Monitoring network devices requires a Network Collector or SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted with enabled Platform Connect.

The Network Collector uses standard protocols, such as SNMP, SSH, and APIs, to retrieve data from network devices. It gathers performance and health metrics on regular intervals and sends them to the central monitoring database for analysis and visualization.

Use the installation wizard to generate a deployment script. Run the script on the host where you want to install the Network Collector. It automatically deploys the SolarWinds Observability Agent and starts the Network Collector installation and configuration. You can monitor the progress in SolarWinds Observability SaaS.

Check whether you already have a Network Collector deployed

1. Click Take Me to Agents on the Install Network Collector screen. This opens the Agents page listing all hosts with deployed plugins.

2. Find the host where you want to deploy the Network Collector and click it. This opens the Inspector Panel, Plugins tab.

   • If there already is a Network Collector deployed, you will see a network-collector (SiteCollector) plugin in the list.

   • If you are using the Platform Connect feature to get SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted data to SolarWinds Observability SaaS, the plugin name is network-collector (CloudConnected).

Review Network Collector requirements and scalability information

• You can only install the Network Collector on a server with a supported Windows version. See Network Collector requirements

• If you plan extensive flow monitoring, SolarWinds recommends that you use a higher tier of SQL Server than MS SQL Express as the database or use a dedicated Network Collector for monitoring flow data. Review the SQL Express Limits.

• You can monitor up to 7,000 standard network devices per Network Collector. To observe more network devices, SolarWinds recommends you deploy multiple Network Collector instances to distribute the load.

  The scale can be influenced by the complexity of the network devices being monitored, such as the number of polled interfaces and/or volumes, and by polling capabilities of the Network Collector:

  • Standard network devices used for scalability testing were polled via SNMPv2 and had 15 monitored interfaces.

  • Network Collector polling capacity depends on the hardware of the server where the Network Collector is deployed.

    • To monitor up to 7,000 standard network devices, deploy the collector on a server with 16CPUs/32GB RAM (tested on Intel Xeon(r) CPU E5-2680 v3 @ 2.5GHz)
    • To monitor up to 5,000 standard network devices, deploy the collector on a server with 8CPUs/32GB RAM (tested on Intel Xeon(r) CPU E5-2680 v3 @ 2.5GHz)

• For flow monitoring, you can monitor up to 40,000 flows per second, or up to 4,000 inserts per second.

  See SolarWinds Observability SaaS System Requirements for details.

• For data in transit from the Network Collector to SolarWinds Observability SaaS, the Network Collector encrypts the data using the TLS 1.2 protocol with a 2048-bit RSA certificate.

Install the Network Collector

1. In SolarWinds Observability SaaS, click Add Data at the top.

2. On the Add Data dialog Intro, click Monitor my on-premise network and infrastructure.

3. Click Network Device.

4. On Select Network Collector, select Deploy new Network Collector.

5. Review the requirements and click Next.

6. On Prepare Ingestion Token, select a token to identify the Agent when sending the data into SolarWinds Observability SaaS and click Next.

   • To create a new token, select Generate New Token and provide a name for the new token.

   • To use an existing token, select Use Existing Token and select a token from the list.

     Not sure? See Create a new or use an existing ingestion API token?

7. On Security Recommendations, click the boxes to display links to documents (security requirements and license agreement), confirm that you have reviewed them, and click Next to continue.

   The Next button becomes available when both check boxes are selected.

   • Review the secure configuration guide and system requirements and confirm that you have reviewed both documents.

   • Review the license and confirm that you have reviewed the document.

8. On Credential Selection, specify credentials to be used for accessing the Network Collector web console and click Next:

   • To create a new set of credentials for the admin account, select Create new credentials manually, provide a display name and a password.

   • To generate credentials automatically, select Generate credentials automatically. The credentials will be generated during the installation and saved in %ProgramData%\Solarwinds\UAMSClient\plugin-storage\network-collector-deployment-plugin\SilentConfigWizardSoc.xml.

   • To select existing credentials, choose Select existing credentials and select a credentials set from the drop-down list.

9. On Install Agent, complete the following steps:

   1. Consider setting up a host name. Click the Set up host name toggle and type a host name into the provided field. The specified host name is added to the script.

   2. Copy the provided script to clipboard.

10. Log in to the server where you want to install the Network Collector and run the installer using the copied PowerShell script.

    You can monitor the installation progress in the SolarWinds Observability SaaS wizard. When the Agent is installed, the Next button in Install Agent becomes active. Click it to proceed to the Install Network Collector screen, where you can view real-time messages on the installation progress.

    When you run the script on the host, the installation proceeds automatically. You can close the wizard and track the progress by reviewing Network Collector installation events.

11. After the installation completes, configure the Network Collector on the target host. You can use default options.

All activities necessary for providing data from the Network Collector to SolarWinds Observability SaaS are performed automatically. Just specify network devices you want to monitor.

See Troubleshoot Network Collector installation issues if necessary.