Flows

If you collect NetFlow on your devices, flow details are available in the Network devices area overview or in the Flows tab for a monitored element's details view. Flow details are collected based on the Orion.Netflow.Flows.Bytes metric. See Flow metrics.

Filter flow data to display only communication inside the organization, outside of the organization or all flow data

Click the filter icon on a Flow tab, and select the Traffic Direction you want to apply. You can select multiple filter options at the same time.

• No filter selected: All flow data is displayed in the charts.

• East/West: Only flows from within the organization are displayed.

• North/South: Only flows regarding communication outside of the organization are displayed.

• Not classified: IPv6 and IPv4 multicast traffic.

Filter flow data based on time

Use time filters in the upper right part of the screen. To use a custom time range, scroll down and select Custom at the bottom of the drop-down list.

Filter flow data based on endpoints, protocols, applications, advanced applications, countries, or domains

To quickly display flow data for a specific endpoint, protocol, application, advanced application, country, or domain, click the filter icon on a Flow tab, and select the filter you want to apply.

You can apply the filters to all flow data in the Network area overview, to flow data from a specific device in the Network Device Details view, or to flow data from a specific interface in the Interface Details view.

Find network devices exporting flows (Entity Explorer)

To quickly filter out network devices that export flow data in the Entity Explorer, use options in the Last Received Flows filter.

Find devices exporting the most flow data

To determine devices that export the most flow data, click Network in the left-hand navigation, activate the Flows tab and scroll down to Top Flow Sources.

To see the interface exporting the most flow data on a device:

1. In the Network area overview > Flows tab, go to Top Flow Sources table.

2. Click a device name in the Name column in the table. This opens the Flows tab on the device details view.

3. Now on the Flows tab for the device, scroll down to the Top Flow Sources table. The table shows a list of top flow-exporting interfaces on the device.

Filter by domain

Select a domain to filter the data. If there is no data from the selected domain, no data is displayed, for example if all traffic is from private IP addresses in an internal network.

Interfaces

When a you add a network device in the Network Collector for monitoring with SolarWinds Observability, you can specify interfaces you want to monitor. See Add network devices for monitoring in SolarWinds Observability SaaS.

To see a list of monitored interfaces on a network device, find the device in the Entity Explorer and click the Interfaces tab.

The Interfaces tab displays a donut chart showing the number of interfaces monitored on the selected device, grouped by their status. The time series widget next to it displays historical interface statuses.

Click an interface to go to the interface details view. See Interface metrics and Network widgets for details.

To see a list of all monitored interfaces, click Explore, and then select Network Interfaces in the drop-down list at the top of the page.

When interfaces on different devices are shown, for example on Dashboards or on the Group views, the parent device is displayed in brackets next to the interface name.

Analyze performance

To open a custom dashboard with basic metrics for a device, click vertical ellipsis next to the device in a devices list and select Analyze Performance. You can find this action in the vertical ellipsis for network devices on the Network area overview, on entity details view, or in the Inspector Panel for the device, as a button in the Average Availability widget.

The custom dashboard includes details on the following metrics:

• Average response time
• Average CPU utilization
• Average memory utilization
• Average availability
• Average packet loss

If the device is polled only via ICMP, only the following metrics are available: average response time, average availability, and average packet loss.

You can save the dashboard for later use or add more metrics.

Ports

To monitor ports add a device that supports ports for monitoring, such as a switch.

For monitored switches, you will see a Ports tab in the Entity details view with information about used/free ports, ports usage over time, and details, such as port status, IP, vendor, or MAC address. See Network widgets.

Expand ports to display related endpoints (if available).

To find ports, you can:

• Use the search bar and search by port names.

• Filter ports by their endpoint data.

Routing

For monitored routers (devices of the Router type), you can see the Routing tab in the Entity Details view.

Routing information includes top flapping routes, routing neighbors, default route changes, or the routing table.

Sensors

If hardware health sensors are detected on a monitored network device, you can see the list of all monitored sensors on the device in the Entity Explorer, in the Sensors tab for the network device details view.

Use the search and filter options to find the sensor you are interested in and click the sensor. You will see an overview of data for the sensor and an Alerts tab with a list of unresolved alerts relevant for the selected device.

Click a sensor to display sensor data. See Sensor metrics and Network widgets for details.

VLANS

If you add a device with VLANs, the node details page includes the VLANS tab, listing all VLANs on the device.

Expand a VLAN to see more details, such as the VLAN ID, state, tag, and the list of interfaces that build the VLAN.

Volumes

When a network device's volume elements are detected and monitored, they are listed in the Volumes tab, with an overview of their status, size, percentage of used space, and the volume type.

To monitor volumes on a device, add the device in Network Collector Web Console, and make sure the volume is selected for monitoring on Choose Resources. See Set up monitoring volumes (Network Collector).

Click a volume to display volume data. See Volume metrics and Network widgets for details.