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

Well, here we are, again, with another example of how we can view the same old boring data via a SWQL query and a little bit of JavaScript.

Previously, I posted an example of how to build an events calendar, which would populate some pie charts once you clicked a date on the calendar. Using Your Custom HTML Resource To Properly Display SWQL Query Results

Then, there was the post showing how to rebuild the manage views page, making it easier to navigate and manage your various viewgroups. Using Your Custom HTML Resource To Build A Better Way To Navigate Your Custom Views

Now, if all goes well, this post should show you an example of how you can view your events across a timeline. While this will work for any event with a start and end time, I am going to specifically use the NCM Scheduled Jobs for the example data.

More information on the timeline being used in this example can be found here: Charts   |  Google Developers

Just the same as previous versions of similar tools, mblackburn has done most of the legwork to get a fairly decent template built out, allowing me to "plug and play" this code to display our data in different ways.

ESTIMATED TIME TO INSTALL/PERFORM MODIFICATION:<5 Minutes

DIFFICULTY LEVEL:1-Youngling

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, possible 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 performedon the following SolarWinds environment/versions: (It may, or may not work on other versions)

Orion Platform 2018.2 HF6, SCM 1.0, NCM 7.8, NPM 12.3, DPAIM 11.1.0, VMAN 8.3.0, SAM 6.7.0, NetPath 1.1.3 © 1999-2018 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

1. Access to manage views in your Orion environment
2. Orion web server must be able to access "https://www.gstatic.com/charts/loader.js"
3. The "Custom HTML" resource added to a view
4. A working method to copy text from the attached file
5. A working method to paste text, copied from #4 above, into a custom HTML resource, from #3 above.

Basically, you should only need to open the attached file (JS_Timeline-003.txt) in a text editor, copy the contents, and paste them into the "Custom HTML Resource" on one of your views within your SolarWinds environment.

Before we begin, (while the following is certainly a good practice, it actually doesn't apply to this customization.)

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

In The Beginning:

As with most things, we need to start somewhere. That somewhere is the default NCM "Jobs List" page. (/Orion/NCM/Resources/Jobs/JobsList.aspx)

Here is what our example data looks like in its default form. Pretty simple.

While there are many things I would like to see on this page (better/static filtering, independent "Last Date Start", "Current Duration", "Min Duration", "Max Duration", and "Avg Duration" columns, as well as a handful of other basic/standard data to assist with the overall system management), this post is really only going to focus on the basic DAILY view.

I say DAILY as this method is fairly simplistic, and is NOT very good at accommodating for anything out of the ordinary. In other words, if you are manually starting/stopping your NCM jobs, then you might see some odd looking data on the timeline. As far as I can tell, there is not an easy way to pull the basic data. For instance, I would consider the start time, end time, and next start time to exist for easy consumption. In reality, however, we only have easy access to end time, which is actually labeled as "LastDateRun", and the next start time, which is labeled as "NextDateRunUtc". Unfortunately, all of the job schedule data is stored in an XML formatted column of the Cirrus.NCM_NCMJobsView table, which I do not know how to easily access and parse within the scope of this example.

Having said that, we should still be able to get the previous start time, by manipulating the next start time and previous end time with a few date thingies, a couple of number thingies, and a pinch of "I hope nothing changes"... Needless to say, I think this should work for the most part, but just know there may be issues with displaying some data, depending on some wonky date calculations.

Okay, let's get back on track here...

The SWQL Query: (Without the JavaScript)

Before we get into the JavaScript, let's make sure we are able to see the data we want/expect to see. We already know what the default jobs list page shows us, so we are going to build this query to show us the important data, and get rid of everything else.

The full SWQL Query can be found at the following link: (SWQL Query To Display Basic NCM Scheduled Job Stats (Job Start, End, Duration, Next Start))

Here is what the results of our SWQL query would look like:

Nothing fancy, but we can clearly see all of the enabled jobs (and none of the jobs which are disabled), when each job started (or so we think... this is where the magic calculations begin), when each job ended, how long each job ran to complete, and a brief summary of when each job will again. Being that the query depends on the difference between the next run date and last end date, manually running the job would alter that time frame, which would produce incorrect data. (A problem to solve at another time?)

The JavaScript:

Now that we are able to see the data we need, we can dump it into some JavaScript stuff, and hopefully produce a decent looking timeline.

Again, this timeline is NOT perfect... at all... but it should provide a decent way to visualize which jobs are taking long, or which are overlapping with other jobs.

