Migrate from Pingdom to SolarWinds Observability SaaS

Digital Experience Monitoring in SolarWinds Observability SaaS supports many of the features you’ve grown to known and love in Pingdom. However, things may look slightly different and be called different things. We’ve highlighted a few things you might be interested in below.

Why I should migrate

SolarWinds Observability SaaS moves beyond monitoring individual URLs to provide full digital experience observability for your website and infrastructure. With SolarWinds Observability SaaS, you get a comprehensive overview of the status of your website, and you can view all aspects of your website in a single place. Add infrastructure, application, database, and network monitoring to get a full picture of the entire environment supporting your website. HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and URLs are supported in SolarWinds Observability SaaS.

What do I need to know, coming from Pingdom?

Digital experience monitoring in SolarWinds Observability SaaS tracks the performance and availability of external websites using synthetic monitoring methods or monitoring real user activity and experiences.

Just like in Pingdom, websites and URIs can be monitored using synthetic methods. Probes periodically connect to the website or URI and perform tests that verify the availability and report it's uptime, whether the SSL/TLS certificate will expire, and response times from the uptime tests. See Synthetic monitoring for details about the synthetic availability tests.

Real user monitoring (RUM) in SolarWinds Observability SaaS is accomplished in a way similar to Pingdom. When adding a website and selecting RUM, you will be provided a script to place into the HTML of your website. When a visitor accesses your website, the JavaScript sends data collected from the browser to SolarWinds Observability SaaS. This data may include details about the user, such as where they are located or what browser they use, and details about their experiences interacting with the website, such as page load times. See Real user monitoring for more details about collecting RUM data.

Websites

A website entity in SolarWinds Observability SaaS allows you to monitor and collect data from many aspects of your website, such as the availability (uptime) of a specific URL or the user experience (RUM) of all or some of the pages in your site. All of the data collected for your website is now available in one consolidated place. You no longer have to look at the results of your website’s checks separately. See Add a website.

URIs

A URI entity in SolarWinds Observability SaaS allows you to monitor the availability (uptime) of specific domains, URLs, or IPs using protocols other than HTTP and HTTPS. All of the data collected for your URI is now available in one consolidated place. You no longer have to look at the results of your URI’s checks separately. See Add a URI.

Synthetic transactions

Synthetic transaction monitoring with SolarWinds Observability SaaS provides a way to automate and test website interactions synthetically so that you can be sure your website is performing as intended. See Add a Synthetic transaction.

Outages

Monitor your website entity downtime and outages with Digital Experience. Digital Experience measures an outage after a monitored entity fails two consecutive Availability checks in any given region. See Outages.

Digital Experience Data

To see an overview of all Digital Experience Monitoring data collected for your websites and URIs or locate a specific website or URI entity, click Digital Experience in the side navigation. See Digital experience monitoring for more information about viewing a website or URI entity.

Use the Metrics Explorer to examine Digital Experience data deeper, looking at metric history or grouping metric data by website or URI name or attribute. See Website and URI metrics.

Alerts

When a new website or URI entity is added, out-of-the box alerts are created for when the website or URI is unavailable. After adding a website or URI for monitoring, you can create an alert for any metric(s) collected for your entity. See Alerts for information about creating alerts.

What do I need to configure manually?

Add RUM to a new Website entity

To configure Real User Monitoring (RUM) on a new SolarWinds Observability website entity, you can click Add Data > Real User Monitoring in the Add Data wizard. See Real User Monitoring.

Add RUM to an existing Website entity

Add RUM to websites entities that were migrated from Pingdom.

1. Click Digital Experience > Availability.

2. Click the desired website entity, to continue to the Entity Explorer.

3. Click the vertical ellipsis on the upper right screen, and then click Edit.

4. Click the Real User Monitoring toggle in the basics section. Click Next.

5. Modify any availability settings. Click Next.

6. Copy the RUM code, and add the script immediately before the </body> tag on your page or site. Click Next.
   

   Note: If you are adding RUM to a website migrated from Pingdom where RUM was configured, and you want to keep RUM monitoring on Pingdom, paste the SolarWinds Observability RUM snippet after the pingdom snippet.

   If you want to replace Pingdom RUM monitoring with SolarWinds Observability RUM, replace the Pingdom snippet with the SolarWinds Observability RUM snippet.

7. Review the website entity summary. Click Save.

Whitelist Digital Experience Probes

You should whitelist the SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience probes, domain IPs, and webhooks like you did in Pingdom. Click here for a list of probe IPs.

Manage users in Pingdom and SolarWinds Observability

Invite new users to SolarWinds Observability

When you are migrated to SolarWinds Observability, the migration only takes place once. Users that are in Pingdom are migrated to SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience. If you want to add new users to Pingdom and SolarWinds Observability, you will need to do so in each product separately after the migration has completed.

Set up SAML for SolarWinds Observability users

If you had SAML configured for users in Pingdom, those users can verify their SAML connections with the existing SAML IDP after the migration has completed.

Set up a new SAML IDP for SolarWinds Observability

SolarWinds recommends creating a new IDP for SolarWinds Observability, and adding new users to the IDP so they can authenticate through it. See Configure SAML.

