Suppressing or unmanaging hardware sensors?

admin_nsn

Hi Thwack community

I'm just wondering if there is any way to schedule a suppression (mute) or unmanagement of a hardware sensor?

It's a frequently question asked in our organization and I've not found any solution to this myself.

Thank you!

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

stuartd

Pretty sure there isn't a way to do this at the sensor level.

You'd, as I understand it, need to mute the aspect it is attached to. So, for example, an interface.

vinay.by

Not a good option - but you can disable the ones that you don't want

Settings -> All Settings -> Manage Hardware Sensors -> Looks for the sensor on particular node -> Select that sensor -> disable

But as i said not a good option, this would disable it permanently and you can enable it back provided there is no change on the end device (node).

admin_nsn

This has been my conclusion as well. Thank you for taking your time to give your insight.

admin_nsn

This has actually been our workaround too. But as you can imagine, without the schedule, enabling the sensor again is sometimes forgotten.

Thank you for taking the time to answer anyway, I appreciate it

MathieuJM

you can try the solarwinds api

there are verbs to enable and disable the hardware sensors.

you can probably scheduled it.

stuartd

I've thought some more, and the only other option I can think of is to do it via scripting.

stuartd

Yeah, this is what I was meaning by scripting it.

bourlis

Interesting question/subject. It made we wonder if this is possible, but what about disabling certain global hardware for those annoying issues? Then leveraging UnDP for sensors you care or want? In this case it would be easier to opt in rather than disabling sensors

Finnick

Interesting question! We run a similar setup for monitoring behind bsd-brawl.net, where uptime and performance are key—especially when hosting real-time multiplayer content. While there's no built-in feature to schedule suppression of a hardware sensor in SolarWinds, we've managed temporary unmanagement using scripts and API calls, kind of like toggling specific game modes or modules during peak load times. A built-in scheduler for this would be super helpful to avoid manual intervention during maintenance windows. Definitely something worth pushing for

Finnick

That's an interesting topic—it got me thinking about whether it's possible to handle this by disabling specific global hardware that's causing persistent issues. Then, instead of managing everything, you could use UnDP to selectively include only the sensors you actually need. This way, it becomes more of an opt-in approach rather than having to go through the trouble of disabling unwanted sensors.

admin_nsn

Yep, thinking about creating a Jenkins job that can automate this process. Thanks!

ronan.tonilon

Disclaimer:
The content posted herein are provided as a suggestion or recommendation to you for your internal use. The information set forth herein may come from third party website or customers. SolarWinds is not liable for any downtime or any issue that may occur if you perform the following suggestions on the link provided. Your organization should internally review and assess to what extent, if any, such custom scripts or recommendations will be incorporated into your environment.
Please try this first in a lab environment, before implementing to your production.

You can open a support ticket to get insights, but please take note of our Working with Support Policy, customizations are not supported especially if this would involved custom scripts or queries, support can assist in a best effort practice since our support team is intended as a break fix support.

This is a good and frequently asked but overlooked question and unfortunately SolarWinds does not currently support direct scheduling or suppression of individual hardware sensors (e.g., fans, power supplies, temperatures) via native UI or APIs.

Below are reasons and some possible workarounds.

Why You Can't Directly Suppress a Hardware Sensor

Hardware sensors in SolarWinds are sub-entities under nodes (in Orion.HardwareHealth.HardwareSensor).
Unlike nodes or interfaces, they do not have the UnmanageFrom / UnmanageUntil fields, so you can't schedule them to be muted or unmanaged.

Workarounds:

1. Suppress Alerts via Custom Property and Time-Based Logic

You can simulate "muting" a sensor by suppressing the alert, not the object.

Steps:

Add a custom property to nodes or sensors:
- E.g., SuppressSensorAlert
Create a scheduled task (PowerShell or SQL Job) to toggle this value based on a schedule.
Modify your alert to include:
text
CopyEdit
AND (CustomProperty.SuppressSensorAlert <> 'Yes' OR CustomProperty.SuppressSensorAlert IS NULL)

This effectively mutes the sensor only within the alert logic, and you can schedule this change.

2. Use a Scheduled Script to Suppress Based on Alert Trigger Time

You can auto-suppress an alert if it occurs during a maintenance window:

<span><span class="hljs-keyword">WHERE</span> (<br />&nbsp; DATENAME(dw, GETUTCDATE()) <span class="hljs-keyword">NOT</span> <span class="hljs-keyword">IN</span> (<span class="hljs-string">&#39;Saturday&#39;</span>, <span class="hljs-string">&#39;Sunday&#39;</span>)  <span class="hljs-comment">-- allow weekdays only</span><br />  <span class="hljs-keyword">&nbsp; AND</span> DATEPART(<span class="hljs-keyword">HOUR</span>, GETUTCDATE()) <span class="hljs-keyword">BETWEEN</span> <span class="hljs-number">9</span> <span class="hljs-keyword">AND</span> <span class="hljs-number">18</span>         <span class="hljs-comment">-- allow 9am&ndash;6pm UTC</span></span>

)

Add that into the alert trigger condition for a specific sensor alert.

