Hey folks!  We've got a buddy drop for an optimization that seems to make a pretty significant improvement to how efficiently we store certain interface data.  We've tested in the lab and all looks good.  Now we need to test it in a scale production environment to prove it's works.

Benefit: Less database interaction to store interface data, potentially decreasing hardware requirements and/or increasing overall scale.  This is entirely theoretical and even if this buddy drop proves successful, we can't say when or even if this will ship in a future version of the software.

Qualification to Participate

1. You must be on NPM 12.3 or later.  The buddy drop won't work on earlier versions.
2. You must be monitoring at least 5,000 interfaces.  This scale is required to confirm the buddy drop is working.

Steps

1. Stop services.
2. Make a backup of existing DLL.
3. Replace DLL with one we provide.
4. Start services.
5. Verify monitoring is working.
6. Collect a few stats using steps we provide.
7. You may choose to roll back the change using the same steps as above or leave it on your system until the next release comes out.  The next release may or may not include the change.

Risks

1. Using new code in a production environment always caries some risk.
2. This is a very specific change, not a bundle of changes.
3. We have tested this in our lab and believe it's very likely to be safe.
4. Roll back is simple and fast: stop services, replace DLL, start services.
5. I'll provide my cell phone number in case of emergency at time of install or in the subsequent couple days.

If you're interested in trying this, please send me a PM!

We have four optical Cisco ONS 15454 MSTP DWDW devices. A we know on these devices, some of the paths through the device are purely optical. We using these on our Production site and DR site connectivity in cluster. We configure all four SNMP but not getting CPU and RAM Information although interfaces are visible but the up down status might not be of much use as we need to monitor our Production and DR sites fiber connectivity.

Jawwad~

Hi All,

I am planing to upgrade my environment. Not sure how much downtime would be required.

Please suggest ..

I've to upgrade following modules to the latest version:  NPM 12.2, NCM 7.7, NTA 4.2.3, VNQM 4.4

Hi Everyone,

With the release of 2018.2, APC UPS monitoring is now natively supported. I have been trying to figure out why some of my APC UPS units are reporting correctly, and others are not. I am referring to the Power Control Unit Status section of node details, SNMP is functioning but returned unknown status' for a few fields. While the other fields work as expected. Based on my environment, I have been able to limit the problem to SMARTUPS2 devices (aka UPS Network Management Card 2). Where my other older UPS units, like Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL, work without issue. In the example below, I provided one working and one not working node. The battery does not need replacement on this particular node, but returns wrong.

SMARTUPS2

UPS STATUS		Unknown
	BATTERY STATUS		Unknown
	NAME		APC UPS
	SERIAL NUMBER		AS1628264973
	MODEL		Smart-UPS X 3000
	LAST FAIL CAUSE		Self Test
	BATTERY PACK COUNT		0
	OUTPUT LOAD		0 %
	BATTERY CAPACITY		0 %
	BATTERY TEMPERATURE		32 °F
	TIME ON BATTERY		0
	RUN TIME REMAINING		0
	REPLACE INDICATOR		Battery Needs Replacement

Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL

UPS STATUS		On Line
	BATTERY STATUS		Normal
	NAME		{removed}
	SERIAL NUMBER		JS0801002212
	MODEL		Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL
	LAST FAIL CAUSE		Self Test
	BATTERY PACK COUNT		0
	OUTPUT LOAD		0 %
	BATTERY CAPACITY		100 %
	BATTERY TEMPERATURE		64.4 °F
	TIME ON BATTERY		0
	RUN TIME REMAINING		4h:28m:00s
	REPLACE INDICATOR		Battery Doesn't Need Replacement

Any information or recommendations are appreciated.

Is it possible to manually install a netpath probe/agent? I have an issue where I am using 2 factor authentication on my network including an id card and cannot get the probe install to work through the standard method? Is it possible to download the agent so I can load it up that way?

NPM 12.3 has shipped and we're hard at work building the next release.  Here's what we're working on, in no particularly order.

• Cisco ACI Monitoring
• Remote Collector - New, agent based collector for distributed environments and hybrid deployments
• Next Generation Orion Mapping - First version delivered in NPM 12.3 via Orion Platform 2018.2.  Working on the next version.
• Centralized Upgrades
• Website & Database Performance Improvements
• Windows Device Guard Support
• SAML Authentication Support
• Replace syslog/trap with the functionality from our new Log Manager product

We're working on trying to get a list of the PSU SN's from our Cisco devices, and we want to see if reporting can pull this info from the devices.

