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Newbie Question about SAM

psfletcher

Hi All,

Hopefully a simple question , I've just got SAM installed on a new system.

All Windows environment , so where is the best place to start?

Are there any good default templates to start of with, or any community ones I should be considering?

Thanks all.

Pete

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Accepted answers

gkjono

You can navigate to Settings > All Settings > SAM Settings > Manage Application Monitors. The "Assigned Application Monitors" tab shows all of your template assignments. Check the box next to the assignment that you want to remove and click delete. This is only deleting the assignment, not the template or node.

I'm an engineer for Loop1 and we provide training/professional services/managed services for SolarWinds products. I have some free time tomorrow and could walk you through some of this if you want - no cost. My contact info is below.

-Greg Kjono

Loop1 Systems: SolarWinds Training and Professional Services

LinkedIN: Loop1 Systems
Facebook: Loop1 Systems
Twitter: @Loop1Systems

All comments

mesverrum

The templates you want to use pretty much depend on which software you run on your servers. Almost anything that is out there has a template in the content exchange, some are better than others but a BIG factor is how many licenses you have. If you have a limited number then you tend to need to be pretty ruthless in only monitoring the most important things, but for those who are using an unlimited license then you find people building big comprehensive templates that include every related process and counter and port and anything else that has even a small impact on the applications you need to monitor. Just as an example if you applied the OOTB AD domain controller services template, and the security template, and the standard server template then youd be using nearly 100 licenses on every domain controller. In practice you could likely cut those templates down to bare bones and be using less than 10 monitors per server and probably still be okay.

gkjono

Hey Pete,

As mesverrum mentioned, every environment is going to be different based on the software they run, etc. I would typically start with the most critical applications in your company and those that cause the biggest headaches. I'm sure you've probably seen the templates in SAM, but there is a reference available at SAM Template Reference as well.

You can always create custom templates as well. There's currently 49 different Component Monitor Types that can be used, which makes it possible to monitor almost anything. Personally, if I can't find a way to monitor something with one of the other component types, I can typically find a way to use the Windows PowerShell monitor to monitor most other things.

psfletcher

Hi Mesverrum and gkjono,

Thanks for the advise, i'm quite lucky I persuaded the management to give me a unlimited SAM licenses so i'm good to go really!

If its as simple as finding the templates that suit my system then that's nice and easy, I wasn't to sure if there was some must have windows focused templates that identified some of the fun windows issues that are more useful to the system but I can have a play. So thanks,

And thank gkjono for the links, i'll start to go through them to see what i can find!

On a slightly different note, on SAM, i can quite easily assign a template, how do i unassign a template to a sever/node? (or is that a different post?)

Thanks Pete

gkjono

-Greg Kjono

Loop1 Systems: SolarWinds Training and Professional Services

LinkedIN: Loop1 Systems
Facebook: Loop1 Systems
Twitter: @Loop1Systems