Network area overview
The Network area overview consists of the following tabs:
In the upper right corner, you can change the time settings.
Overview
The Overview tab displays metric data collected from all monitored network devices over the selected time period.
Overall Health
A health score provides real-time insight into the overall health and performance of your monitored entities. The health score is calculated based on anomalies detected for the entity, alerts triggered for the entity's metrics, and the status of the entity. The health score is displayed as a single numerical value that ranges from a Good (70-100) to Moderate (40-69) to Bad (0-39) distinction. To view individual monitored network devices and their details in the Entity Explorer, click the widget title or click the vertical ellipsis in the upper-right corner of the widget and select View all network devices.
Health Distribution
A graph displaying the number of network devices in individual health score categories over the selected time period.
Active Alerts
An overview of the active alerts triggered by network devices, categorized by severity. Active alerts are alerts that have been triggered but not cleared. This includes acknowledged alerts. For more information about the entity's active alerts, click the widget title or click the vertical ellipsis (
) in the upper-right corner of the widget and click View All Active Alerts.
Overall Health for device groups
Review the health status for all devices or device type groups, such as routers, switches, wireless controllers, or firewalls.
The All Devices tile lists all monitored network devices, by default in the List View.
- To only display specific devices, use Vendor, Machine Type, or Location filters. Click the filter icon and specify what devices should be displayed.
- To find a specific device, type a name or a tag into the search field.
- To switch to Grid View, click the Grid View icon next to the search field.
- To group devices in the Grid View, select an item in the Group by drop-down list. You can group devices by vendor, location, machine type, device type, or display all devices in one widget (Group by: None).
Device type tiles, such as Router, Switch, Wireless Controller, SD-WAN, ...
- Click a device type tile to filter the displayed data. Network Overview filtered by a device type shows a Grid View of devices of the selected type, such as routers, switches, or firewalls.
- Use available filters and search options. Within the selected device type, you can also group and sort the devices.
Group network devices within a device type group
In the Group by drop-down, select what you want to group the displayed health score data by:
- Vendor: The widgets display health score for the selected group of devices, filtered by vendor, such as Cisco or Juniper Networks, Inc.
- Location: The widgets display health score for the selected group of devices, filtered by location.
- Machine type: The widgets display health score for the selected group of devices, filtered by machine type, such as Cisco 7206 VXR, or Palo Alto Networks PA-200 series firewall.
Sort network devices within a device type group
In the Sort by drop-down, select how the data should be sorted:
- Name ascending - health score groups are sorted alphabetically, starting with A down to Z
- Name descending - health score groups are sorted alphabetically, starting with Z down to A
- Health score ascending - health score groups with the greatest number of devices in bad state are displayed first, followed by health score groups with the highest number of devices in moderate state and then health score groups with devices in good state. Devices with unknown health score are not taken into account.
- Health score descending - health score groups with the greatest number of devices in good state are displayed first, followed by moderate health score, ending with bad state.
Diagnostics
The Diagnostics tab consists of two subtabs.
-
Click PERFSTACK to see a list of custom analysis dashboards in your organization. See Create custom analysis dashboards.
-
Click NetPath to see paths to endpoints defined in your organization. See Monitor critical network paths (NetPath).
Flows
If you collect NetFlow on your devices, the following metrics can be displayed in the Flows area overview. Metrics are collected from all observed entities, based on the Orion.Netflow.Flows.Bytes metric. See Monitor flow data.
Top Protocols
A donut chart displaying the protocols used most for traffic on your monitored network.
Top Countries
A donut chart displaying the countries hosting endpoints that transmit the most data over your monitored network.
Top Endpoints
An area chart of the monitored endpoints that are producing the most traffic on your monitored network.
Top Conversations
An area chart displaying most bandwidth-consuming conversations conducted over your monitored network.
Top Applications
An area chart displaying the top applications responsible for monitored traffic on your network, ranked in order of traffic volume.
Top Advanced Applications
An area chart displaying the top applications recognized through NBAR2 responsible for monitored traffic on your network, ranked in order of traffic volume.
Top Flow Sources
Top ten devices which send flow data to SolarWinds Observability. Click the link in the Name column to go to the device details view.
Starting with Network Collector 2022.4, you can filter flow data to display only communication inside the organization, communication outside of the organization, or all flow data. Select an option in the Traffic Direction filter. See Flow filters for details.
-
All traffic: 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.
VLANS
If you add VLANs for monitoring in your Network Collector Web Console, the Network area overview includes a VLANS tab with a list of all VLANs on devices monitored in SolarWinds Observability.
Click a VLAN to see more details, such as the VLAN state, name, and the network device that hosts it.
Click the expanded VLAN to display the Inspector Panel with more details about the device, such as IP address, machine type, machine vendor, health score, average response time, CPU utilization, memory utilization, availability, or packet loss.
Click a network device to go to the network device details view where you can see more details in the VLANS tab. See VLANS.
Load Balancers
If you add F5 Load Balancers for monitoring in your Network Collector Web Console, the Network area overview includes a Load Balancers tab with the load balancing overview. Individual items are displayed as color-coded hexagons.
Hexagon color reflects the entity status:
- Up
- Warning
- Down
- Unmanaged
- Unreachable
- Unknown
The Load Balancers tab includes the following groups:
F5 services
This group lists F5 service nodes. You can monitor the nodes' State, Status reason, Role, and Requests per second (number of incoming requests that F5 load balancer can process within a one-second time frame). Click a hexagon to see details for the service node in the Inspector Panel.
F5 Global Traffic Managers
Global Traffic Managers distribute incoming client requests across multiple data centers or server pools to ensure efficient utilization of resources. Click a hexagon to see details for the global traffic manager in the Inspector Panel.
F5 Local Traffic Managers
Local Traffic Managers intelligently distribute incoming client requests across a pool of servers based on various factors such as server health, server capacity, and application-specific rules. Click a hexagon to see details for the local traffic manager in the Inspector Panel.
F5 Virtual Servers
Virtual servers act as a front-end entry point that receives incoming network traffic and distributes it to the appropriate back end servers based on predefined rules and configurations. Click a hexagon to see details for the virtual server in the Inspector Panel.
F5 Pools
Pools are collections of back-end servers or resources that share a common purpose or provide the same application or service. Click a hexagon to see details for the pool in the Inspector Panel.
F5 Pool Members
Pool members are individual back-end servers or resources that are part of a pool within a load balancer configuration. Click a hexagon to see details for the pool member in the Inspector Panel.
Show entity details or related entities
Click a hexagon to display the Inspector Panel. The Inspector Panel displays an overview of the selected entity and related entities.
To display details for a related GTM, open the Inspector Panel for a load balancer entity, click the Related Entities tab, and click the View Details button for F5 GTMs.
Click View Details to go to the entity details page.