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.

Work with SAM component monitors

SAM includes predefined component monitors, comprised of code and scripts, that you can use to assess the status and performance of applications, services, processes, and event on nodes throughout your environment.

SAM application monitor templates are collections of component monitors that you can assign to nodes as "application monitors" that are also called "applications." A single component monitor can be used on its own and applied to a node in an application monitor, or it can be used in multiple templates.

For example, the HTTPS Monitor is included in the following templates:

  • AppInsight for IIS
  • HTTPS Monitor
  • SolarWinds Platform server 2020.2 - Additional Website
  • SolarWinds Platform server 2020.2 - Main Polling Engine

For a quick overview, watch Common SAM template elements (6:34).

Note the following details about SAM component monitors:

To display the component monitors included in a template:

  1. Navigate to Settings > All Settings > SAM Settings >Manage Templates.
  2. On the Manage Application Templates page, click the Application Monitor Templates tab.
  3. Select an existing template and click Edit.

The following example shows some of the component monitors in the AppInsight for Active Directory template:

Component monitor types

Component monitors that share similar characteristics are categorized by a component monitor type. The following example shows three different types included in the Active Directory 2016 Services and Counters template:

  • Performance Counter Monitor,
  • Windows Service Monitor, and
  • Window Event Log Monitor

To learn more about individual component monitor types, see the SAM Application Monitor Template Reference. For database values assigned to component monitor types that you can use to configure alerts, see Component monitor properties for alerts.

Component monitor fetching methods

For many component monitors, you can configure the preferred fetching method used to gather data from target nodes. SAM automatically switches to a fallback method to collect data if the first method fails, and then works through other methods until polling succeeds.

You can also configure some component monitors to use SolarWinds Platform agents to collect data.

Starting in SAM 2020.2, WinRM is the default transport method used to collect data with the following WMI-based component monitor types:

  • Directory Size Monitors
  • File Count Monitors
  • Performance Counter Monitors
  • Process Monitors for Windows
  • Windows Event Log Monitor
  • Windows Service Monitors
  • WMI Monitors

See also:

Component monitor thresholds

For some component monitors, you can set threshold conditions on the monitored parameters to indicate warning and critical conditions. For example, to monitor the percentage of free space remaining on a volume, set a warning threshold at 15%, and a critical condition at 5%. See Manage application monitor thresholds in SAM.

Component monitor scripts

Some component monitors gather data directly from target services, others execute scripts on target servers to pull metrics. For example, the Apache template uses an SolarWinds Platform agent and several Linux/Unix Script Monitors to collect data. The IdleWorkers component monitor uses SSH to upload a script to target Linux servers and then processes the returned values and text output that appear in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

The Active Directory 2016 Domain Controller Security template includes component monitors that use scripts to collect data:

  • Locked out users uses a PowerShell script to pull metrics for currently locked out users.
  • Disabled users uses a PowerShell script to return the number of currently disabled users; you can adjust thresholds as necessary.

Other topics in this section include: 

Additional resources include: