Documentation forSolarWinds Observability SaaS

Subscription

The Subscription dashboard provides an at-a-glance overview of the monitoring areas and the entities within these areas that you are entitled to use based on your subscription plan. For example, when you add Network Observability to your subscription plan, you are entitled to monitor a certain number of network devices with SolarWinds Observability SaaS. The number of monitored entities depends on how many of these entities you added to your plan. On the Subscription dashboard, you can learn which entity types you are licensed to use in each monitoring area, observe the current and historical usage of each licensed entity, review your subscription type or the date when your licenses expire, enabling you to properly plan your expenses. The dashboard also provides an option to choose your subscription plan or add more entities to your current plan.

To access the Subscription dashboard, click Settings > Subscription.

The Subscription dashboard lists the monitoring areas in SolarWinds Observability SaaS and provides the following details for each area:

  • Usage: Shows the number of licensed entities used from a total number of entities added in your current subscription plan. For more information, see How is subscription usage calculated.

  • Units: Entity type.

    The example above assumes you have added 1000 hosts to your subscription plan, and your are currently monitoring 151 hosts within Infrastructure monitoring.

  • As of: The date of the Usage data being updated.

  • Usage history: Graph displaying the usage of your licensed entities for the past month.

  • Dynamic limit: Shows if the dynamic limit is enabled, disabled, or unavailable. For more information, see Dynamic limit for log ingestion.

  • Data retention: Specifies the time for which data are stored until they expire and are permanently deleted.

  • Subscription type: Type of plan you subscribed to.

  • Subscription expiration: The date when your current subscription plan expires.

To choose your subscription plan or add monitoring areas and entities to your current plan, click Choose your plan.

As your subscription plan is based on the number of entities licensed for each monitoring area, SolarWinds Observability SaaS displays a warning banner on top of the Subscription dashboard when you are about to reach the limits for your current subscription plan.

How is subscription usage calculated?

Application Observability (APM)

The cost of your APM subscription depends on the number of active services, such as processes being monitored by various APM agents, such as Go, Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, or Python. If SolarWinds Observability SaaS receives telemetry data from a service during any time interval, that running instance of a service is considered active.

Application service instances can be in the cloud, on-premise, persistent, ephemeral, lightweight, heavyweight, or have dynamic numbers based on your capacity needs. SolarWinds Observability SaaS pricing for Application Observability adapts to correspond with that dynamic nature and value provided. You can have your monitored APM service instances running on a traditional host, virtual machine, container, or any other infrastructure type - the subscription price will calculated the same way for any type.

Digital Experience Observability (DEM: Synthetics)

The price of your Digital Experience Observability – Synthetics subscription is based on the number of synthetic checks configured (uptime checks or synthethic transactions). Each Digital Experience Observability – Synthetics availability bundle comes with ten synthetic checks. In each bundle you purchase, you can configure up to ten uptime checks or two Synthetic transactions.

Availability checks

Use the following formula to determine how many uptime checks are configured for each website:

Tested protocols x Locations tested from = Synthetic checks configured

For example, if you want to test a website’s availability and response time from London and Los Angeles using both the HTTPS and HTTP protocol, you will need four uptime checks for that website.

If you have ten websites you want to monitor with that same configuration, the total number of uptime checks for your organization would be 40. To observe these websites, order a quantity of four Digital Experience Observability – Synthetics bundles.

For each uptime check you purchase, you can run its individual tests as frequently as every 60 seconds. You will only pay per check configured, no matter how frequently the check’s tests run. For the example above, with 40 tests configured you could run up to 57,600 tests a day.

Synthetic transactions

Use the following formula to determine how many Synthetic transactions are configured:

5 Synthetic checks X Locations tested from = Synthetic transaction checks count

For example, if you want to test your website's checkout functionality from Boston, VA and Oregon, you would need two Synthetic transactions (which counts as ten Synthetic checks).

Like with uptime checks, for each Synthetic transaction you purchase, you only pay for the check count and not how often the check is executed.

Digital Experience Observability (DEM: Real User Monitoring)

The price of your Digital Experience Observability – Real User Monitoring (RUM) subscription is based on bundles of 100,000 pageviews per month. To decide how many bundles to order for your website(s), determine the total number of pageviews you expect to get each month and divide by 100,000. For example, if you expect 1,200,000 pageviews per month, you will need to order a quantity of 12 of RUM bundles.

Database Observability (DBO)

The Database Observability subscription is priced based on the number of active database instances you are monitoring. If a database instance receives telemetry data, such as metrics or logs, in the previous calendar day, it is considered active. A database instance is a database service that can be connected to by the SolarWinds Observability Agent. It can be local or remote over a TCP/IP connection, such as AWS RDS. A database instance must have a database agent installed. AWS RDS inferred from the CloudWatch metric is not counted as a database instance unless it is being monitored by a database agent.

Log Observability

The Log Observability subscription is based on the amount of logs ingested in the previous calendar day. You subscribe to a monthly logging plan.

Network and Infrastructure Observability

The price of your Network and Infrastructure Observability subscription is based on the number of active network devices and active infrastructure hosts monitored within the previous calendar day. If SolarWinds Observability SaaS receives telemetry data from a host or network device within the last calendar day, that host or device is considered an active infrastructure host or active network device.

Network devices and hosts can be defined as:

  • Any network device, router, hub, or switch which counts at a 1:1 ratio.

  • Any host with a SolarWinds host agent installed which counts at a 1:1 ratio.

  • Containers which count at a 10:1 ratio.

  • Any non-host cloud service (AWS, Azure) which counts at a 3:1 ratio.

Dynamic limit for log ingestion

With the Dynamic limit feature, you can manage unplanned log ingestion that would otherwise be limited by your subscription plan. You can configure the dynamic limit only if you have an active Log Observability subscription plan.

When an organization is activated, the dynamic limit is enabled and set to 200% by default. When you reach both the limit for your subscription plan and the dynamic limit, you are notified by an in-product notification banner and by an email sent to users with either an Admin role or an Owner role.

The Subscription dashboard displays the status of the dynamic limit. To enable or disable the dynamic limit or to set the dynamic limit value, open the Subscription details panel by clicking anywhere in the Logs table row on the Subscription dashboard. The dynamic limit value can be set from 101% through 1000%.

Disabling the dynamic limit while in the dynamic limit range may result in immediate capping.

Dynamic limit use cases

Use case 1: You disable the dynamic limit and reach your subscription plan of 1 GB per month. This results in logs being discarded until the next billing period.

Use case 2: You enable the dynamic limit, set the dynamic limit value to 500%, and reach your subscription plan of 1 GB per month. This results in logs still being ingested until you reach 500% of your subscription plan, 5 GB in total. After reaching the dynamic limit, logs are discarded until the next billing period.