creating a web-based report in the SolarWinds Platform, the first step is defining the "Selection Method" for the entities you want to include. According to the SolarWinds Platform Reporting Guide , the platform offers two primary user-friendly ways to define the scope of a report:

Static Selection : This method allows the administrator to manually pick specific nodes, interfaces, or applications from a list. This is best suited for reports targeting a fixed set of infrastructure, such as "Core Data Center Switches".

Dynamic Query Builder : This is the most powerful method for automated reporting. It allows you to define a set of rules—such as "Vendor is Cisco" and "Department is Finance"—that automatically update the report's content as new devices are added to monitoring that match those criteria.

While advanced users can use SWQL (SolarWinds Query Language) or SQL to define a custom selection, PostgreSQL (Option B) is not used as the backend database for the SolarWinds Platform. Furthermore, while PowerShell (Option C) can be used to extract data via the SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS) API, it is not a selection method used within the native Web-Based Report builder interface.

The export capabilities for chart-based reports are designed to provide both a visual representation and the underlying raw data. According to the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide , when viewing or scheduling a report that contains charts or graphs, the system supports two primary export formats:

PDF : This format is the standard for visual reports. It captures the rendered chart exactly as it appears in the Web Console, making it ideal for email distribution to management or for archival purposes where the visual trend is more important than the individual data points.

CSV (Comma Separated Values) : When a chart is exported to CSV, the platform extracts the time-series data points used to generate that chart. This allows technical staff to import the raw performance numbers into external tools like Excel for deeper statistical analysis that may not be possible within the standard web view.

While the broader reporting engine supports Excel (.xls) for tabular reports (as seen in Question 8), the specific function for exporting chart components often defaults to CSV for the data layer and PDF for the visual layer. XML (Option D) is typically reserved for report definitions (transferring a report from one server to another) rather than exporting the data results of a chart.

The "Add Node" wizard in the SolarWinds Platform is a multi-step process designed to fully integrate a new device into the monitoring ecosystem. According to the SolarWinds Platform Node Management documentation, once the IP address and credentials (SNMP/WMI) are verified, the administrator is presented with several configuration panels.

Select Statistics and Resources (D) : This is the critical step where the admin chooses what to monitor on the node. This includes selecting specific interfaces, volumes, or hardware health sensors. It also allows for the selection of the polling frequency for "Statistics" (how often to collect performance data) and "Status" (how often to check if the node is up).

Create/Assign Custom Properties (C) : During the "Add Node" process, there is a dedicated tab for metadata. Here, the admin can fill in values for existing custom properties (such as Site, Owner, or Asset Tag). If a property does not exist, the wizard often provides a shortcut to the Custom Property manager to create or modify the fields so that the node is correctly categorized from the moment it is added to the database.

Device Studio Pollers (Option A) are typically assigned after a node is added if the default pollers are insufficient. Rediscovery Interval (Option B) is a global setting or found deep in the advanced node properties, rather than a primary configuration step in the standard "Add Node" wizard.

Network Discovery is an automated process to scan subnets and import new infrastructure. However, the discovery engine includes logic to prevent duplicate entries and ignore non-relevant assets. According to the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide , if specific devices are missing from the results, the most common administrative cause is the Discovery Ignore List .

The "Ignore List" is a database of IP addresses or MAC addresses that the platform has been explicitly told to skip. This often happens if a device was previously discovered but the administrator chose "Ignore this node" during the import phase. The system remembers this choice to prevent the device from reappearing in every subsequent scan. Additionally, the platform automatically ignores any node that is already present in the "Manage Nodes" list to avoid creating redundant monitoring objects.

While a timeout (Option C) or incorrect polling method (Option D) could cause a node to fail to respond with its full metadata, the device would typically still appear in the discovery results as a "Generic" or "ICMP-only" device rather than being skipped entirely. Only the Ignore List or pre-existing status causes a device to be excluded from the discovery results table during a scan of a valid subnet.

When a new user account is created in the SolarWinds Platform, it is assigned a set of "Default" permissions designed to provide a "Read-Only" baseline of visibility. According to the SolarWinds Platform User Account Management guide, the platform is configured to ensure that new users can immediately benefit from the monitoring data without having the power to accidentally modify the environment.

Specifically, view all active alerts (C) and view all existing reports (D) are enabled by default. This ensures that any team member with a login can see the current health of the infrastructure and access historical performance data. These are considered "Passive" rights that allow for operational awareness. Conversely, disable session time out (A) is a security-sensitive setting that is typically disabled by default to prevent abandoned sessions from remaining active on public or shared workstations. Self-manage dashboards (B) , while a common feature, often requires explicit "Dashboards" or "View" management permissions to be toggled on by an administrator to prevent a proliferation of unmanaged or redundant dashboard pages within the database. By defaulting to alert and report visibility, SolarWinds follows the principle of providing immediate information for troubleshooting while reserving management and security-override functions for designated administrators.