Does anyone know if this can be done/has been done before?  I've already got a good report for the chassis PSU, but trying to get one for the PSU Sn's

specifically, looking to do this to the 2960x series. 

A long time ago, in a monitoring environment far far away...

Custom ".resource" files were fairly simple and straightforward, allowing users to alter what they had, or just build something new altogether. As time went on, SolarWinds evolved and improved, and has changed many aspects of its products over the years. Most recently (NPM 12, I believe), those with customized SolarWinds deployments saw another change, the precompiled webpages/site. At this point, almost all of the files we could previously edit, simply in a notepad, were precompiled and just became empty placeholders. That is, until now...

Now, I'm not a rocket surgeon, so I cannot guarantee this is the best way to do things here, but it has worked great for me.

ESTIMATED TIME TO INSTALL/PERFORM MODIFICATION:<15 Minutes

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: 2-Padawan

1. Youngling (Easiest/Most Basic; no coding experience required, no config wizard required, no system restart required, no system downtime.)
2. Padawan (Easy/Basic; no coding experience required, config wizard required, possible system/services restart required, limited/no downtime.)
3. Jedi Knight (Moderately Difficult/Advanced; some coding experience required/recommended, config wizard required, possible system/services restart required, limited/short duration downtime.)
4. Jedi Master (Most Difficult/Advanced; advanced coding experience required, config wizard required, system/services restarts required, 30+ minutes downtime/maintenance window recommended, and other things that I do not even know I would need to know, required...)

This mod was performed on the following SolarWinds environment/versions: (It may, or may not work on other versions)

Orion Platform 2017.3.5 SP5, NCM 7.7, DPAIM 11.1.0, NPM 12.2, VMAN 8.2.0, NetPath 1.1.2, QoE 2.4, CloudMonitoring 2.0.0, SAM 6.6.0

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

1. Access to the IIS server used for your SolarWinds environment
2. Your trusty notepad of choice
3. Permission to run the config wizard to rebuild the website folder

Before we begin,

PLEASE don't edit the system files/database without backing them up first.

If you see a friend or co-worker making changes without backing up first, please alert the authorities.

Friends don't let friends mod without backups.

"If it's not broke, then fix it until it is."

     -The smartest person ever

On the Orion webserver, open the following file in your notepad/editor.

\Program Files (x86)\SolarWinds\Orion\ConfigurationWizard.exe.config

This is where the real fun begins. Make sure your coffee is full and your bladder is empty, because this is gonna take some time...

On/around line 24 you should see something about "PrecompiledWebsiteDisabled".

The current/default value is set as "false".

Change this:

<add key="PrecompiledWebsiteDisabled" value="false" />

To this:

<add key="PrecompiledWebsiteDisabled" value="true" />

Save your file and continue editing th... uh, nope, that's it.

Yeah, we're all done here... Now you just need to run the config wizard for the website, and you should have all of your files back.

Okay, well, you were probably going to get a refill on your coffee anyway, and that other thing would have just happened naturally... so win-win-win...?

Seriously, that's it... There is simply nothing else to it... No overly complex procedure... Nothing... We're done!

Well, for the sake of thoroughness, I reckon I can drop in a before and after screenshot of the folder/files...?

Here is a screenshot of some of the files before disabling the default precompiled option: (5 files)

And here is a screenshot of that same folder after disabling the precompiled option: (24 files)

For more ways to customize your SolarWinds environment, make sure to check out this link, by CourtesyIT

How to do various customizations with your Solarwinds

Thank you,

-Will

In my network i have 500 alcatel dslams. They are all discovered with the same wrong hostname (ASAM). I guess they are being polled for the hostname with a wrong OID. Is there a way to check which oid is used by orion and to change it if required?

Similarly, i need to know which oid orion is using to get interface errors for a specific device type. I tried to use pollercheckertool.exe but i couldn't figure it out.

Please help!

I was wondering if any one has any material where we can get the significance/functionalities/uses of all Services under Orion service manager.

And what all modules uses these services.

The time has come again for another exciting rundown of some of the improvements and enhancements coming your way in the next major installment of the Orion Platform. For those who may not be familiar, Orion is the foundational component upon which product modules such as Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Server & Application Monitor (SAM), and many others are built atop. Platform capabilities are available to, or can be leveraged by modules which run atop the Orion Platform. In most cases, those enhancements are available regardless of which Orion module(s) you are running, such as PerfStack. In others, it may be something which individual modules can extend to utilize for their own purposes, such as the Orion Agent which has been the basis for delivering amazing new capabilities from NetPath and QoE in NPM, to Application Dependency Mapping (ADM) and IaaS monitoring in SAM.