SolarWinds recommends moving existing Pingdom users to the new SAML created for SolarWinds Observability to future proof product access.

What else should I know about SolarWinds Observability SaaS?

What is happening to my Pingdom account?

Nothing at first. Over the next 30-60 days, we will move you to the next generation of Pingdom, SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience Monitoring.

Why are we making this change?

Based on your feedback, we’ve built a new platform that takes advantage of Pingdom's best capabilities and provides additional functions, including a machine-learning engine. SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience is the next generation of Pingdom, and it's been coming for a long time.

What is Digital Experience?

Digital experience monitoring tracks the performance and availability of external websites and URIs using synthetic monitoring methods or monitoring real user activity and experiences. In Pingdom, you created individual checks to monitor a single aspect (for example, your website’s uptime) of a website or URI. Now in SolarWinds Observability SaaS, create website or URI entities to monitor and collect data from many aspects of your website (for example, the availability of a specific URL).

The Digital Experience area overview, available in the left pane, consolidates all of the data collected for every aspect of your monitored websites and URIs. You can then drill in to see a summary of a single website or URI’s data and view other details about the selected entity. All of the test results that were available in separate uptime checks, transaction checks, page speed checks, and Real User Monitoring pages can be found in one simple location in SolarWinds Observability SaaS.

We are very busy, and we love Pingdom as it is; what do I need to do for this migration?

We are doing everything we can to make the transition to the next generation product easy for you. We will replicate your Pingdom account so during the migration process you can use your existing account while becoming comfortable with the next generation product.

When are you making the change to SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience?

We are not rushing it, because we want to give you as much time as you need to get comfortable with our new, powerful next-generation product. Approximately 30-45 days from the first email we sent you, we will inform you that we’ve replicated your account, and you will have 30-60 days to use both, make sure all is good, and finally, at the end of approximately 90 days, you will no longer use Pingdom, but we will make it available for a time so you can get to your historical data.

How much is this going to cost me?

Nothing, the payment plan is the same. When we migrate your account, we will also move the billing to SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience, but it will be for the exact amount you are paying today.

How do I log into the SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience?

Sign in to Pingdom like you always do, then on the top right of the screen click Log me to SWO.

Where are my Uptime checks?

Pingdom uptime checks are a part ofSolarWinds Observability SaaS digital experience monitoring. A website or URI entity was created for each migrated uptime check. In some cases, two uptime checks might be merged into one website. For example, this could happen if you were monitoring the same website in Pingdom with different protocols.

Why am I missing some of my data?

If you are missing any of your pingdom configuration or if any data are missing please contact us at pingdomng-questions@solarwinds.com for the fastest resolution.

Does my test data expire?

Digital Experience monitoring retains metric related data for 18 months and event related data for 1 month.

What Digital Experience features are available in SolarWinds Observability SaaS?

HTTP and HTTPS availability (synthetics) monitoring and real user monitoring (RUM) are available for websites, and URI entities can have TCP and Ping availability (uptime) monitoring. Synthetic Transaction Monitoring is available for monitoring customer flows (Transaction monitoring in Pingdom).

Can I create uptime check in SolarWinds Observability SaaS?

Yes, uptime checks are available, but the way you create one is a little bit different. SolarWinds Observability SaaS focuses more on the entity you are monitoring, such as a website or URI. When creating your entity, you define what you want to monitor for that entity, such as its availability (known as uptime in Pingdom) for a region or regions.

Will my changes sync between Pingdom and SolarWinds Observability SaaS?

No, this migration was a one time action to bring your Pingdom configurations to SolarWinds Observability SaaS. Changes made in Pingdom after you initiated the migration will not automatically apply to SolarWinds Observability SaaS and vice versa.

Can I migrate again if I've made more changes in Pingdom?

No, this migration is a one time action that cannot be repeated.

Can I configure MFA in SolarWinds Observability?

Yes, you can configure MFA in SolarWinds Observability. See Set up MFA.

Can I configure SAML in SolarWinds Observability?

Yes you can configure SAML in SolarWinds Observability. See Configure SAML.

I whitelisted Pingdom probes, do I need to whitelist SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience probes?

Yes, you should whitelist the SolarWinds Observability Digital Experience probes and domain IPs like you did in Pingdom. Click here for a list of probe IPs.

I had RUM configured for my website(s) in Pingdom, do I need to update the RUM snippet to get RUM data in SolarWinds Observability?

Yes, you will need to update the RUM code snippet on your website(s) to continue getting RUM data in SolarWinds Observability. See Real User Monitoring.

I get email alert notification in Pingdom, will I get email notifications from the same sender in SolarWinds Observability?

No, in Pingdom the sender email for alerts is no-reply@pingdom.com. In SolarWinds Observability, the sender email for alerts is no-reply@my.cloud.solarwinds.com. Make sure to add no-reply@my.cloud.solarwinds.com to your safe senders list.

Where can I find more information?

For an in-depth guide to everything Digital Experience in SolarWinds Observability SaaS, see Digital experience overview.