According to the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide for Hybrid Cloud Observability, the AppStack Environment View provides an interactive, visual mapping of relationships between monitored entities such as applications, servers, and storage. In the provided image, it is evident that a filter is applied to show entities related to an application (A) because the left-hand navigation pane shows specific filters selected under the "Applications" category, and the main view displays a subset of the environment's total objects that correspond specifically to those application relationships. This filtering capability allows users to narrow down the environment to focus on the specific dependencies of a critical business service, such as Microsoft Active Directory or a SQL Server instance, which are shown as filtered groups in the sidebar.

Furthermore, it can be concluded that the option to hide categories with no objects is selected (B) . A standard, unfiltered AppStack view typically displays every possible layer of the IT stack—including Transactions, LUNs, Pools, and Arrays—regardless of whether they contain active entities. However, in the provided view, only categories containing entities relevant to the current filter (such as Applications, Database Instances, Servers, and Volumes) are visible. This indicates that the "Hide categories with no objects" setting is active, which is a standard customization used to clean up the interface and highlight only the active parts of the dependency map.

While the view shows storage-related entities like "Volumes," this does not confirm whether the Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) is not installed (C) , as basic volume data can often be collected via standard node polling. Additionally, the AppStack interface itself does not provide enough diagnostic data to verify if the user account is given administrator access rights (D) , as these visual elements are accessible to non-admin users with appropriate view permissions. Therefore, A and B are the only verified conclusions based on the visual evidence of the filtered environment.

The SolarWinds Platform web-based report builder provides specific layout options to ensure reports are professional and readable. According to the SolarWinds 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 the font of the report content (Option A) is generally limited to global CSS or predefined themes rather than individual report layout settings. Similarly, the position 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.

The SolarWinds Alerting Engine provides a wide array of "Trigger Actions" that occur automatically when an alert's conditions are met. According to the SolarWinds Platform Alerting Guide , these actions are designed to either notify a human operator or perform an automated remediation step.

Send an e-mail (D) : This is the most common alert action. It allows the system to send formatted notifications (including variables for node name, IP, and status) to individuals, distribution lists, or ticketing systems like ServiceNow or SolarWinds Service Desk.

Execute a script (B) : This is the primary tool for automated "self-healing." An alert can be configured to run a local batch file, a PowerShell script, or a VBScript on the SolarWinds server. For example, if a "Service Down" alert triggers, the system can automatically execute a script to attempt to restart that service on the remote node before a human technician even sees the alert.

Options A and C are incorrect because they are not "actions" triggered by the alerting engine. Adding widgets to views (Option A) is a manual customization task performed by an administrator in the web console. While you can schedule a report to be sent via email, the alerting engine itself does not generate a report (Option C) as a reactive trigger action to a node failure; reports are intended for historical analysis rather than immediate event response.

The transition from the legacy Orion Platform to Hybrid Cloud Observability (HCO) introduced stricter hardware and software prerequisites to support modern features like AIOps, advanced mapping, and high-performance data processing. According to the SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability System Requirements , the platform requires modern SQL features for optimal performance.

While legacy versions of the Orion Platform may have supported SQL Server 2016 or even 2012 in older iterations, MS SQL Server 2019 is identified as the minimum supported version for new HCO installations. This requirement ensures compatibility with the latest database indexing and query optimization techniques used by the SolarWinds Platform to handle the high volume of time-series data generated by observability nodes. Additionally, using SQL 2019 or later (including SQL 2022) is necessary to ensure the platform can utilize specific security protocols and memory management improvements that are not available in the end-of-life SQL 2012 or SP1 versions of 2016.

SolarWinds Intelligent Maps require specific functional permissions within the user's account settings to perform modifications. According to the SolarWinds 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 the user does not have Intelligent Map edit rights assigned to their user account. In the SolarWinds Web Console, map permissions are granular. An administrator must go to Settings > 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.

The ability to create or modify reports is a high-level administrative function in the SolarWinds Platform, distinct from the ability to simply view them. According to the SolarWinds Platform User Account Management guide, this is controlled by the Report Management right.

To restrict a specific group of users from creating or editing reports while still allowing them to view existing ones, the administrator must remove the "Manage Reports" permission from their user accounts. When this right is set to "No," the "Manage Reports" button is hidden from the "All Reports" view for that user. They can still click on and run any report they have access to, but they will lack the interface options to enter the "Report Builder," change schedules, or delete entries. This provides a secure way to delegate report consumption to the wider team while centralizing report creation within a smaller group of "power users" or administrators. Option D is incorrect as it refers to Alerts , which is a separate permission set entirely.

