Documentation forServer & Application Monitor
Monitoring your applications and environment is a key capability of Hybrid Cloud Observability and is also available in a standalone module, Server & Application Monitor (SAM). Hybrid Cloud Observability and SAM are built on the self-hosted SolarWinds Platform.

API poller licensing

Each monitored metric returned by the API Poller feature counts against your SAM license. The way licenses are consumed depends on your SAM license model, as described here.

Starting in SAM 2020.2.6, you can monitor 10 times as many API metrics per license. (In earlier SAM versions, the number of allowed metrics matched the number of licensed nodes with a 1:1 ratio.) For example, with a SAM100 license, you can monitor up to 1000 API metrics.

Node-based

If you have a node-based SAM license:

  • Each node with at least one API-monitored metric counts as a managed SAM node.
  • A SAM node can host multiple API pollers.
  • Regardless of how many metrics are consumed by API pollers, you can monitor an unlimited number of component monitors if using node-based licensing.

For example, with a node-based SAM10 license, you can monitor API metrics up on up to 10 nodes with either:

  • Monitor 100 values with 1 API poller on 1 node, or
  • Monitor 50 values with 2 API pollers on 1 node, or
  • Diversify license consumption, as follows:
    • Monitor 10 values with 1 API poller on 3 nodes,
    • Monitor 20 values with 1 API poller on 1 node, and
    • Monitor 10 values with 5 API pollers on 1 node.

    In this example, 30 + 20 +50 = 100 consumed SAM licenses.

Component-based

If you have a component-based SAM license:

  • The number of monitored API metrics does not impact the available number of licenses that can be consumed by SAM application monitors and component monitors.

  • The number of allowed monitored metrics depends on how your component-based license maps to an equivalent node-based license, as detailed next. For example, you can monitor up to 500 API metrics with an AL700 license, starting in SAM 2020.2.6 when the allowed amount of metrics increased.

    Component-based license tier Node-based license tier
    equivalent    		 Maximum number
    of monitored API metrics
    AL150 SAM10 100
    AL300 SAM25 250
    AL700 SAM50 500
    AL1100 SAM75 750
    AL1500 SAM100 1000
    AL2500 SAM200 2000
    ALX SAM300 3000
      SAM400* 4000

* Additional node-based SAM license tiers are available, up to SAM5000 and beyond.

Both

For both license types:

  • Only API metrics monitored for licensed SAM nodes appear in the API Poller widget on the Node Details page. For unlicensed nodes, API pollers display an Unknown status.
  • When adding an API poller, the initial request to contact the external API is sent from the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, not a polling engine. Until you select at least one metric to monitor for an API poller, no license is consumed.
  • API pollers stop updating metrics in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console if your SAM license expires. The status of API pollers on the Node Details page changes to Unknown.

What happens if you exceed license limits

If you exceed the license limit when adding monitored metrics to a new or existing API poller, a message similar to the following appears. Any metrics above the limit are not monitored and the status appears for metrics appears as Unknown in related widgets.

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If you receive that message, you can:

You can also use SolarWinds AppOptics to collect metrics via REST API calls.