Orion Platform Administrator Guide

+ Orion Platform requirements

Hardware, software, and port requirements for the Orion Platform server and for the SolarWinds Orion database.

+ Security enhancements and exceptions

Configure SSL for the Orion Web Console, enable FIPS, antivirus directory exclusions.

+ How Orion Platform products work

Orion platform products monitor your network through different protocols. A typical installation includes a database server and one or more polling engine servers.

+ Licensing

Activate, add, upgrade or assign licenses with the web-based License Manager in the Orion Web Console.

+ Add devices

Identify the devices you want to monitor and add them to the SolarWinds Orion database.

+ Manage devices

Edit properties of monitored devices, stop monitoring, edit monitoring settings, stop polling devices or mute alerts.

+ Groups and dependencies 

Organize how monitored data is presented in the Orion Web Console to improve or simplify alerts. Set up dependencies to better represent the status of objects on your network.

+ Events

View events, alerts, traps and Syslogs in the Orion Web Console.

+ Hardware health

Get insight into hardware issues on the network. Monitor hardware health based on hardware sensors, such as fan status, power supply status, or temperature.

+ Quality of Experience

Use packet analysis sensors to see packet-level traffic information about key devices and applications on your network.

+ Agents

Deploy agents to collect data for monitoring your network.

+ Syslogs

Configure your devices to send Syslog messages to your Orion Platform product and view them in the Orion Web Console.

+ Traps

View SNMP traps in the Orion Web Console. 

+ Alerts

Get informed about network events. Use or customize the out-of-the-box alerts, or create new alerts tailored to your needs.

+ Maps

See your network devices on maps in the Orion Web Console.

+ Thresholds

Specify thresholds for monitored metrics. Customize general thresholds or use baselines.

+ Users

Manage Orion Web Console user accounts: set user rights, reset passwords, limit access to network segments based on user accounts, enable authentication with Active Directory.

+ Admin functions and settings

Proxy settings, counter rollovers, view secure data, chart settings auditing settings, and other settings.

+ Custom properties

Specify custom fields to associate with monitored network objects.

+ Customize Orion Web Console (views, widgets)

Log in to the Orion Web Console, customize menus, colors, the logo, and breadcrumbs. Customize views, add widgets and subviews, limit objects on views, specify views for device types. Customize widgets and charts.

+ High Availability in SolarWinds products

Use SolarWinds High Availability to provide failover protection for your Orion server and additional polling engines to reduce data loss.

+ Web-based reports

Generate reports in the Orion Web Console based on the predefined reports for your Orion Platform product. Customize existing reports to fit your needs, create reports, schedule a report to run automatically.

+ Virtualization

Monitor your virtual networks (ESX and ESXi servers, vCenter, VMware) in the Orion Web Console. 

+ Polling Engines

Balance polling using Additional Polling Engines and Additional Web Servers, customize polling and database settings.

+ PerfStack

Visually correlate historical time series data from multiple Orion Platform products and entity types in a single view.

+ Monitor cloud instances and VMs

To support hybrid environments, the Orion Platform can retrieve data from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure cloud service platforms to track availability, performance, applications, and more for instances and VMs. Examples of data gathered include status, storage capacity, memory usage, and IP addresses.

+ Optimize your Orion Platform

Learn more about optimizing your Orion Platform deployment.

+ References

Networking glossary, alert variables, and so on.

+ Configuring the Orion Web Console for SSL

+ Stand-alone Windows License Manager

With the stand-alone Windows License Manager, you can manage licenses for some SolarWinds products that do not use the Orion Platform, or for Orion Platform products that use Orion Platform 2016.1 and earlier.

+ Legacy Orion Report Writer reports

Orion Report Writer is a stand-alone application for creating reports that has been replaced by the web-based Report Manager in the Orion Web Console.