Documentation forSolarWinds Observability

Host monitoring options

In SolarWinds Observability, there are two main options you can use to monitor hosts.

Agent-based monitoring

  • Used for detailed observability data.
  • SolarWinds Observability Agents (Agents) and monitoring plugins are based on the OpenTelemetry (OTel) standard, giving you the flexibility to add more features.
  • Ensures that there is only one entity when you monitor a host both by the Agent and using a cloud account, such as AWS EC2.
  • See Add a self-managed host, Configure native OTel integrations.

Agent-less / Cloud API-based monitoring

Agent-based vs Agent-less monitoring

  Agent-based Agent-less (Cloud API-based)
Installation Lightweight installation on the host No software needs to be installed on the host
Agent Management Directly in SolarWinds Observability:
  • Restart the Agent
  • Stop/Start, Restart plugins running under the Agent
 Centralized management and monitoring of multiple cloud hosts from a single location
Monitoring capabilities Configure monitoring to suit specific needs to monitor services, processes, and events relevant for the host, such as:
  • Memory utilization
  • Memory utilization by state
  • CPU utilization by state
  • Additional host details, such as host uptime, kernel architecture, kernel version, platform, platform family, platform version, and more are being added.

Basic data for monitored hosts

Optional real-time monitoring with API streaming to quickly detect and address issues as soon as they occur
Entity consolidation

One entity in SolarWinds Observability, no matter what is monitored (if both Agent and cloud monitoring is configured)

Agents can be used to relate entities, for example if a database is on the same server as host, you can use one Agent to monitor both.

 One entity in SolarWinds Observability, no matter what is monitored (if both Agent and cloud monitoring is configured)
Extensibility

Additional monitoring can be enabled easily to add custom data (NGINX, Apache, ZooKeeper, Elasticsearch, Memcached, Redis,...)

One Agent can monitor multiple aspects, by deploying multiple plugins, such as host, network, or database monitoring

 Easily scalable to monitor large numbers of cloud hosts but only basic data
Diagnostics
  • Download Agent and plugin logs from SolarWinds Observability for support use cases
  • Collect logs via Agent-based Logs collection
 Depends on the API supported by the host
Security Secure data ingestion channel Secure data by design
Data collection frequency Every 30 seconds Every 5 minutes
Standardization Based on OpenTelemetry (OTel), consistent data, can be easily analyzed and compared Depends on the API supported by the host
Interoperability Easy integration with other tools, such as tracing and logging systems Depends on the API supported by the host