Documentation forSolarWinds Platform Self-Hosted

Monitor cloud instances and VMs

This topic applies only to the following products:

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted

IPAM — NAM — NPM — SAM — VMAN

To support hybrid environments, the SolarWinds Platform can retrieve data from supported cloud service platforms to track availability, performance, applications, and more for instances and VMs. Examples of data gathered include status, storage capacity, memory usage, and IP addresses.

Supported cloud platforms

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

How does cloud monitoring work?

Available cloud monitoring options depend on the SolarWinds Platform products you have installed, on your cloud solution, and on the data the products collect.

API polling and limits

To retrieve status and metric data for monitored clouds (cloud metrics), the SolarWinds Platform sends API requests to cloud service providers. Most providers include up to 1 million requests per month free. Additional requests may incur charges based on your provider’s pricing.

Cloud service APIs are used to collect information, such as resource status, volume IDs, subnet IDs, memory usage, CPU usage, and IP addresses. This polling occurs at regular intervals and is influenced by the number of monitored resources and configured polling frequency.

If you need operating system-level data, such as detailed memory metrics, or want to use additional polling methods like SolarWinds Platform Agent, WMI, or SNMP, manage the cloud instance in the SolarWinds Platform as a node.

Cloud metrics vs OS metrics

Cloud monitoring primarily relies on cloud metrics, which differ from operating system (OS) metrics. OS metrics directly capture values from the core system and do not account for shared resource allocation across cloud environments. As a result, cloud metrics and OS metrics can report different values at the same point in time.

Throttling and rate limiting

Cloud service providers use throttling to manage the volume of API requests sent to their services. When polling activity places excessive load on cloud infrastructure, providers may temporarily limit requests to maintain performance and meet service‑level agreements (SLAs).

Throttling limits can apply by time, region, or cloud account. You can configure alerts to notify you as API usage approaches these limits. To reduce the risk of throttling, increase polling intervals or limit API polling for selected resources.

Supported features

Review what individual SolarWinds Platform products support.

Monitoring specific cloud features with SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, such as databases, load balancers, applications, or storage, requires a node license for each monitored entity.

Product AWS Azure GCP
SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted - no extra licenses required
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
  • DNS Zones
  • Route 53
  • Site to Site Connections
  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
  • VM (not managed as nodes)
  • Volumes
  • VPN Gateways
  • Cloud Zones
  • DNS Zones
  • VM (not managed as nodes)
  • V-Net Gateways
  • V-Nets
  • Volumes
  • Site to Site Connections
  • Persistent Disks
  • VM (not managed as nodes)
  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
  • VPN Gateways
SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted - features that require node licenses

Network

  • Direct Connect
  • Load balancers
  • AWS Transit Gateway

Storage

  • AWS Storage - S3

Compute

  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  • Elastic Kubernetes
  • AWS Lambda Functions

Database

  • AWS DynamoDB
  • AWS SQL Databases
    • SQL RDS
    • PostgreSQL RDS
    • MySQL RDS
    • Oracle RDS

VMs managed as nodes

Network

  • Application Gateway
  • ExpressRoute
  • Azure Virtual WAN
  • Load balancers

Storage

  • Blob Storage
  • Azure Table storage

Compute

  • Azure App Services
  • Azure Functions
  • Azure Kubernetes Service

Database

  • CosmosDB
  • SQL DB
  • Postgres
  • MySQL
  • Managed instance

VMs managed as nodes

Network

Storage

  • GCP Cloud Storage

Compute

Database

  • GCP Databases

    • SQL Server
    • MySQL
    • PostgreSQL

NPM - no extra licenses required

N/A
  • V-Net Gateways
  • V-Nets
  • Site to Site Connections
 N/A

SAM, VMAN - no extra licenses required
  • VM
  • VM
 N/A

IPAM - no extra licenses required
  • Route 53
  • Azure DNS
 N/A

How do I configure it?

  1. Review recommendations and requirements for cloud monitoring.
  2. Configure your cloud account to interact with the SolarWinds Platform.
  3. Gather credentials in your cloud console.
  4. Add the cloud account to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

After you have configured your cloud account both in the cloud and in the SolarWinds Platform, you can explore cloud instances and VMs on the Cloud Summary page.

As new features are added, you may need to adjust your cloud monitoring configuration to access them. This can include granting additional permissions or enabling new settings both with your cloud provider and in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console. Review your monitoring settings regularly to ensure continued and complete data collection.

Additional resources

In addition to the SolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, check out these resources to learn more about cloud monitoring with SolarWinds products: