Documentation forSolarWinds Platform Self-Hosted

AI assistant

The AI assistant, the SolarWinds® AI agent, in Observability Self-Hosted introduces natural-language interaction directly within the platform. Instead of manually navigating through multiple dashboard views or constructing complex filters, you can ask questions in plain language and receive immediate insights based on your monitored environment.

AI assistant is also available as a separate preview in SolarWinds Observability SaaS, where no Platform Connect setup is required. This topic covers AI assistant in SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted. For the agent in SaaS, see AI Assistant for SolarWinds Observability SaaS.

Prerequisites

  • SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted 2026.1 or later

Enable AI assistant

This setup configures Platform Connect using a new SolarWinds Observability SaaS user account for the selected cloud provider and enables AI assistant.

  1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click the AI assistant icon in the menu bar. The AI assistant preview panel opens and prompts you to enable the feature.

    If your user account doesn’t have administrator privileges, you cannot enable the feature. Click Notify administrator to send a request to your administrator.

  2. If you have administrator privileges, select your cloud provider and enter your email.

  3. Review the SolarWinds SaaS supplement, and then click Agree and connect. This configures Platform Connect and enables AI assistant so you can chat with AI assistant in the side panel.

    To enable the Anomaly-Based Alerting or individual SolarWinds Observability SaaS integration features, click Advanced Setup Wizard, and enable required features.

    You can also click the Platform Connect button in the menu bar and change the features on the Settings tab.

    See SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Features and SolarWinds Observability SaaS Integration.

When the configuration is complete, click the AI assistant icon () in the menu bar to open the chat. It can take a few minutes for the icon to appear after Platform Connect is configured.

AI assistant is not enabled until you complete the Platform Connect setup. If you don't have administrator privileges, you can request enablement directly from the AI assistant panel; see Set up Platform Connect (simplified).

Current Capabilities

AI assistant focuses on the SolarWinds knowledge base documentation and the current state of your monitored infrastructure. It performs best when answering questions related to:

  • Nodes: status, health, and resource utilization

  • Volumes: capacity, consumption, and threshold levels

  • Interfaces: error rates, discards, and bandwidth usage

  • Active alerts: severity, affected entities, and recent activity

  • Virtualization: vCenters, datacenters, clusters, hosts, virtual machines, and datastores

  • Applications and components: status and down components

  • Platform and licensing: general questions about your deployment

  • Knowledge Base guidance: explanations, insights, and instructions drawn from our technical documentation library

AI assistant is designed for observation only and does not modify configurations, execute scripts, or perform remediation actions.

Limitations

This release includes a limited data scope, and AI assistant does not yet access all data sources within the platform. It is designed for observation only and does not modify configurations, execute scripts, or perform remediation actions.

Answers are generated based on the monitored data currently available in your deployment and on historical data. Missing or outdated data may result in incomplete responses.

Privacy and security

AI assistant operates against your organization's monitored data within SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted to surface insights that help operational decisions. SolarWinds does not train its models on customer data. All communications are encrypted, conversations are linked to your user account, and any change to your environment requires your approval.

See Role-based access control for details on access control.

For details on data handling, retention, and model training, see AI assistant for Observability Self-Hosted FAQ.

Learn more