New to SolarWinds Orion - Need help setting up a dashboard

Hi, not sure if this is the right place to post this, so really sorry if its not.

I am new to SolarWinds, i have a basic understanding and have been able to set up alerts, however i have been asked to create a dashboard to show Internet Bandwidth utilisation for various regions, i have no idea where to start, ive tried google, YouTube, i even raised a support call with SolarWinds who advised me to use Flow navigator but i have no idea or experience on what to do.

Does anyone know of any resources i can use to learn how to create such a dashboard please, i would be eternally grateful.

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HerrDoktor

Ahoi,

first you need to check if the corresponding interfaces are monitored in your environment. I would start by making a list of your regions and the corresponding devices that are the "internet routers" there.

Check then if you have the "internet breakout" monitored. If you have all the interfaces - next step

Decide how you want to visualize the data. Map/Lists/....

If you opt for a Map, use "Orion maps" and drag/drop the identified internet breakout interfaces onto the map. arrange them nicely, put the map on a dashboard. Done

If you opt for a List - Create a "Table Widget" on a modern dashboard and select your interfaces in the query.

If you want someone to do it for you. Reach out to our sales team, they'd be happy to send you an offer for Services. Reach out to me directly and I will provide you with the email address.

Cheers

WindsOfNishat

Hi @Tony.r

You can do this by breaking all those in a smaller section, as @HerrDoktor advice you first of all list out all the interface as per the region and checked whather you are monitoring all those interface or not?

Secondly, Set CPs for All Interface and add necessary information which will be very usefull to you in coming days.

After all that, you start building dashboard and as herrdoktor guided you as well as you can reffer all other resources like youtube, on demand videos over cutomer portal etc.

Syed.raven

I can help you in creating one for free

romeo-donca

Hi
Another approach
create a perfstack project, Introduce there the interfaces - grouped by location, and save the project for later use as well
In your new modern dashboard - with multiple tabs ( and configured as NOC dashboard ), one of this tab will contain a timeseries wirget with this perfstack project presented before

This way you will have the historical values as well in a chart

silverbacksays

Hey @Tony.r

In addition to what's been said here, and to expand on some of the abbreviations used by others, as you're new to the platform, there's a few things you can setup to help organise things. In the below I have assumed you've been asked for internet bandwidth usage, but you can rejig things to show internal use with the same methodology:

As @WindsOfNishat mentioned, one of the key tools the platform has are Custom Properties (often abbreviated as simply CP). These are custom labels which you can assign to many different element types, including interfaces.

For your solution, I would look at creating two:

Firstly, a NODE custom property called 'Region' (or whatever works for your org) - Use this to define the 'WHERE' for your devices, so you can create groups using Dynamic Queries (also another useful tool!) to automatically populate the group with nodes, based on the value of the 'Region' CP.

Secondly, an INTERFACE custom property called 'WAN_Link', a yes/no type, where you specify whether the interface in question carries external traffic or not by changing the CP value to yes (which equates to 1 in the database tables, with 0 being the value for no).

Then, you can use a combination of these different CPs to create groups, reports, and even custom Proportional widgets using the Modern Dashboards (a bit more advanced, so I won't cover that here).

Getting the fundamental CP setup right is key to getting the most out of your platform, but hopefully the above suggestions will help