Cisco chassis line-card serial numbers not visible in Observability Self-Hosted Hardware Health

• Symptom / “error message”:
  
  • No explicit error is shown.
  • On Cisco chassis devices (for example, C9410R) monitored in SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted 2025.4.x, the Hardware Health / Hardware Details views show:
    • Chassis Service Tag / serial
    • Module / slot / PSU / fan health rows
    • But no per–line-card serial numbers.
• From the customer’s perspective:
  
  • “We would like the ability to see the serial numbers of line cards on our Cisco chassis in Observability.”
  • Customer has valid SNMP/CLI access to the device and can see serial numbers in the device CLI (show inventory, show module), but not in Observability.
  • Behavior is consistent across all Cisco chassis nodes; there is no intermittent failure.
• What this article explains (How-to / Problem-Resolution):
  
  • Clarifies that this is a current product limitation / feature request, not an SNMP or configuration issue.
  • Lists supported workarounds to obtain and report on chassis line-card serial numbers using NCM and/or custom pollers.
  • Provides links to public documentation and THWACK content that demonstrate these workarounds.

• Product limitation / feature gap in Observability Self-Hosted 2025.4.x:
  • Hardware Health currently:
    • Polls and displays chassis-level information and certain module/FRU health metrics.
    • Shows chassis service tag/serial and module status rows.
  • It does not surface per–line-card serial numbers from ENTITY-MIB (entPhysicalSerialNum, OID 1.3.6.1.2.1.47.1.1.1.1.11) for Cisco chassis platforms (for example, C9410R).
• This behavior is by design for current 2025.4.x releases and is being tracked as a feature request / roadmap enhancement for a future Observability Self-Hosted release (targeted 2026.2; dates and scope subject to change).

Because this is a limitation of the current Observability Self-Hosted release, there is no setting or hotfix that will make per–line-card serial numbers appear in Hardware Health. Use one of the following workarounds and, optionally, log or upvote a feature request.

1. NCM / CLI-based inventory (recommended, simpler)

Use Network Configuration Manager (NCM) to collect chassis inventory via CLI and build a serial-number report.

Steps (high level):

• Ensure the Cisco chassis node is managed by NCM.
• Configure an NCM command script or job to run on the chassis, for example:
  
  • show inventory
  • show module
• Use NCM’s reporting capabilities to parse the collected output and build a report that maps:
  
  • Chassis / node
  • Slot / module
  • Line-card serial number
• Example patterns and a ready-made Cisco hardware serial report are available on THWACK:
  
  • Cisco Hardware report with Serial Numbers (NCM-based report)
    
    •  https://thwack.solarwinds.com/kb/articles/1384-cisco-hardware-report-with-serial-numbers
  • NCM – Add the ability to query for chassis serial numbers on Cisco Nexus devices (feature request + discussion of using entPhysicalSerialNum in reports)
    
    •  https://thwack.solarwinds.com/discussion/130869/ncm-add-the-ability-to-query-for-chassis-serial-numbers-on-cisco-nexus-devices

This approach uses standard NCM jobs and reports, and works even when serials are only easily accessible via CLI.

2. Custom pollers on ENTITY-MIB (advanced, SNMP-based)

For environments that prefer SNMP-based reporting, configure custom pollers against ENTITY-MIB entPhysicalSerialNum and build a SWQL/SQL report.

High-level steps:

1. Identify the OID(s):

   • Use ENTITY-MIB entPhysicalSerialNum (1.3.6.1.2.1.47.1.1.1.1.11) as the primary OID for device and module serial numbers.

2. Create custom pollers (Device Studio or UnDP):

   • Follow the official “Create custom monitors” documentation for NPM, which explains how to create Device Studio pollers or Universal Device Pollers (UnDP) and assign them to nodes:
     
     •  https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/npm/content/npm-custom-monitoring.htm
   • Configure a poller using:
     • OID 1.3.6.1.2.1.47.1.1.1.1.11 (ENTITY-MIB: entPhysicalSerialNum)
     • SNMP Get type: typically GetNext for tabular data.
   • Apply the poller to the Cisco chassis nodes.

3. Use existing examples for serial-number pollers:

   • THWACK provides sample custom pollers for Cisco serial numbers, including a ready-made definition for entPhysicalSerialNum:
     
     • Hardware serial numbers of Cisco devices?
       
       •  https://thwack.solarwinds.com/discussion/comment/202319

4. Build a report or dashboard:

   • After polling is in place and data is collected:
     • Use the Report Writer / web report builder or custom SWQL queries to join:
       • Node / device identifiers
       • Custom poller results (serials)
       • Any relevant module/slot metadata
   • As a reference, THWACK includes full report examples for serial-number reporting across multiple vendors:
     
     • Cisco Hardware report with Serial Numbers
       
       •  https://thwack.solarwinds.com/kb/articles/1384-cisco-hardware-report-with-serial-numbers

3. Feature request / roadmap tracking (optional, customer-facing)

To have this requirement tracked and prioritized:

• Ask the customer to log or upvote a feature request on THWACK with their use case and case number:
  
  • THWACK Feature Request forum:  http://thwack.solarwinds.com/community/feature-request_tht
• Internally, link relevant customer cases to the existing Cisco module/line-card hardware health / serials feature items (for example, Observability Self-Hosted 2026.2 hardware-health enhancement) as per internal process.