SolarWinds Platform Collector Support

Starting with Orion Platform 2020.2.1, you can distribute the load on your monitoring environment by deploying SolarWinds Platform Collectors (Collectors) - lightweight polling engines.

• Collectors use the Agent technology to communicate with the SolarWinds Platform
• Collectors do not need a direct connection to the database
• Collectors are easy to deploy in remote locations, thanks to their simplified architecture
• Collectors can poll/cache over unreliable networks (store up to 24 hours with no connection to the polling engine)

You cannot use Collectors to poll nodes monitored via the Agent method

Review the supported technologies, SolarWinds Platform products, and other requirements.

You can use Collectors to monitor nodes that support additional polling options. However, you will have to disable the features not fully supported by Collector and will only monitor the Collector-supported features.

Product supporting Collector	Supported features	Limited support	Not supported features
NAM 2020.2.1 (NPM, SAM)	Common SolarWinds Platform metrics Node CPU Node Memory Node Status Node Response Volumes Other module-specific features Device Studio Device View Duplex Mismatch FiberChannel Hardware Health Interfaces Multicast NEC Nexus Routing & VFR Switch Stack Topology UnDP VLANs Wireless Wireless Heatmaps	ACI ASA F5 Palo Alto	Energywise NetPath Orchestrators and SD-WAN Creating automatic dependencies for nodes assigned to Collectors
SAM (node-based license only)	AppInsight for Active Directory AppInsight for IIS AppInsight for SQL AppInsight for Exchange Most application monitor templates Asset inventory Hardware Health		API Poller UCS Nutanix Container monitoring AppOptics JMX

Supported SolarWinds Platform products

• NAM 2020.2.1 (NPM 2020.2.1)

• SAM 2020.2.1 with node-based licenses

  See Use SolarWinds Platform Collectors with SAM for details.

Limited support

SolarWinds Platform Collectors only support SNMP or WMI pollers, it does not support any data polled by any additional monitoring options. You cannot use Collectors to monitor the information polled using additional credentials. You can use Collectors to poll basic data using SNMP (node CPU, memory, status, response time, or volume details) from these devices.

Devices requiring extra credentials to get full monitoring experience:

• Cisco ACI (Poll for Cisco ACI)
• Cisco ASA (Enable CLI Polling)
• Cisco Nexus devices (Enable CLI polling)
• F5 devices (Poll for F5 iControl)
• Palo Alto devices (Poll for Palo Alto)

Poll basic data on devices that require additional polling options for full experience

To poll only basic data for these devices, disable the additional monitoring option. Then you can edit the node properties and select the Collector to poll the data.

1. Go to the Node Details view and click Edit Node in the Management widget.
2. Scroll down, disable the additional polling, and submit the changes:
   • For Cisco ACI, clear the Poll for Cisco ACI box.
   • For Cisco ASA or Cisco Nexus devices, clear the Enable CLI Polling box.
   • For F5, clear the Poll for F5 iControl box.
   • For Palo Alto devices, clear the Poll for Palo Alto box.
3. When you click Edit Node again, you can assign the node to be polled by the Collector - it will appear in the Polling Engine drop down list.

Troubleshooting

I cannot see the option to assign an Collector to poll my node (it is not in the drop-down box)

Check that the node does not poll any technology that is not supported by Collector or that has limited support. If the node is polling a not supported technology, Collectors cannot be used to poll the node and thus are not displayed.

To resolve the issue:

• Poll the node using an additional polling engine.
• Stop monitoring not fully supported technologies on the node and then assign the node to an Collector.