Documentation forNetwork Performance Monitor
Monitoring network performance is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Essentials edition. Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is also available in a standalone module.

Set up Network Insight for F5® BIG-IP® load balancers in NPM

To monitor the servers and connections in your load balancing environment, make sure your F5 devices meet the following requirements, add the F5 devices for monitoring, and enable F5 iControl.

Requirements

Requirement Details
supported modules

F5 Local Traffic Managers (LTMs)

BIG-IP DNS (formerly called Global Traffic Managers or GTMs)
SNMP

used to poll everything except for health monitors

TMOS version 11.2 and later (including 12.0)
iControl by F5

used to poll health monitors and to enable and disable the rotation of pool members

TMOS version 11.6 and later

The iControl account used in NPM must be a local account on the F5 device. You cannot use Active Directory or TACACS accounts.

Add F5 devices and enable iControl

Add F5 devices hosting global traffic managers (GTMs) and local traffic managers (LTMs) for monitoring.

You need Node Management Rights. See Define what users can access and do.

  1. Click Settings > All Settings, and click Add Node in the Getting Started grouping.

  2. Enter the IP address for the device.

  3. Select Most Devices: SNMP and ICMP as the polling method.

  4. Enable F5 iControl:

    1. Scroll down to Additional Monitoring Options, select Poll for F5 iControl, provide the credentials for accessing the iControl API on the F5, and click Test.

      Starting with 2023.2, the credentials are used for retrieving an API token. The token is further used for identification. Using API tokens for authentication improves both security and performance. To disable token-based authentication, see Polling Settings.

    2. If iControl does not run on the default port 443, select Advanced Settings, and provide the port.

  5. Complete the Add Node wizard.

Both status information and health statistics will be collected on the F5 device, and you can now monitor your load balancing environment:

See Discover your network with the Discovery Wizard to add more F5 devices at the same time.

Enable iControl on F5 load balancers

When your F5 devices are already monitored in NPM, make sure iControl is enabled. F5 iControl API is used for collecting health monitor statistics from load balancers, and for enabling and disabling the rotation of pool members.

  1. Click Settings > Manage Nodes.
  2. Select the node, and click Edit Properties.
  3. Enable F5 iControl.
  4. Click Submit.

Now you can enable and disable the rotation of pool members and see the health monitors polled on the node.