UPS Monitoring

Several years ago I created a Universal Device Poller (UnDP) for monitoring APC SmartUPS devices, and still to this day it remains amongst one of the most popularly downloaded UnDPs for NPM, if not the most popular. Universal Device Pollers are an incredibly powerful feature of NPM, allowing you to monitor virtually anything about a device which is managed via SNMP. However, there comes a time when certain functionality becomes so ubiquitous that it makes sense to promote it to native functionality of the monitoring solution and not require users to create it themselves. So in this 2018.2 release of the Orion Platform included with NPM 12.3, that's precisely what we set out to do, while also making some improvements along the way.

If you haven't already done so, you'll want to start by adding your APC UPS equipment to Orion. You can do so individually using the 'Add Node Wizard' [Settings > All Settings > Add Node], or in bulk using Sonar Discovery [Settings > All Settings > Discover Network]. If you are adding the devices using the 'Add Node Wizard', you will notice a new option listed for your APC UPS equipment entitled 'UPS'. Checking the box next to this option will enable UPS polling for this device.

List Resources	Power Control Unit Status Resource	UPS Firmware Version

Once you've successfully completed the 'Add Node Wizard' and navigate to the 'Node Details' view of your newly added UPS device, you will notice a newly added resource entitled 'Power Control Unit Status'. This resource reflects the most important information about your UPS device, including things such as its overall status, time on battery, and the batteries current charge capacity. This information can, as you would expect, be utilized in Alerts to notify you things such as when the UPS is on Battery, if a battery needs replacing, or if the battery is reaching an unsafe operating temperature. You may also notice that the 'Software Version' field in the "Node Details' resource now accurately reflects the firmware version installed and running on the UPS.

Currently, this new capability is limited exclusively to APC (American Power Conversion) SmartUPS Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) containing Network Management (AKA Web/SNMP) cards. This feature does not support APC's unmanaged BackUPS series, nor does it yet support other UPS vendors, such as Eaton, Tripp Lite, or CyberPower. At least for now, we recommend using the Universal Device Poller to monitor similar metrics for UPS vendors other than APC. We will, however, be keeping a close eye on the NPM feature request forum to gauge interest in native support for other UPS vendors.

Linux/Unix Load Average

In a similar vein to UPS monitoring discussed above, we learned from speaking with our customers over the years, as well as from those participating in the Orion Improvement Program, that monitoring Load Average on Linux and Unix systems ranks among the most popular uses of the Universal Device Poller. In our enduring pursuit to deliver unexpected simplicity to our customers, we realized that collecting these important metrics natively was something which was long overdue.

Beginning in Orion Platform 2018.2, and included with NPM 12.3, Load Average is collected automatically for any node which supports it. This is typically any Linux based operating system, but can also extend to FreeBSD, AIX, and other Unix like OS's. The Load Average metrics are collected for nodes monitored via the Orion Agent, as well as those managed agentlessly via SNMP. There's really no additional steps required if you added your nodes using the default selection. Since Load Average has a direct correlation to CPU utilization, it's intuitively tied to the existing 'CPU & Memory' option shown under 'List Resources'. When selected, Load Average statistics are collected automatically if the node being monitored supports them.

List Resources - CPU & Memory	Load Average Resource

On the 'Node Details' view of your Linux servers, you will notice a snazzy new resource entitled 'Load Average' which displays the one minute, five minute, and fifteen-minute load average of the machine being monitored. Because Load Average metrics are tightly coupled to the number of CPU cores, we extended Orion's alerting to allow you to combine Load Average statistics with CPU count within your Alert Trigger so you can be notified when your system is under strain.

Load Average has also been added to the default PerfStack metrics for the node, meaning if you click on the 'Performance Analysis' button on the "Management' Resource of the 'Node Details' view for Linux server, you'll be taken to PerfStack where these Load Average statistics are automatically prepopulated. Similarly. if you're already working in PerfStack you can drag the node itself onto the chart area, the Load Average statistics, as well as other default metrics for the node will populate the PerfStack dashboard.

Group Availability

Ever since bshopp introduced us to Orion Groups back in NPM 10.1, we've heard from many ofyou that the manner in which availability is calculated for these groups just didn't jive with how you think about availability in your environment, nor did it provide a valuable measurement for use in your SLAs. Sadly, Group Availability in Orion is calculated binarily. Put simply, the group is either 100% 'Up' or it's 100% 'Down' regardless of the number of members contained within the group. What this usually meant was, so long as at least one member in the group was 'Up', the availability of the group was 100%. That remained true even if there were 99 other things 'down' in that group at that time. I know, it sounds odd when you say it aloud or even when you're writing it down, but that's how it's been for years and somehow we've managed the muddle through. Well in this release of the Orion Platform, no longer will you be forced to just muddle through. Today we heed your cries!