A few things to note:

• The 2 jobs on the far left of the screenshot only run once per week. (Just a heads up as to why they were not invited to join the party with the rest of the data)
• The timeline on the bottom repeats 12AM/6/12PM/6/etc. because, again, the 2 jobs on the far left only run once per week, which happens to be 3 days ago. (When the jobs run closer together, the timeline will automatically become more granular.)
• The timeline does not display full datetimes in the hover over pop-up box.
• The "Duration" value, within the timeline pop-up, comes from the way the chart processes the start and end dates. (The SWQL query inside the JavaScript is a slightly modified version of the query mentioned above. The query above calculates and formats the value for duration differently).

**I have updated the attached file to include a temporary workaround for displaying jobs which were manually started. Manually starting a job will cause the new start time to appear as a date/time in the future, which will break the chart. If/when the new time is set as a future date, later than the end time, this workaround will simply use the last end time as both the start and end time. This will allow the job to be added to the chart at the time it completed running. The next time the job runs at its normal schedule, it should show up with its normal start and end times... Hopefully**

Well, there you go. It's not rocket surgery, or anything fancy. But, when the planets are aligned, and your luck is full, it just might work well enough for you to use once or twice.

What's in your widget? Please post below and let us know.

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

Hi,

Is it possible to install netpath probe on a cisco device ( router/switch) and use that a source of sending probes to specific destinations?

Regards

Raja

I created an universal device poller to get the attenuation for fiber optic interfaces.

The problem is the OID is giving me the ID of the interface instead of the name so when I use a Tabular Node Pollers it´s difficult figure out what interface is relating to the attenuation.

When I created the UDP I also select "Use interface name" for the label but is still showing the ID for the interface.

Have you found a solution for this issue?

Thanks.

Hello

I've created a map of my site. Each building is represented and if I click one of them I can focus on a list of servers hosted in the relative IT room.

When a server is down, the red status is raised and on my map, the "red" status is appearing.

But when a component of the server is faulted, the red status is not propagated to the main map.

How to raise a visual alarm on the hisghest level when a component  of a server is faulted, not only when the whole server is down?

Thank you for helping

I'm in the process of converting a few of our alert emails and I'm wondering if there is an easy way to do what I'm aiming to accomplish.

If a group goes down, for X number of minute an alert email is fired with some basic information such as time, link to group on Orion etc. On other network monitoring software I've used it's always been possible to include a chart of some description into the alert email such as a utilization chart on a utilization alert and so on. So I'm trying to do something a bit similar. I've had some limited success so far and can quite easily insert a chart into the body of the email for the whole day by doing the following

/Chart.aspx?ChartName=ContainerAvailability&NetObject=C:${GroupID}&Period=${MM}/${DD}/${YYYY} 0:00 AM~${MM}/${DD}/${YYYY} 11:59:00 PM&SampleSize=1M&ShowTrend=False&Width=640

However I'm having difficulty finding a way to do the same thing for different time frames such as a 7 day chart. Is there any way to manipulate the returned values of variables so that a date returning 14 can become 7, or a time of 11:00 can become 10:00?

Or maybe I'm doing things in an overly complicated way and have completely missed something. Wouldn't be the first time!

Working on an alert for response time using NPM v10.7. If I am correct, the warning and critical response time thresholds that I can set on the Node edit properties page are related to "current" response time. If my trigger condition is pointed to the variable Response Time and the Trigger must be sustained for 4 minutes (2 polls), why am I not seeing any alerts when I have a node that has been above the critical threshold for several polls in a row?

Hello all! My name is Zack Mutchler and I am a monitoring engineer for Cardinal Health. When I'm not working with all things SolarWinds, I spend my time knee-deep in APIs for various other monitoring platforms. I've been a member of THWACK^® for about 6 years and have been attending THWACKcamp^™ (TC) since 2012. Some of my favorite parts of TC is the sense of community in the live chats, as well as the cool ideas and theories discussed during sessions. It seems that every year our little corner of the IT-verse (monitoring) grows and changes to keep up with the ever-shifting IT landscape surrounding us. TC has always been an extremely valuable resource to me personally, as I’m not typically in a position to attend some of the larger industry events. Let's be honest though, who needs the Orlando jungle weather or Las Vegas hair dryer wind when you can attend TC from your couch?!?!?!

This year, I'm pretty dang excited about the entire lineup, but one of my all-time favorites is returning, featuring two of my bestest besties: the "animated" Dez and my "always thinking what I'm thinking" buddy KMSigma!!! I hope you'll check out the Tips & Tricks: Thinking Outside the Box session with me to listen to the advice and recommendations from two of the most fun and engaging people I’ve ever met! This type of session is a staple of the SolarWinds User Group^™ (SWUG^™) events that I’ve attended and that have been covered previously at TC as well, and every single time I’ve learned something new, or had one of my personal hair-brained schemes validated and encouraged!

TC16: How to Get the Most of Your SolarWinds Products

SWUG: What is a SolarWinds User Group?

