SAM - In over my head?

Question

I will admit that I know very little about Solarwinds. As a matter of fact, I know almost nothing about it. As such, I am having some issues come up with SAM that I am just trying to understand.

For example, when using SAM I have it configured to monitor DHCP. I constantly receive alerts saying that the application is in a state of "Up" and then a short while later, I receive an alert that says it is in a state of "Down" and the last time is was "up" was hh:mm:ss date. The thing is, I don't understand why it is alerting me when my servers appear to be up and running without interruption at all. I have seen this up and down warning on other application monitors in SAM but this was the first to come to mind. Regardless, the question would be the same for all applications.

Why is it telling me something is in a state of "Down" or "Up" when it appears the server that is being monitored is undisturbed? What would be causing the "Up" and "Down" warnings?

Please help!

Thanks,

-Hab

habbolooey · Answer

Thank you to all who responded. I am going to look over your suggestions today and will get back to you with my results.

Sorry, I have been out on travel which is why it has taken me so long to get back to you but I do appreciate your time.

Thank you.

mbird · Answer

Here's an example. This is an application monitor I have set up for some DHCP servers we have:

And here's the alert that works off the data from this monitor:

When any of those items listed above goes into any state other than "up", it'll start firing off emails. You can see stuff can be excluded if you don't need it, you can add things, etc. I believe this application monitor is one out of the box, otherwise you can use the "shared templates on Thwack" tab to find it.

christopher.t.jones123 · Answer

depending on how you have your alert configured it could be because of a number of things. from your description it sounds like one or more of the services for DHCP went into critical which depending on how you have alerting set up could result in the application (not the server) being interpreted as being in a down state

I'm not familiar with the DHCP application monitor because i have not used it, but some application monitors require additional configuration in order to accurately monitor their state. One that comes to mind is the DFS application monitor. I would recommend taking a look at the application monitor template and for each component that it is monitoring you read the description as for most Out-of-the-box application monitors solarwinds puts in any additional configuration steps in the description of each particular component. This will also provide you better insight as to what its monitoring so that when a component does go critical you at least have a starting point for your troubleshooting.

i would then look at thresholds you have set, some thresholds are set to cause a component to go into critical which could potentially cause the application to go into a down status as well. increasing this thresholds to fit your needs may be required.

And lastly i would look at your alert configuration. some alerting can be a bit tricky with the language especially if you're new to solarwinds.

Also keep in mind that application monitors are designed to give you an insight to your applications health, so while the servers may never actually go down, it is letting you know that an application may require some attention, and provide you a starting point for troubleshooting.

When you look at your application are there any components that are critical or in warning?

Hope this was helpful