Documentation forAppOptics

SolarWinds Snap Agent

The SolarWinds Snap Agent is a modular agent that collects logs and metrics from systems in your IT infrastructure. The application is based on the Intel Snap Telemetry Framework—an open framework designed to simplify the collection, processing, and publishing of system data through a single API.

By default, the Snap Agent is installed on the host system. After you install and configure the agent, it collects system and process metrics running on the host and reports the data to AppOptics.

The Snap Agent can also be run in a container using the docker image.

Snap Agent CLI

The Snap Agent package includes the SWISnap CLI tool, allowing you to manage tasks and plugins manually. The CLI can perform several functions, such as starting and stopping tasks and managing plugin processes. This is an optional tool and is not required for normal use of the Snap Agent, since the Snap Agent installation package includes predefined configuration example files.

See SWISnap for details.

Snap Agent plugins

The Snap Agent package includes plugins that monitor, collect, and process data on heterogeneous integrations. These plugins include collectors, streaming collectors, processors, and publishers:

  • Collectors gather data from the monitored systems. They are initiated by the agent based on a specific schedule; by default, active polling collects data every 60 seconds.

  • Streaming collectors also gather data from the monitored systems. They provide data to the Snap Agent when they are available and are not restricted to a specific schedule. Since they passively wait for the data to arrive, they are a perfect match for collecting logs or data from a Real-Time service.

  • Processors are optional plugins that can process data provided by the collectors. This can include simple tasks such as calculating an average with a given set of data. After the data is processed, the data is passed to the publishers.

  • Publishers receive the data from the processors (or directly from collectors) and send it to external systems, such as AppOptics or an OTEL endpoint.

When a related task is started, the Snap Agent enables each plugin as a separate process or as a Goroutine inside the Snap Agent process. When a task is stopped, the Snap Agent stops the plugin as well.

ARM CPU architecture support

On platforms based on the ARM architecture, the only plugins supported are embedded plugins.

Embedded plugins

Embedded plugins can be run as goroutines (lightweight functions that are dispatched on top of process threads by the Golang runtime) inside the main Snap Agent service process. This includes plugins that provide:

  • System metrics collection

  • System processes collection

  • AppOptics measurements publisher

  • AppOptics processes publisher

  • Logs collection

    • Log files

    • Docker container logs

    • Kubernetes events

    • Syslog server

  • Logs publishing

    • Loggly HTTPs bulk

    • Loggly HTTPs

    • Loggly Syslog

    • Papertrail HTTPs bulk

    • Papertrail HTTPs

    • Papertrail Syslog

Supported platforms

The Snap Agent supports only 64-bit architectures and is available for the following platforms:

Linux

Currently only embedded plugins support ARM v7 and v8. See Embedded plugins for a list of the embedded plugins.

  • Ubuntu 12.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 14.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 15.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 16.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 17.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 18.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 18.10 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 19.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 19.10 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 20.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 20.10 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Ubuntu 21.04 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Centos 6 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Centos 7 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Centos 8 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • CloudLinux 6 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • CloudLinux 7 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • CloudLinux 8 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Debian 7 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Debian 8 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Debian 9 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Debian 10 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Debian 11 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Oracle Linux 6 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Oracle Linux 7 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Red Hat 7.3 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Red Hat 7.4 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Red Hat 8.0 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Amazon Linux 2016.03 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Amazon Linux 2016.09 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Amazon Linux 2017.03 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Amazon Linux 2017.09 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Amazon Linux 2018.03 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)
  • Amazon Linux 2 (AMD64, ARM v7 and v8)

Microsoft Windows

  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2019

Containerized environments

  • Docker, ContainerD
  • Kubernetes

Install and configure the Snap Agent

See the following topics to learn how to install, configure, and use the Snap Agent: