Entity health

Metrics, performance data, entity availability, and other telemetry data are collected for each entity type added to SolarWinds Observability SaaS. Telemetry data is displayed in real-time or presented historically in entity widgets. Collected telemetry data helps create a baseline for the typical operating performance of your monitored entity. Anomalies indicate when the operating performance for your entity deviates from the baseline, and alerts notify users when key metrics, logs, or events match pre-defined conditions. An entity's overall health can be determined by analyzing the anomalies and alerts for key metrics.

The health state provides real-time insight into the overall health and performance of your monitored entities. The health state represents the deviation in performance from your entity's typical performance and is determined based on anomalies detected for the entity, alerts triggered for the entity's metrics, and the status of the entity. The impact of these factors can be customized.

The health state is displayed as one of the following categories: 

• Green: Good.
• Yellow: Some degradation, moderate impact.
• Red: Requires immediate attention.
• Grey: Unknown. (This happens when the telemetry data stops flowing without any state change event from the entity)

How an entity's health state is determined

Each entity type's health state is calculated based on a combination of telemetry data:

• Entity state: The current state of the entity compared to typical recorded telemetry. Possible states vary by entity type. Changes to the state can affect the entity's overall health state.
  

• Anomalies: Entity performance is based on a combination of key metrics that help to determine anomalous patterns in your entity. These key metrics and anomalies vary by entity type.

• Alerts: You can set alerts for each entity type. Some out-of-the-box alerts are created when an entity is added for monitoring.

  When an alert is triggered, it can affect how the alert data for an entity is assessed. The alert severity determines the effect. For most entity types that use the system defaults, any triggered Critical alerts cause alert data to be classified as bad. Warning alerts cause alert data to be classified as moderate. Info alerts have no impact.

  Use the Health settings page to determine how alert severity affects the health state for an entity type and to customize it if needed.

Each of these telemetry data types (entity state, anomalies, and alerts) has a value of either good, moderate, or bad. The data type with the worst value determines the entity's overall health state. This means that:

• If all types have a value good, the entity's health state is Good.

• If at least one type is moderate and all others are good, the entity's health state is Moderate.

  For example, if alerts are moderate but the entity state and anomalies are good, the entity's health state is Moderate.

• If any type is bad, the entity's health state is Bad.

  For example, if anomalies are bad but the entity state and alerts are good, the entity's health state is Bad.

View entity health state

Since health is an important indicator for whether an entity needs immediate attention, it can be found throughout SolarWinds Observability SaaS. The following is a list of some of the places that include the health state of an entity.

Entity lists in the Entity Explorer and area overviews

In the Entity Explorer and some area overviews, entities are listed in either a grid or list view.

In Grid View, the color of the hexagon indicates whether the entity's health state is Good, Moderate, Bad, or Unknown. The number inside the hexagon indicates how many entities in the specific state there are.

In List View, a table lists each entity. The first column of the table displays the health state, with a colored icon and text indicating whether the entity's health is Good, Moderate, Bad, or Unknown.

Entity Explorer details view for an individual entity

Click an individual entity in the Entity Explorer. The Health widget for the current entity is included on the Overview tab or the Health tab.

An individual entity's health widget includes two components: the entity's current health and a timeline of the health history over the selected time period. The current health is displayed as one of four states: Good, Moderate, Bad, or Unknown with the background color of the current health reflecting the state. Next to the current health is a timeline charting the health states of the entity over the selected time period. The health state changes plotted on the timeline represent the worst health state occurring within the specified time period. If telemetry data was not received for the entity at any point in time, causing the health to be unavailable, there will be a gap in the timeline.

The Health tab shows detailed information about the entity's health. The Health tab includes the entity's current health and the timeline of the health history in a Health widget and a Health Events table. The Health Events table lists the events, such as anomalies and alerts, that affected the entity's health during the specified time period. Click an event to open the Event Data panel.

Entity Explorer details view for a group of entities

Click an entity group or an individual entity in the Entity Explorer. Health widgets for an entity group or entities related to the current entity in the Entity Explorer details view summarize the entities' health states using a donut chart, grouping the entities based on Good, Moderate, Bad, or Unknown health states.

Area overview

Click an area overview for a specific monitoring area to view the health states for all entities in that monitoring area. Health widgets in area overviews summarize the entities' health states using a donut chart, grouping the entities based on Good, Moderate, Bad, or Unknown health states.

Customize how conditions affect the entity health state

You can determine how affect how the health state is calculated for each entity type. Only system administrators or owners can edit the health configuration.

1. In the left pane, click Settings. Then under My Settings, click Health.

   The Health settings page lists all entity types. It indicates whether each entity type uses a custom configuration or the default configuration, when the configuration was updated, and who updated it.

2. Click the entity type whose health configuration you want to change.

   A sidebar opens, showing the current health configuration for that entity.

3. To make changes, click Edit Configuration.

   The Events and Health Impact panel lists the events, alerts, statuses, and anomalies that could affect the health state of entities of the selected type.

4. To change the affect that an item has on entities of the selected data type, select an option from the drop-down menu: Bad, Moderate, or No Impact.

   When No Impact is selected, the drop-down menu is disabled. To change a selection from No Impact to Bad or Moderate, first select the checkbox on the right and then select a menu option.

   Example: By default, alerts with a severity of Info do not affect the alert health value. If you want the alert health value to change to Moderate when an Info alert is triggered, change Info to Moderate on the Events and Health panel.

5. Click Save.