Along with my love of all things API, I have always wanted to find and design more "hands-off" SolarWinds environments, so I’ll be listening closely in the session for any new ideas that can help me be the ultimate "Lazy Admin." What kind of tips and tricks are you hoping to hear?

Join me in attending THWACKcamp this year. Register now.

We're looking into how thin AP monitoring works today and would like your input.  How does thin AP alerting and other aspects of monitoring thin APs work for you?  Are there areas where you feel we're doing good or bad?  What would you add or remove about our current functionality.

I'm interested in your thoughts!

Those that have been part of the Thwack Community a while may be familiar with the long running Tell us your "Unknown" devices! thread which had been active since 2007. That thread had become too unwieldy, and most of the user submissions had been implemented many years ago. I recently reviewed each and every posting in that thread, verified what had been implemented in-product, and which ones had not so they could be included in a forthcoming release. With that done, it was time to lock that thread for good and start anew. This time, providing a bit more guidance along the way to ensure everyone is successful in providing the necessary information required to properly identify these devices.

What is an 'Unknown' Device anyway?

Orion does its best to automatically identify and classify nodes as they're added to Orion. There are however, new device types and models released all the time. It's entirely possible you might be managing a device right now that Orion is unable to properly identify. You can find these easily by going to [Settings - Manage Nodes], changing the 'Group by:' option to 'Machine Type' and clicking on the 'Unknown' category. It's also helpful to add the 'Polling Method' column to the layout, as this thread pertains exclusively to SNMP managed nodes.

Any SNMP managed nodes listed under the 'Unknown' Machine Type category are prime candidates for submission to this thread. All that's required is that you provide the devices SNMP System Object Identifier (SysObjectID), as well as the Make & Model of the device associated with that SysObjectID. This post is an excellent example of the perfect submission.

What Exactly is a SysObjectID?

I have yet to find a clearer definition for what the SysObjectID (System Object Identifier) is then the following excerpt which can typically be found written in virtually every vendor's MIB file verbatim.

Object Name: sysObjectID
Object ID: 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.2.0
Object Syntax: OBJECT IDENTIFIER
Object Access: read-only
Object Status: mandatory
Object Description: The vendor's authoritative identification of the  network management subsystem contained in the  entity. This value is allocated within the SMI  enterprises subtree (1.3.6.1.4.1) and provides an  easy and unambiguous means for determining `what  kind of box' is being managed. For example, if  vendor `Flintstones, Inc.' was assigned the  subtree 1.3.6.1.4.1.4242, it could assign the  identifier 1.3.6.1.4.1.4242.1.1 to its `Fred  Router'.

Essentially, it's a string of numbers in dotted notation that is (hopefully) unique to at least the manufacturer, and in most cases, to the specific make and model of the device being monitored. It's how we identify for example, that the device vendor is 'Cisco' and the model is a 'Nexus C7018'. All System Object ID's begin with '1.3.6.1.4.1' followed by a number which uniquely identifies the manufacturer. The numbers which then follow typically identify the specific model of the device.

Where Can I Locate the SysObjectID?

If the device is already managed as a Node in Orion then you can locate the SysObjectID in the 'Node Details' resource as shown below, when viewing the node in the Orion web interface.

Node Details

NET-SNMP

Alternatively, you can use NET-SNMP to query the following SNMP OID to return the unique SysObjectID.   1.3.6.1.2.1.1.2.0   Below is an example of the 'snmpget' command line arguments which will return you the SysObjectID for the device.   snmpget -v2c -On -c public 10.199.5.103 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.2.0   The example above is executed against a device with the IP address of '10.199.5.103' using SNMPv2c, with the community string 'public'. Below is a screenshot of the resulting output from that command. The string of numbers and periods highlighted in yellow below is this device's unique SysObjectID.

My Device Incorrectly Appears Listed as 'NET-SNMP'

Linux hosts, virtual appliances, and even some network equipment built on Linux, FreeBSD, etc. are often identified as 'NET-SNMP'. This is because the SNMP Daemon running on those hosts is, you guessed it, NET-SNMP. Unfortunately, these vendors for some reason, have chosen not to implement their own unique SysObjectID, and instead kept the default SysObjectID '1.3.6.1.4.1.8072.3.2.10' which is designated for NET-SNMP. If you have a device such as this, fret not. There are a few options available to you if you'd like these devices to be properly identified by their appropriate vendor's make & model within Orion.

Install The Orion Linux Agent

The easiest solution would be to install the Orion Linux Agent on the device which is reporting itself to be 'NET-SNMP'. The Linux Agent does not rely upon SNMP to identify the machine type or vendor. Instead, the Agent will report the Vendor as 'Linux' and the 'Machine Type' as the Linux distribution running on the device as depicted in the screenshots below.

