Documentation forWeb Performance Monitor

Understanding WPM

SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM) is a comprehensive web application monitoring product that can detect website performance issues based on location, transaction, and page elements, and monitor website load times so you can fix issues before users are affected. WPM proactively identifies if slow web services are impacting user experience without relying on third-party apps.

Many web applications we create and rely on today involve several steps or scripts working together to form a transaction, which must produce a certain output. This could be, for example, a user registering a new account, or a customer putting something in the shopping cart and checking out, etc. The transaction may contain multiple steps and scripts and span several pages on your site as users log in, click buttons, complete files, or download.

To keep your end users happy, it's crucial that all steps work without problems. Transaction monitoring in WPM provides a way to test web interaction synthetically by running transactions repeatedly, at set intervals. If something fails in a transaction, you can receive an alert.

You can record and run critical transactions as frequently as every 5 minutes, from multiple locations simultaneously. Use the Web Transaction Recorder to capture a series of steps to simulate a user's journey through your website, including login, clicks, and completing forms, or downloading files. Then push recordings to remote systems to replay them from remote locations, as often as you want, and analyze the results.

With WPM, you can:

  • Get an accurate sampling of websites and services from the viewpoint of end users in multiple locations.
  • Monitor the uptime and user experience (UX) of web applications.
  • Display alerts and graphs for websites on both sides of the firewall.
  • Drill into different types of data such as load times, transaction availability, and durations.
  • Create recordings that can be used in SolarWinds Pingdom.

To learn about different ways to leverage WPM, see WPM Use Cases.

After installing WPM on the SolarWinds Platform server, use this guide to finish setting up WPM so you can begin monitoring web and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications in your environment.

  • Get started. Learn how WPM operates and see an example of how to use it.

  • Set up. Log into WPM and adjust SolarWinds Platform account permissions for WPM users.

  • Deploy. Add Web Transaction Recorders and WPM Players to remote machines.

If you're new to WPM and need assistance, see Working with Support to learn how to open a case with the correct level of visibility.

If upgrading an existing WPM deployment, be sure to deploy the latest Web Transaction Recorders and WPM Players throughout your environment, as described in Deploy WPM to remote systems.

To test drive WPM, download a free 30-day trial here. It includes all available features, functional for 30 days. After the evaluation period, you can convert your evaluation license to a production license by obtaining and applying a license key. For assistance during the evaluation period, contact sales@solarwinds.com.

Here are some additional WPM resources:

  • Install or Upgrade WPM
  • WPM online help includes details about individual WPM views and widgets, along with the standard WPM documentation set.
  • For details about features shared by WPM and other SolarWinds Platform products such as the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, user accounts, views, and alerts, see the SolarWinds Platform Product Guide.
  • Visit the SolarWinds Success Center for WPM training resources and support articles.
  • Check out the WPM forum in the SolarWinds online IT community, THWACK, to connect with SolarWinds developers and product managers, plus other WPM users. Some content is created by SolarWinds staff and the rest is created and shared with the community by our customers.