Seeking Guidance on Integrating SolarWinds with Power BI for Dashboard Reporting

Hi Community,

I’m reaching out to understand the feasibility and available options for integrating SolarWinds (excluding SolarWinds Service Desk) with Power BI, with the goal of creating interactive dashboards that visualize data from the SolarWinds database.

To clarify, I’m not a SolarWinds engineer and do not have technical expertise in the SolarWinds platform or its modules. However, I’m working on a data reporting initiative and would appreciate the community’s insights into the best approach for this integration.

Here are the key points I’m looking to understand:

Is there an out-of-the-box connector or native integration available between SolarWinds and Power BI?
What are the recommended approaches to extract or access data from SolarWinds for use in Power BI?
- For example, is it feasible to directly query the SolarWinds SQL database?
- Are there available APIs that can be used for this purpose?
- Are there any export mechanisms or staging options commonly used?
Has anyone here implemented a similar integration between SolarWinds and Power BI? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience, challenges, and any lessons learned.
Are there any specific limitations, risks, or technical constraints to be aware of when attempting to connect Power BI to SolarWinds data?

If this is not the appropriate forum to raise this question, I would really appreciate it if someone could point me to the correct forum or resource where I can get further help.

Thank you in advance for any guidance, shared experiences, or direction you can provide. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Comments

ChrystalT

Currently, there's no built-in integration. There may be others here in the community that have worked outside the product or via the API that can assist. In the meantime, there is a feature request which I encourage you to add you voice and vote to: [mention:d6335d31830e47308fbef258559e98b1:fb5d84b10a5745448a7a45dafc1faa43]

tobyw_loop1

Nothing stopping you querying the database directly. What is it you're looking to do?

anupa_91

Thank you @ChrystalT for the insights.

anupa_91

Hi @tobyw_loop1

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, you're right, we can retrieve the data by querying the database directly. However, I was wondering if there could be any scenarios where querying the database might be restricted or disabled, either temporarily or due to system limitations?

HerrDoktor

Hi Anupa I personally would use the Solarwinds Information Service SWIS to gather the data needed. You don't need to open access to the database directly but a web request to SWIS.

I sent you a teams message to discuss your specific requirements.

Cheers

Holger

marcrobinson

You can create a dataflow based on custom swql/api data pulls instead of connecting the actual sql database or even a copy of it (sync'd daily...). This allows you to tailor and simplify the data that PBI is receiving. In other words, if users want data on hardware asset details or alerts, etc. You can create swql to grab the data that they need - then they will not get lost trying to understand the schema and their own needs. THere is nothing stopping you from doing multiple dataflows either. Refreshing the data in a schedule is recommended, especially if you are throwing lots of data up to PBI. Store the data in azure and point PBI at it then. You now have data that can be used without interacting with SolarWinds. Storage amount and duration is also up to you.

tobyw_loop1

See @HerrDoktor reply. The SWIS API adds an additional layer of security. But getting that to feed into PowerBi would probably require some additional PS custom work.

mesverrum

To address "has this been done" the answer is yes, it is very common. I've seen this at a couple dozen clients myself. It's pretty trivial, but the biggest obstacle tends to be that the PBI data engineers usually know next to nothing about the kinds of data available in SW so they struggle to figure out the relevant queries.

Doesn't make a huge difference if you use SWQL with the API or SQL with the DB directly. The general consensus is to use the API but I will say that for serious reporting use cases SWQL does not have all of the functions of SQL. So I prefer regular SQL which the data engineers are almost always deeply experienced in, rather than forcing them to try and familiarize themselves with the slightly tweaked SWQL syntax for something that is probably just a small slice of their day job and responsibilities.

Just like any database, the risk is that you can throw a badly written query at it and overwhelm the database. That's true if you are hitting the API or the DB, i've locked up the SWIS service (API) hundreds of times over the years while developing queries and scripts.

kekline

In case you're still looking, check out this very recent Forum post Introducing a Modern Drill-Down Dashboard and its Modern Drill-Down Dashboard Downloadables and Setup Info. Cheers!