Red Hat	Citrix XenServer

Modify NET-SNMP Configuration

Another approach is to customize NET-SNMP and Orion to properly reflect the Vendor and Machine Type. Simply following the steps outlined by adatole's post entitled No More Net-SNMP Nodes. This method uses a script osname.sh which is executed when a particular OID is is queried. Next, you would create a custom Device Poller to query that newly created OID and populate the Machine Type value in Orion for that device.

If you find it more fun to follow along, you can watch adatole walk you through the entire process in the following video.

Can't I Just Upload My Vendor's MIB File Here And You figure it Out?

While it would be nice if that's how it worked, unfortunately many (or most) vendors don't include this information within their MIB files. MIB files include a listing of all possible OIDs which could be polled across a wide variety of different devices (typically an entire product family), but it doesn't include the values which are returned by the devices (Enums notwithstanding). For that reason we need users, such as yourself, to post the SysObjectID's in this thread, along with the device vendor and model information so it can be included in our database.

If you'd still like your device's MIB file included in the Orion MIB database, for use with Network Performance Monitor's Universal Device Poller, or the Orion Platform's SNMP Trap Receiver, simply follow the steps outlined in KB article at the link below.  The latest version of the MIB database, containing your submissions, can always be downloaded from within the Customer Portal.

Request additional MIBs to the SNMP MIB browser database - SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. Help and Support

Hi everyone,

I’ve done some searching and not finding a great answer. So I wanted to ask the community. We use SAM and I want to filter out all the servers from our down nodes list. I know you can do sql but it seemed like it would be a huge list. Is there a simple way of just filtering out any server nodes I just want the network nodes to appear for my dashboard. I did create a custom report that pretty much was a running list based on machine type filtering all the non network items but this seems like we need to keep up on it and I feel there could be an easier way to accomplish my goal.

also if I add my custom report will it run everytime the page refreshes or do I need to schedule it?

thank you for any assistance and please let me know if you need anymore information.

I don't see any option to save scheduled reports from Orion in any format other than Excel 2003 (XLS). I know CSV and PDF are options, but they are not feasible.

Is there a way to save in a not-so-antiquated Excel format (XLSX)? If not, might there be a feature request out there that I can add on to?

< BACK TO TO THE MAGIC OF SQL SCRIPTS SERIES LIST

My Dear Thwackers,

If you are sick and tired of having to deal with continuous noise from hundreds of alerts and customer complaints due to missed problems - you must have this report, now!

Fact: 80% of your alerts and frustrations come from 20% of stuff within your infrastructure!

It is quite obvious that most of the negative impact on performance and productivity within the NOC is being caused by noise and repetitive alerts that is just keep coming through... non-stop. Ability to highlight them in a most efficient manner has never been easy, until now

I am here to offer you a gift - a custom made report that has served us for years in attacking and eliminating all the noise. It is compatible with Orion Platform 2015.1.2, NPM 11.5+ (also works with latest NPM 12)

Download > Import > Run > Action

... and just for fun - please publish a screenshot in the comments below of the top 5 stats that you will get- it is very interesting to know how this will play out in your environment

To your monitoring success,

Alex Soul

[UPDATES]

[30/08/2017]: Below we have discussed some bug fixes around extracting EmailTo from description. In the attached report this workaround was implemented, so, it should work for you straight out-of-the-box

[31/08/2017]: I have added % column, which will calculate percentage from total umber of email alerts sent over the defined period. I have also updated they way variables are being defined, so, you can now just open SQL script and change them all in one place defined in SET function on top of the script

[04/09/2017]: As suggested by tdanner - there is a better way of extracting EmailTo and EmailCC. This has been implemented in version 1.3 of the report

I thought this was coming in 12.2 ?, or did I mis understand ?, if so when can we expect it as running two products is not cheap (As in once SW supports Huawei properly I will have more money to spend :-))

Hello

In iLO v4 available SNMP settings, and successfully polled Hardware Info and Hardware Health and other components.

But in iLO v3 available only SNMP Trap settings.

How can I configuring iLO or vCenter or Solarwinds to gather Hardware Info and Hardware Health from iLO v3?

hi ,

We have SAM,NPM and NTA on one server and one additional polling engine.

We need to configure HA for above Setup.

Below are few doubts regarding this:

1)Do i need to configure my trap to send to my primary and secondary or to Virtual IP?

2)Do i need to send traps to additional polling engine as well?if yes then i need to configure me device to send alert to primay ,secounday ,Additional polling engine ?

Regards,

Abhishek

I'm not able to add any nodes. When i click on "next" on the first page to add nodes. That's stop there. No error message.

Someone have a idea to help me ?

I opened a case to support, but i have no answer for the moment Thanks,