Documentation forSolarWinds Observability

Application Performance Monitoring area overview

The APM area overview displays performance metrics from the services powering your application. To access the APM area overview, click APM in the left pane.

Only services that processed requests during the selected time period are included. Click the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner to change the time period.

Identify services that might need attention

The Overview tab, which is displayed by default, highlights the monitored services that are the least reliable or poorest performing.

Choose how services are ranked

Services are ranked based on a metric (by default, current health score). To change the selected metric, click the Analyze By dropdown menu. You can choose to show service entities with the:

  • Lowest current health score
  • Lowest average health score
  • Highest request rate
  • Highest response time
  • Highest error ratio

Top 3 Services

The widgets under Top 3 Services identify the three services entities that need the most attention, based on the selected metric.

All Services

The All Services area lists all monitored services entities that processed requests during the selected time frame. Entities are ordered based on the selected metric, going from worst to best value. The following information is shown for each entity:

  • An icon and word to indicate whether the entity's health score is good, moderate, or bad
  • The name you gave the entity
  • The average health score for the entity
  • Average requests rate for the entity
  • Average response time for the entity
  • Average error ratio for the entity

Click a service entity name to view details about that entity in the Entity Explorer. Or click another location in the line to display additional information about that entity in the Inspector Panel.

View summarized information about monitored services

Click the Analysis tab to see a summary of the current status of the monitored services that processed requests during the selected time frame. The following widgets display information.

Overall Health

The number of monitored services entities whose health score is in each category (Good (70-100), Moderate (40-69) or Bad (0-39)).To view individual monitored services 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 services.

Active Alerts

An overview of the active alerts triggered by services, 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.

Total Exceptions

The total number of traced exceptions for all monitored services. To view all exceptions associated with the monitored services in the Traces Explorer, click the widget title or click the vertical ellipsis in the upper-right corner of the widget and select View all exceptions.

Services heat map

A color-coded overview of all monitored services and their transactions, request counts, and error rates. The size of each tile is based on the number of requests, and the color is based on the error rate. Transactions are grouped under services, with the service name showing above the group of transactions.

Click a service or transaction name to see more details in an Inspector Panel. To view individual monitored services 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 services.

Search for services

Use the Search box to search for a specific service or to filter the list of services based on the service name or an attribute value. When you perform a search, the Overview tab and the Analysis tab display information about only the services returned by that search.

  1. Click inside the Search box.

    The Attributes drop-down menu displays the attributes available for services.

  2. Enter the search criteria:

    To search based on a specific attribute value
    1. Click the attribute name.

      The Tag Values drop-down menu displays all values for the selected attribute that are assigned to currently displayed services.

    2. Click a value. The attribute and value are shown in key:value format. For example:

      healthScore.categoryV2:bad

    To search based on multiple attribute values
    1. Click the attribute name.

      The Tag Values drop-down menu displays all values for the selected attribute that are assigned to currently displayed services.

    2. Enter the values to include, enclosed in square brackets and separated by commas. For example, to search for services whose health scores are either bad or unknown:

      healthScore.categoryV2:[bad, unknown]

      Multiple values for an attribute are separated by an implicit OR operator. The search will return services with any of the specified values.

    To search based on the name

    Enter a string. If the string includes spaces or special characters, enclose it in quotation marks. Examples:

    exampleService
    "example service"

    The search will return all services whose name includes the string.

    The search is not case sensitive.

  3. If needed, add other conditions.

    By default, multiple conditions are separated by the AND operator. Services must match all conditions. For example, to search for services with a bad health score whose names include the string prod:

    healthScore.categoryV2:bad prod

    To search for services that meet any condition, include the OR operator. For example, to search for all services that have a bad health score or have prod in the name:

    healthScore.categoryV2:bad OR prod

    You can use parentheses to group conditions. For example, to search for all services that have a bad health score and are in maintenance, and all services with prod in the name:

    (healthScore.categoryV2:bad inMaintenance:true) OR prod

  4. Press Enter to search.

    The APM area overview shows information about only services returned by the search.

Save a search

If you regularly run the same search, you can save it run it again quickly.

  1. Enter the search conditions you want to save.

  2. Click the ribbon icon on the right side of the Search box.

    The Create Saved Search dialog opens.

  3. Enter a name to identify the search.

  4. If you want the saved search to be available only to you, select Private.

  5. Click Save.

Run a saved search

  1. Click the list icon on the right side of the Search box.

    The drop-down menu lists the saved searches for services that you have access to.

  2. Click the name of the search you want to run.

    The Search box shows the search criteria, and the search runs.

Clear search conditions

To remove all conditions, click the X on the right side of the Search box. Or, if the search did not return any results, click Clear All Filters.