Rather than turn the world on its end, causing lots of confusion and alerts storms in our wake, we left the legacy Group Availability metric in place, untouched. I know that will come as a big relief to those of you which have grown dependant upon this method of calculating availability and have built reports and alerts around this metric. What we chose to do instead is introduce a new Group metric entitled 'Group Members Availability', which as one would expect, properly and accurately calculates the availability of the group based on its members. This includes nested groups as well.

This new 'Group Members Availability' metric appears automatically on the 'Group Details' view upon group creation. We will also start calculating this new metric upon upgrade to Orion Platform 2018.2 if you already have existing groups. So there's really nothing you need to do. We even include a new out-of-the-box report we refer to as 'Members Based Group Availability Report - Last Month' which serves as an example for how easily this metric can be added to your own reports compared to some of the complex SQL queries some had attempted to use in the past. You can even leverage this new Group Members Availability metric in your alerting conditions with no fuss!

And More!

There's still plenty more we've managed to jam pack into this release of the Orion Platform that we're particularly excited about and would love to get your feedback on. Stay tuned to learn about some of the mapping improvements jblankjblank has whipped up and the many usability enhancements serena has crammed into this release, such as sexy new hovers, a new PerfStack widget, and additional improvements that we've made to ensure your next upgrade experience is great!

Hi

since few days NPM DB is reaching till 80 GB , before that it get maximum til 17 GB

today morning i shrink dDB from SQL studio , than DB is 14 GB and after 3 hours its now 22 GB

Kindly find screen-shot of  NPM DB

Hi,

We are shifting our Core WAN firewall wall segment from Juniper ISG 1000 to Juniper SRX 5400, mentioned issue has been arrived while limiting the policies of SRX 5400 as on ISG 1000 we use allow any port policy for Branches SNMP i.e. we are getting UDP port hits from the direction branches towards NMS Server in the range of 50000 to 65000 and if we are not allowing this we are unable to pool the branches on SNMP.  i.e. The point is we allowed the port 161 and 162 it will not work i.e. branch router behind firewall not responding on SNMP and test failed. But as we allow port 50000 till port 65000 its work and branch router starting responding on SNMP.

Below is the polices and the flow session ready reference. As for allow of ports we need justification for Network Security demand and Audit requirement,

Policy on WAN firewall SRX 5400:

set security policies from-zone trust-VPN to-zone trust-BLUE policy NMS match source-address ALL-BRANCHES

set security policies from-zone trust-VPN to-zone trust-BLUE policy NMS match destination-address 10.1.107.150/32 (NMS server)

set security policies from-zone trust-VPN to-zone trust-BLUE policy NMS match application UDP-161-162 (routine)

set security policies from-zone trust-VPN to-zone trust-BLUE policy NMS match application UDP-50000-65000 (Additional on this work)

set security policies from-zone trust-VPN to-zone trust-BLUE policy NMS then permit

Flow session on WAN firewall SRX 5400:

PR-AGG-FW-A> show security flow session policy-id 152

node0:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flow Sessions on FPC0 PIC1:

Session ID: 10034489, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 54, Valid

In: 10.36.156.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/59028;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 1, Bytes: 80, CP Session ID: 16268284

Out: 10.1.107.150/59028 --> 10.36.156.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16268284

Session ID: 10035240, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 54, Valid

In: 10.38.22.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/59028;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 1, Bytes: 80, CP Session ID: 16434842

Out: 10.1.107.150/59028 --> 10.38.22.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16434842

Session ID: 15599400, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 34, Valid

In: 10.38.26.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/57672;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1272, Pkts: 7, Bytes: 1046, CP Session ID: 16238875

Out: 10.1.107.150/57672 --> 10.38.26.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16238875

Session ID: 15748000, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 32, Valid

In: 10.38.94.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/57672;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 7, Bytes: 1082, CP Session ID: 16090750

Out: 10.1.107.150/57672 --> 10.38.94.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16090750

Session ID: 15825490, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 16, Valid

In: 10.37.50.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/57672;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 7, Bytes: 1058, CP Session ID: 16356558

Out: 10.1.107.150/57672 --> 10.37.50.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16356558

Session ID: 16069823, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 8, Valid

In: 10.36.172.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/57672;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 15, Bytes: 2043, CP Session ID: 16216814

Out: 10.1.107.150/57672 --> 10.36.172.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16216814

Session ID: 16126142, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 16, Valid