Access control for reporting in Hybrid Cloud Observability (HCO) is highly granular, allowing administrators to define exactly what a "standard" (non-admin) user can do within the reporting module. According to the SolarWinds Platform User Account Management guides, three distinct restrictions can be applied:

Preventing Access to All Reports (A) : By setting a "Report Limitation" on the user account to "No Reports," the entire module is effectively hidden from the user.

Preventing Access to Reports by Other Users (B) : This is a privacy and security feature. Administrators can configure report permissions so that users can only see the reports they have created or those explicitly shared with them, hiding the potentially sensitive custom reports created by other teams.

Preventing Access to the Report Manager (C) : The "Report Manager" is the administrative interface used to create, schedule, and delete reports. By removing the "Manage Reports" permission from a user account, you allow them to view and run existing reports but prevent them from accessing the management tools required to modify them.

Option D is logically incorrect because if a user has access to reports at all, they must be able to see the ones they are authorized for; "preventing access to their own reports" while allowing others would not be a standard security use case.

The My Deployment page is the centralized administrative hub for managing the health and scale of the SolarWinds Platform. According to the SolarWinds Platform Installation and Upgrade Guide , this page simplifies complex infrastructure tasks that previously required logging into the individual server consoles.

Centralized Upgrade (B) : The "Updates & Evaluations" tab allows administrators to download and orchestrate the upgrade of the main polling engine and all additional polling engines from a single interface. This "Centralized Upgrade" feature ensures all components are updated in the correct order.

High Availability (HA) Pool Setup (D) : The "High Availability" tab provides the wizard-driven interface to create and manage HA pools. This allows you to link a primary server with a standby server to ensure near-zero downtime in the event of a hardware or software failure.

While you can view license status (Option A) or trigger diagnostics (Option C), license activation is typically handled via the License Manager, and diagnostic transmission is often a sub-function of the technical support workflow rather than the primary architectural focus of the "My Deployment" management page.

SolarWinds agents support two communication modes: "Server-Initiated" (Passive) and "Agent-Initiated" (Active). According to the SolarWinds Platform Agent requirements and port information , the direction of communication determines which firewall ports must be open.

When an agent is configured for Agent-Initiated communication (where the agent on the managed node reaches out to the SolarWinds server), it uses TCP port 17778 . This port must be open for inbound traffic on the SolarWinds Main Polling Engine or Additional Polling Engine. This mode is highly beneficial for monitoring servers in DMZs or remote sites where the SolarWinds server cannot initiate a connection through the firewall, but the remote node is allowed to communicate back to the primary management network. Port 17777 (Option B) is used for the legacy Orion Information Service, and 17790 (Option D) is used for specific client-to-server messaging in different contexts, but 17778 is the dedicated, encrypted port for agent-initiated data transmission.

SolarWinds distinguishes between "viewing" reports and "managing" them through account permissions. According to the SolarWinds Platform User Account Management guides, standard users can typically view, run, and export reports that they have access to.

However, administrative actions that affect the system's resource usage or global configurations require the Manage Reports permission:

Modify report schedule (C) : Only users with management rights can create, edit, or delete the schedules that automatically email reports to recipients. This is a security measure to prevent unauthorized users from flooding mail servers or accessing sensitive data via automated delivery.

Change report timing (A) : This refers to editing the "Time Period" or "Schedule" settings within a report's core definition. Altering these parameters changes the report for all users, so it is restricted to those with "Manage" rights.

Exporting a report (Option B) and running an existing report (Option D) are fundamental "read-only" actions available to any user who has been granted report viewing rights.

In the SolarWinds Platform, the method used to poll a node (SNMP, WMI, or Agent) is a specific property assigned to the node record in the database. According to the SolarWinds Platform Agent Management guide, simply installing the agent software on a remote server does not automatically convert the existing node record to use that agent for data collection.

If a node was originally added to the system via WMI , the platform will continue to attempt to poll it via WMI over the network using RPC/DCOM, even if the SolarWinds Agent is successfully installed and running on the target machine. To fix this "irregularity" and take advantage of the agent's encrypted, single-port communication, an administrator must edit the node and change the polling method (D) .

By going to Manage Nodes , selecting the domain controller, and clicking "Edit Properties," the admin must find the "Polling Method" section and select "Agent". Once saved, the Polling Engine will stop using WMI network calls and will instead wait for the agent to provide the data (if in Agent-Initiated mode) or reach out to the agent via the agent's port (if in Server-Initiated mode). This change ensures that the monitoring load is shifted to the agent and that the communication adheres to the desired security profile.

Groups in the SolarWinds Platform are logical containers used to organize monitored entities for easier management, alerting, and reporting. According to the SolarWinds 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: groups can be 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.