AppStack Environment categories and data

By default, the following categories appear in the AppStack Environment that you can access by clicking My Dashboards > Home > Environment categories in the SolarWinds Platform:

• Groups
• Containers
• Chassis
• Applications
• Database Instances
• Servers
• Hosts
• Virtual Clusters
• Virtual Data Centers
• Virtual Centers
• Volumes
• API Pollers

Other SolarWinds Platform products offer more categories. For example, if your deployment includes SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM), Transactions and Steps categories also appear.

Category Status Summary indicators along the right side of page parse, enumerate, and display the number of objects in each category, emphasizing the status as indicated by the colors.

Supported categories and data

The following matrix outlines categories associated with the AppStack Environment view, which vary by SolarWinds product.

Category	SRM	SAM	VMAN	WPM	DPA	NPM	Definition
Groups							Manage your environment by organizing monitored objects logically into groups, regardless of device type or location.
Containers							Lightweight, executable packages of software that include everything needed to run an application: code, system tools, system libraries, and settings. Containers isolate applications and their dependencies into self-contained units that can run anywhere without interfering with each other.
Chassis							A physical structure that houses one or more servers.
Applications							Also called application monitors, these are collections of component monitors that collect specific metrics.
Database Instances							Database instances including Microsoft SQL, MySQL, and Oracle appear if the SolarWinds DPA Integration Module (DPAIM) is configured in your environment.
Transactions							A recording of web browser steps assigned to a specific location in SolarWinds WPM.
Steps							A collection of actions in a transaction created in WPM. For example, the actions required to navigate to a specific URL make up one step. See How WPM works.
Servers							A system that can accept requests from a client and return responses accordingly. A server makes services, data files, programs, and peripheral devices available to workstations on a network.
Hosts							A server running a hypervisor for virtualization that can host multiple VMs.
Virtual Clusters							A group of VMs installed at distributed servers from one or more physical clusters. VMs in a virtual cluster are logically connected by a virtual network across several physical networks. Each virtual cluster is formed with physical machines or a VM hosted by multiple physical clusters. See Monitor your virtual infrastructure in SAM.
Virtual Data Centers							A centralized virtual repository to store, manage, and disseminate data related to a particular body of knowledge or pertaining to a particular business.
Virtual Centers							A server that acts as a centralized management application to manage VMs and ESXi.
Datastores							A set of data object sets modeled using classes defined in a database schema. A datastore may also contain simpler types such as flat files. Some datastores represent data in only one schema, while others use several schemas for this task.
Volumes							A volume, or logical drive, is a single accessible storage area with a single file system, typically residing on a single partition of a hard disk.
LUNS							A Logical Unit Number (LUN) identifies a logical unit, which is a device addressed by the SCSI or SAN protocols that encapsulate SCSI, such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI. A LUN may be used with any device which supports read/write operations, but usually refers to a logical disk created on a SAN.
NAS Volumes							Network-attached storage (NAS) is a type of dedicated file storage device that provides LAN users with centralized, consolidated disk storage through a standard Ethernet connection.
Pools							A storage pool (also called a RAID array) is a collection of disk drives that become a logical entity.
VServers							A virtual storage server (VServer) contains data volumes and one or more logical interfaces (LIFs) through which it serves data to clients. A VServer can contain multiple FlexVol volumes, or a single Infinite Volume. A VServer securely isolates the shared virtualized data storage and network, and appears as a single dedicated server to its clients. Each VServer has a separate administrator authentication domain and can be managed independently by a VServer administrator.
Storage Arrays							Two or more disk drives built into a stand-alone unit to provide increased availability, resiliency, and maintainability by using existing components (such as controllers and power supplies) to the point where all single points of failure are eliminated from the design.
API Pollers							Monitor metrics via external REST APIs by sending automated API requests to poll data from remote REST APIs.

This AppStack example provides a sample of categories and multiple nodes in various health states: