Applications Systems

WPM Troubleshooting Guide

Web Performance Monitor ultimate troubleshooting guide. Most common issues. WPM known bugs and issues. Transactions are unknown. Local seum users, domain users, single sign-on. Player is unknown. Best practices for WPM. Upgraded to 2020.2.2 transactions stopped playing, not playing.

First published date

7/30/2020 12:44 AM

Last published date

9/2/2021 5:19 PM

Overview

The most common issues found in WPM. Covering the following
  • Best practices & FAQ
  • Common issues
  • Known issues

This article is for educational purposes only. If you're experiencing an actual issue, please create a new support ticket for SolarWinds Technical Support.

Product section

Web Performance Monitor

Resolution

Best Practices & FAQ

Please review the landing page for how WPM works.
It is WPM best practice to not use the Main Orion polling engine as your main Player location. 

  • Use Additional polling engines (if they exist)
  • Use dedicated Windows server(s)

The Main Polling Engine handles many other tasks and was not designed to bear the load of being a primary WPM Player location. Dedicated Player Locations are free and should be used instead. The system requirements are minuscule.

How many Transactions are ideal per Player?
It is difficult to answer with absolute certainty. The official guidelines states only 12 Transactions per Player. Of course, it is possible to push a Player far beyond this. It depends on the number of Worker processes available, the length of each Transaction assigned to the Player, and the system hardware the Player has. 

To truly determine what a Player can handle based on the Transactions assigned, it is recommended to use the Player Load value. NOTE: this value fluctuates depending on what is actively playing back at that moment in time. It is ideal to keep the Player Load at values under 100%. Values over 100% indicate Transactions are not playing as scheduled. 


Can you use domain accounts in place of the local user accounts?
Of course, sometimes it is a requirement to use domain accounts to access a site. Either Windows authentication or Single-Sign-On prevents users from being authenticated. For these purposes, WPM has the ability to program domain users. 

What is the ideal number of users?
Seven. Seven was decided to be the default number of users for WPM Players. You can designate anywhere from 1 to 15 accounts. This applies to both local and domain accounts. 

If you should need more than 7 account, you must take into account that the system specifications for Players only account for 7 users so you must increase the CPU and memory of the location accordingly.
 

Common Issues

Please note that the following issues and recommendations apply to the most common scenarios. If you're experiencing issues and these do not address your concern, please submit a support ticket for your particular issue. If it is considered a common issue, it can be amended to this to document.


Recording is not working

Other tips

  • Implementing wait conditions
  • Adding X,Y Capture mode at the failing step
  • Use of mouseover feature (Ctrl+tilde - While in Recording mode, hitting the Ctrl + ~ keys will record the location of the mouse cursor location. This can be useful when recording some mouseover menus, especially where clicks are not necessary, only a mouseover action).
  • Re-record the section of the Recording that is failing

Transaction does not work but works in Recorder

Other issues not mentioned here. 

Transactions Playback Slower than expected

  • If the transaction speed has slowed down significantly, the first culprit is usually the resources of the player machine. Ensure that you have enough resources running on the playback player by following the system requirements outlined here.
  • As mentioned above, the main polling engine should not be your main Player location. Instead, use additional polling engines or designated Player servers.
  • If you experience slower than playback consider increasing your resources to the recommended (not required, but rather the recommended values) CPU and memory that is listed in our multi-module guidelines.
  • Transaction(s) is in warning/critical state - see about increasing CPU or other resources - Transaction times are higher than expected
  • Known WPM issue (2020.2.6): first step of Transaction has high latency/wait time and shows lag on the tcp waterfall chart [internal: Delay before first navigation during playback on Player].

 

Transactions are unknown

First, it must be identified if the Player is healthy. If none of the Transactions are assigned to the Player are running, it could indicate a Player issue. The most common Player-wide issues are related to users. i.e. Users lack sufficient privileges to play Transactions. 

Please visit: 



The AgentService log (C:\ProgramData\SolarWinds\Logs\SEUM\) is key to discovering if the issue is Player-wide. Errors in that log file will indicate right away what the Player-wide issue is. If errors are not logged within that file, it likely could be that the issue is Transaction-specific.

*Important note: The AgentService config file is wiped clean upon upgrading. Any programmed domain accounts will be cleared. You will need to manually add these back. 

If only one Transaction assigned to the Player is unknown, then troubleshooting of that specific Transaction can begin. It is recommended to navigate to the Transaction Details page for further details on what the cause of unknown status is. If known exists, it would be recommended to navigate to the Player itself and determine the cause in the worker process log (C:\ProgramData\SolarWinds\Logs\SEUM\). Retrieve a timestamp of last played time in the web interface to find the correct worker process log file to examine. 


Upgraded to 2020.2.2 - Transactions Unknown

 

Known Issues