Documentation forNetwork Performance Monitor
Monitoring network performance is a key capability of Hybrid Cloud Observability and is also available in a standalone module, Network Performance Monitor (NPM). Hybrid Cloud Observability and NPM are built on the self-hosted SolarWinds Platform.

Troubleshoot Network Insight for F5® BIG-IP®

Make sure the following conditions are met:

Polling issues

For polling your load balancing environment, NPM uses two pollers, and each of them polls different data.

F5 status poller

Polls status data from the devices. By default, the status is polled every two minutes. Status poller issues result in gray statuses:

  • When the node is down, the GTM or services are set to unreachable.
  • When the node is in any other status than up or down, the GTM and services are set to unknown.

F5 statistics poller

Polls for data every ten minutes. If this poller is not operating successfully, resources show no data.

How do I find out how often status and statistics data are polled?

Pollers use the default node polling intervals. To find out whether the polling interval has been customized for the node:

  1. Go to the node details page, and click Edit Node in the Management resource.
  2. Review the Polling section to find out the frequency of polling node status and collecting the statistics.

Enable F5 statistics poller

F5 statistics poller specifies the data collected on F5 devices. By default, the poller is enabled for F5 load balancers when you add F5 devices.

When the F5 poller is disabled, load balancing pages show obsolete data for the device. To display current data, enable the poller.

  1. Log in to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console as an administrator.
  2. Click Settings > Manage Nodes.
  3. Find the node, select it, and click List Resources.
  4. Select the F5 BIG-IP poller, and click Submit.

    If you have provided iControl credentials, load balancing resources will now show current data.

How do I find details about F5 Servers?

The lowest level in the load balancing hierarchy, F5 servers, are not displayed in the Balancing Environment resource. NPM monitors only their IP address and status.

  1. In the Load Balancing resource, click a pool member and click Display Details Page.
  2. On the F5 Pool Member Details page, click the F5 Server link in the Pool Member Details resource.
  3. To monitor more than the IP and status, link the F5 server to a monitored node. In the F5 Server Details resource, click Link Node, and select the node, or add the node for monitoring in NPM.