SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability supports multiple industry flow protocols:

J-Flow: Supported and commonly used by Juniper devices.

NetFlow v9: Supported, providing flexible flow data and templates.

sFlow: Supported, widely used in vendor-agnostic environments.

NetFlow v6 is not a recognized protocol; SolarWinds documentation does not list it as a supported standard.

" SolarWinds NTA and HCO support NetFlow (v5/v9), sFlow, J-Flow, and IPFIX for collecting and analyzing flow data. "

SolarWinds provides a MIB Browser utility that lets you search and verify whether a specific object ID (OID) exists in the SolarWinds MIB database. By entering the OID in the MIB Browser, you can confirm its presence and also test polling against the device.

The documentation states:

" Use the MIB Browser to search for and verify OIDs in the SolarWinds MIB database. The tool also allows you to test poll the device to ensure the OID is being returned. "

When a node status is “unknown,” it often means the SolarWinds platform cannot communicate with the node. The first checks should be:

Ping response: Verify if the node is reachable via ICMP ping, as lack of response leads to an unknown status.

Polling method: Confirm the correct polling method (ICMP, SNMP, WMI, API) is configured and functioning.

OID (A) is related to SNMP but not directly to basic node status, and view method (D) is not a relevant diagnostic step.

If devices respond to SNMP queries individually but aren ' t discovered during network scans, the most likely cause is the discovery timeout value being set too low. This can result in slower devices timing out before responding to discovery requests, even though they are operational and SNMP-enabled.

The documentation explains:

" If devices are not discovered but respond to SNMP queries, increase the discovery timeout and retry. Short timeouts can cause missed responses from devices that take longer to reply during scanning. "

Custom pollers are typically created when you need to monitor metrics or OIDs that are not supported by default in SolarWinds:

Monitor specific metric that is not out-of-the-box: If a device exposes a metric not natively monitored by SolarWinds, you must create a custom poller for that metric.

Monitor unsupported object ID: For any OID that is not included in default templates, a custom poller is necessary.

Monitoring special equipment or devices without WMI might also need custom pollers, but the requirement specifically applies when you need to access non-standard metrics or OIDs.

If only response time and packet loss are visible, the node is currently being polled via ICMP (ping), which does not provide detailed statistics like CPU, memory, or interface data. Switching the polling method to SNMP enables SolarWinds to gather detailed device metrics and statistics, as SNMP supports comprehensive monitoring.

Resolving and storing hostnames at the time a flow record is received means the platform does not need to resolve the hostname each time a report or widget is loaded, which:

Decreases database query times: Hostnames are already resolved, making queries for reports and dashboards much faster.

Flow views and widgets load faster: With DNS already resolved, the interface does not have to perform on-demand DNS lookups, reducing latency in the web console.

The SolarWinds documentation states:

" Immediate DNS resolution upon flow record ingestion reduces lookup delays during analysis and widget loading, resulting in improved performance and reduced query times. "

Domain widgets and reports run with DNS names, but the core advantage is performance rather than widget availability.

The best practices for creating a Universal Device Poller (UDP) in SolarWinds are:

Consult vendor documentation for OID: Always check the device/vendor documentation for the correct OID to monitor the desired metric.

Perform SNMPwalk to determine if OID exists: Use SNMPwalk to verify the OID’s existence and see if it is supported and returns the correct values from the device.

Calling SolarWinds support is not a standard step for obtaining OIDs, and WBemtest is a Windows tool for WMI, not SNMP/OID polling.

Exact Extract from Official Guide:

“Consult device vendor documentation for correct OIDs and perform SNMPwalk to ensure the OID exists and is supported by the device before creating a UDP.”

— (Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide, “Best Practices for Universal Device Pollers” section)

If a node is up but its interfaces show as “unknown,” this usually means the interfaces are not currently being managed/monitored in the SolarWinds platform.

From the documentation:

“If interfaces are not selected for management during discovery or have been removed from monitoring, their status appears as ‘unknown’ even though the parent node is up.”

According to the SolarWinds Log Analyzer Administrator Guide (Version 2024.1) , Log Analyzer provides several built-in or native log entry actions as part of its log-processing rules. The key native log entry actions include:

Add a tag to the log entry : This action allows you to tag event logs for easier searching and filtering later.

Continue rule processing but do not save : With this action, the log entry is not saved but rule processing continues.

Halt further rule processing for the log entry : Selecting this action will immediately stop the processing of any more rules for the current log entry.

Sending an email notification is an alert action and not considered a native log entry action in the context of log processing rules.

Exact Extract from Official Guide:

" Key features in LA

Apply tags to event logs

Drop unwanted event logs in LA

Filter and analyze event logs

Filter and view event logs in live mode

Filter entry details in LA

Filter on log tags... " — (Log Analyzer Administrator Guide, Page 53-54)

Additionally, the guide specifies under Create custom log-processing rules in LA that actions such as tagging, halting processing, and not saving are among the native processing actions.