This discussion has been locked. The information referenced herein may be inaccurate due to age, software updates, or external references.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a similar question you can start a new discussion in this forum.

2 Questions on alerting

My company has recently purchased and implemented Solarwinds NPM and SAM. I have 2 questions that i have looked around on thwack but the threads i have found are either extremely old or not applicable.

1. What is Solarwinds (or any) recommendation for monitoring the actual Solarwinds server, is there a failsafe feature built in? What is the recommended solution for ensuring you get alerts if your Solarwinds server goes down.

2. I am trying to configure an alert for when a node goes down, and the default one is working fine at the moment, but I would like to add the function that it not alert me when the node has been gracefully shutdown. What is the best way this is accomplished? I've read that a manage/unmanaged script is probably the best way, but I am interested in seeing if there are other ways to accomplish this.

Thanks

  • Item two is easiest to accomplish  by unmanaging the node prior to shutdown.

    It can either be scheduled or done at the time just prior to server shutdown.

    Item one, you always need something watching your environment.

    If you have multiple polling engines you can monitor the other Solarwinds server in your environment.

    Sometimes it is useful to another small/free tool such as nagios whose only purpose is to watch the watcher.

  • 1. A standalone instance of SAM which uses;

    • AppInsight for SQL to monitor your Solarwinds DB
    • AppInsight for IIS to monitor your Solarwinds IIS website
    • Orion Server template to monitor your Orion servers
    • Microsoft Messaging Queuing Events to monitor MSMQ
    • Microsoft Messaging Queuing Performance to monitor even more MSMQ
    • Event log monitor on your main poller to watch for Solarwinds.Net critical log events
    • Event log monitor on your DB to look for failed audit events so you know when your scripts or alerts miss their mark
    • SQL Server User Experience to query that all your nice settings you tweak don't get overwritten on the next upgrade
    • SQL Server User Experience to query when your nodes are missing critical custom properties or pollers
    • Windows Powershell Monitor to check solarwinds config files (such as SWTrap Service exe.config or web.config) still contains that string that support said had to = to True or it would not work
    • Windows Powershell Monitor to backup solarwinds config files and notify you of when they change (saved my favorite for last)

    2. I tested this against the Windows Shutdown Event Tracker which lays down an event notification when something is "properly" shutdown. I focused on planned vs unplanned reboots so I am unsure if you would get the notification in time with just polling. I would recommend enabling the Shutdown event tracker, installing the Windows Event Forwarder, then see if you are getting syslog messages when shutdown events are input before it's shutdown. That you could build into an alert.

    Some links:

    FREE Log Forwarder for Windows Event Logs | SolarWinds

    Orion Server

  • Thanks for the info and resources. appreciate you taking the time.