3. Custom SWIS + PowerShell Script (Experimental)

Query the hardware sensor via SWIS.
Change the status or alert mute flag (if available in your version).
Problem: SolarWinds SDK does not expose hardware sensor unmanage natively.

So this would be a dirty workaround involving:

Disabling polling on the node (not ideal).
Or filtering sensors from alerts using SWQL + script-injected tags.

Limitations:

Feature	Supported
Unmanage individual sensors	Not supported
Mute alerts per sensor	️ Only via custom logic
Schedule sensor polling	Not supported
Suppress based on custom property	Yes (workaround)
API/SDK for sensor unmanage	Not available

If your organization frequently asks for this:

Define a custom property or tag for sensors you need to mute regularly.
Create a SolarWinds alert condition that checks this tag before triggering.
Use a scheduled PowerShell script or API call to toggle the tag based on your calendar or events.

Sample PowerShell script to toggle a custom property (e.g., SuppressSensorAlert) on a hardware sensor (or node) in SolarWinds, using the Orion SDK.

Purpose

Input: Node or Sensor ID
Action: Set SuppressSensorAlert = "Yes" (to mute), or "No" (to unmute)
Usage: Schedule it with Task Scheduler or orchestrate through another system

Prerequisites

Install the SolarWinds Orion SDK
- Download: https://github.com/solarwinds/OrionSDK/releases
- Install the PowerShell module: Install-Module -Name SwisPowerShell (if using PowerShell 5+)
Make sure the custom property SuppressSensorAlert is already created:
- Go to: Settings > Manage Custom Properties
- Apply to Orion.Nodes or Orion.HardwareHealth.HardwareSensor

PowerShell Script

# SolarWinds server and credentials

$swServer = "your-solarwinds-server"

$swUsername = "admin"

$swPassword = "yourpassword"

</code></div><div class="overflow-y-auto p-4" style="padding-left:30px;" dir="ltr"><code class="whitespace-pre! language-powershell"><span># The name of the custom property and desired value</span>

$customPropertyName = "SuppressSensorAlert"

$newValue = "Yes" # Use "No" to unmute

</code></div><div class="overflow-y-auto p-4" style="padding-left:30px;" dir="ltr"><code class="whitespace-pre! language-powershell"><span># Target type: "Node" or "Sensor"</span>

$targetType = "Node" # or "Sensor"

$targetID = 123 # NodeID or SensorID

</code></div><div class="overflow-y-auto p-4" style="padding-left:30px;" dir="ltr"><code class="whitespace-pre! language-powershell"><span># Load Orion SDK module</span>

Import-Module SwisPowerShell# Connect to SWIS

$swis = Connect-Swis -Hostname $swServer -Username $swUsername -Password $swPassword

</code></div><div class="overflow-y-auto p-4" style="padding-left:30px;" dir="ltr"><code class="whitespace-pre! language-powershell"><span>if ($targetType -eq "Node") {</span>

  # Node custom property update

  $uri = Get-SwisData $swis "SELECT Uri FROM Orion.Nodes WHERE NodeID = @id" @{id = $targetID}

} elseif ($targetType -eq "Sensor") {

  # Sensor custom property update (if using Orion SDK v3+ with custom properties extended)

<span>&nbsp; $uri = Get-SwisData $swis "SELECT Uri FROM Orion.HardwareHealth.HardwareSensor WHERE HardwareSensorID = @id" @{id = $targetID} </span>

} else {

  Write-Host "Invalid target type. Must be 'Node' or 'Sensor'"

  exit 1

}

</code></div><div class="overflow-y-auto p-4" style="padding-left:30px;" dir="ltr"><code class="whitespace-pre! language-powershell"><span>if ($uri) {</span>

  Set-SwisObject -SwisConnection $swis -Uri $uri -Properties @{ $customPropertyName = $newValue }

<span>&nbsp; Write-Host "[$targetType ID $targetID] Custom property &#39;$customPropertyName&#39; set to &#39;$newValue&#39;."</span>

} else {

  Write-Host "Target entity not found for ID: $targetID"

}

To automate this: Create two scheduled tasks:

Mute script ($newValue = "Yes") — e.g., run every Saturday 2AM
Unmute script ($newValue = "No") — e.g., run every Monday 6AM

Enhancements

Loop over multiple targets from a CSV file
Dynamically evaluate maintenance windows
Log results to a file or email output

Hope this helps.