In: 10.37.72.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/57672;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 7, Bytes: 1083, CP Session ID: 16358271

Out: 10.1.107.150/57672 --> 10.37.72.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 16358271

Session ID: 16269963, Policy name: NMS/152, State: Active, Timeout: 32, Valid

In: 10.36.172.2/161 --> 10.1.107.150/59028;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: st0.1271, Pkts: 1, Bytes: 79, CP Session ID: 15614150

Out: 10.1.107.150/59028 --> 10.36.172.2/161;udp, Conn Tag: 0x0, If: reth1.0, Pkts: 0, Bytes: 0, CP Session ID: 15614150

Total sessions: 8

Please have a look, Share your feedback or ask a feedback from TAC to have a justification for allow mention ports.

Hi All,

Creating one document, that will help you on "how to create the checkpoint firewall fail-over alert"

> Create the one UDNP poller with the help of below OID and assign them on Primary and Secondary both checkpoint firewall.

> Create an alert with below condition.

Actually this alert will target only Primary checkpoint firewall, because when primary firewall failed over to secondary firewall, you will receive such alert on console,

Alert Sanpshot -

here we have target only one node, but if you have multiple primary node, you can create a new custom property against the node, like "Pri_CheckPoint" and marked them "YES" all primary node.

And then same logic you can use in above created alert, where "Node - custom property - Pri_Checkpoint - YES"

Now your alert is ready to fire alert, but in  "Trigger action"  tab  you can use the correct Netperfmon event log setting, So you/your team can get the correct naming details of alert in console.

Hey folks!  We've got a buddy drop for an optimization that seems to make a pretty significant improvement to how efficiently we store certain interface data.  We've tested in the lab and all looks good.  Now we need to test it in a scale production environment to prove it's works.

Benefit: Less database interaction to store interface data, potentially decreasing hardware requirements and/or increasing overall scale.  This is entirely theoretical and even if this buddy drop proves successful, we can't say when or even if this will ship in a future version of the software.

Qualification to Participate

1. You must be on NPM 12.3 or later.  The buddy drop won't work on earlier versions.
2. You must be monitoring at least 5,000 interfaces.  This scale is required to confirm the buddy drop is working.

Steps

1. Stop services.
2. Make a backup of existing DLL.
3. Replace DLL with one we provide.
4. Start services.
5. Verify monitoring is working.
6. Collect a few stats using steps we provide.
7. You may choose to roll back the change using the same steps as above or leave it on your system until the next release comes out.  The next release may or may not include the change.

Risks

1. Using new code in a production environment always caries some risk.
2. This is a very specific change, not a bundle of changes.
3. We have tested this in our lab and believe it's very likely to be safe.
4. Roll back is simple and fast: stop services, replace DLL, start services.
5. I'll provide my cell phone number in case of emergency at time of install or in the subsequent couple days.

If you're interested in trying this, please send me a PM!

We would like to improve user experience and for such reason I'd like to better understand if our users prefers INITIALLY to add nodes manually or run product network discovery in order to import devices to NPM

The other thread is closed so I figured I would start a new one I usually get more help here than actually contacting support.

So same issues as before but instead of the server not responding in 36 hours or so it took maybe a week but it is the SAME issues. 

1. Server stopped sending alerts out sometime around 11AM on the 4th.

2. Logged onto server and opened Orion service manager and both the module engine and the administration service were going back and forth between running and stopping. 

3. Orion could not connect to SQL

4.  I have some alerts that at are going out but not sure if they are legit or not. 

5. After the reboot I notice that a good chunk of my nodes interfaces are 'unknown' this looks like it fixes itself but again something else going on. 

I have applied the 'hotfix' that you all pushed out to try to fix this.

I have done the change from streaming to buffered

I have done the registry change for the ports

The only thing I have not done is revert the snap shots back to June 14th prior to the update so Solarwinds is stable again. 

At this point I am going to schedule a task in VM Ware to reboot the server every night.  That is pretty much the only way I will know Solarwinds will actually work. 

Thoughts?  serenaaLTeReGo

So I have a case open but haven't got a response yet on it  -

So I went to do the hotfix 3 install as the instability issues are becoming an issue with some members of my teams -

Ran the hotfix and then the configuration wizard and got almost done and tripped an error message -

so clicked finished and then started up the services - all came back up no issues but the web site no longer exists in the specified path -

Figured i would then go follow the uninstall directions in the notes but the hotfix is not listed in add/remove - I do see updated things from this morning but wasn't sure if I should remove them and then rerun the config wizard .. do not want to make things worse then they are at this moment

Thoughts ,

Fitz