Documentation forSolarWinds Platform Self-Hosted

What devices to monitor with SolarWinds Platform and what do you need to know about them?

This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform (self-hosted) products.

Your network consists of physical and virtual elements that communicate with each other. You need to decide what devices (virtual or physical) and what properties of these devices you need to monitor.

Different SolarWinds Platform products monitor different entities. For example, NPM monitors nodes, interfaces, and volumes.

Monitored entities influence:

  • The license you need
  • The storage you need for the polled data - the more entities you poll, the more storage you need.
  • The polling engine performance - the more entities you poll, the more performance you need.

How many entities are in your license?

Review the number of currently monitored entities and find out how many entities are included in your license.

  1. Click Settings > All Settings > License Details.

  2. Review the total nodes, volumes, HA pools in the license and currently monitored entities.

  3. In the module sections, review the allowed number of module-specific entities. For NPM, review the number of interfaces in the license and the number of monitored interfaces.

If you are close to the limit for your current license tier, consider upgrading the license.

If upgrading the license is not an option, review the monitored entities, and remove less important devices from monitoring.

View monitored entities

  1. Click Settings > Manage Nodes.
  2. Click New Manage Entities page.
    This page lists all entities monitored with your SolarWinds Platform products.
  3. Review the list of entities and make sure you are monitoring the critical devices and resources.

    To remove a node from monitoring, select the node, and click More > Delete.

What data is polled for monitored entities

Data polled for individual entities is specified by so called "pollers". Default pollers are provided by SolarWinds.

Different SolarWinds Platform products monitor different entities, and provide different data for them. For example, NPM monitors the status of your devices, and other network performance metrics, such as:

Product-specific monitoring