Documentation forServer & Application Monitor
Monitoring your applications and environment is a key capability of Hybrid Cloud Observability and is also available in a standalone module, Server & Application Monitor (SAM). Hybrid Cloud Observability and SAM are built on the self-hosted SolarWinds Platform.

SOAP Monitor

You can use this SAM component monitor to monitor a remote Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) web service on target servers.

It supports automatic retries to fall back through older cryptographic protocols and complete a secure connection. The monitor retries the connection while declaring support only for TLS 1.2, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.0, and then SSL, one at a time. If the target machine refuses a secure connection, the monitor returns an error.

Note the following details about the SOAP Monitor:

  • It can return a status of either Up or Down, or return a status of Warning or Critical based on response time thresholds. This monitor can also search for the presence of a string.
  • You can test the SOAP Monitor in Edit mode. If the test poll throws a web exception (indicating that there was a problem on the target), the response content is extracted and you are able to view the message to help identify the issue.
  • SAM includes a SOAP/JSON template that shows how to gather data from the SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS) web service, which is a data access layer for the SolarWinds Platform that provides a hybrid of object-oriented and relational features. Similar to SQL, you can use the SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL) to query the SolarWinds Platform database for specific network information.

Polling using SolarWinds Platform agent for Linux

This component monitor has the following limitations for SolarWinds Platform agent for Linux polling methods.

It does not support Kerberos authentication. Only Basic and Digest authentication are supported when this probe runs using the SolarWinds Platform agent for Linux. For Kerebos authentication on a Linux-based computer, select Agentless for the Preferred Polling Method on the monitor.

If the Linux implementation does not support the verification of Common Name (CN) and Certificate Authority (CA) for the SSL connection, you can configure the component monitor to ignore CN or CA errors, or switch to agent-less polling.

Field descriptions

Description

A default description of the monitor. To override the default description, add to or replace existing text. Changes are automatically saved. The variable to access this field is ${UserDescription}.

Customize descriptions to specify what will be monitored so related alerts and notifications are more meaningful later.

Component Type

The type of monitor you are using.

Enable Component

Determines if the component is enabled. Disabling this component leaves it in the application as deactivated and does not influence application availability or status.

Credential for Monitoring

Select the credentials needed for monitoring this component.

SOAP XML Request

You can either choose to load XML from a WSDL file or manually enter the XML.

Manually entering the SOAP XML request displays the following fields

  • Web Service Server URL: The http(s) address of web server. For example: https://localhost:17778/SolarWinds/InformationService/v3?wsdl
  • SOAP Action: Indicates the intent of the SOAP HTTP request. For example: http://schemas.solarwinds.com/2007/08/InformationService/QueryXml
  • SOAP Version: Select either 1.1 or 1.2 from the drop down list.
  • SOAP XML: This is the XML envelope.

Loading the SOAP XML from a WSDL displays the following fields after WSDL is successfully loaded:

  • Web Service Server URL:The http(s) address of web server. For example: https://localhost:17778/SolarWinds/InformationService/v3?wsdl
  • Binding: Displays the type of binding detected in the WSDL.
  • Service Name: Displays the service name detected in the WSDL.
  • Method Name: Displays the method name detected in the WSDL.
  • Query: This is a dynamically generated field for Simple and Complex method parameters where you can input values that you can include as part of the SOAP message. May not be present depending upon the type of argument used.
  • Parameters: This is a dynamically generated field for Simple and Complex method parameters where you can input values that you can include as part of the SOAP message. May not be present depending upon the type of argument used.
  • Method Name Space: The unique identifier for the method. This definitional information is extracted from the WSDL file.
  • Schema Name Space: The unique identifier for the schema. This definitional information is extracted from the WSDL file.
  • SOAP Action: The unique name for the method itself. This definitional information is extracted from the WSDL file.
  • SOAP Version: Displays the SOAP version detected in the WSDL. This definitional information is extracted from the WSDL file.
  • SOAP XML: Content for this field is dynamically generated by changing the other SOAP settings. This field serves for reviewing the envelope. Advanced users can edit the content in this field.

For more information, see Configure the SOAP Monitor in SAM.

Host Header

Enter the address of the host header. For example, www.solarwinds.com.

HTTP User Agent

Identifies the client making the request. For example, Google Chrome identifies itself as “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/32.0.1667.0 Safari/537.36” Some web services may behave differently based on the user agent.

HTTP Content Type

Indicates the format of the content of the message. With SOAP, this can either be application/soap+xml or text/xml.

Authenticate Mode

Select an option for the authentication of the HTTPS: Normal, PreAuthenticate, or AlwaysAuthenticate.

Accept Compression

Indicates to the server if the client supports compression of the data.

Certificate Subject

The subject of the certificate to match against.

Ignore CA Errors

Ignore any errors verifying the Certificate Authority. This can occur if the certificate is self-signed or if the certificate was not installed correctly on the server.

Ignore CN Errors

Ignore Common Name error. This occurs when the Common Name of the certificate does not match the name of the server that is in the URL.

Use Proxy

This option allows you to tell the monitor if it is going through a proxy connection.

Proxy Address

Enter the address for the proxy connection, if enabled.

Search String

Allows you to enter a string to test for its presence.

Fail if Found

Select either Yes or No to determine if this monitor reports a status of Fail if the string is found.

Response Time Threshold

Select and enter appropriate thresholds for Warning and Critical statuses. See Application Monitor Thresholds.

User Notes

Add notes for easy reference. You can access this field by using the variable, ${UserNotes}.