Diagnostics

Format: 75 multiple-choice questions
Time allotment: 90 minutes

Study Resources
The intention of the resources provided is to supplement your experience with diagnostics using SolarWinds’ products. The included resources are not all-inclusive and should only aid as a starting place for your studies.

Use the available documentation to learn more about SolarWinds Diagnostics:

• Orion Platform documentation
• NPM documentation
• SAM documentation
• NCM documentation
• NTA documentation
  

For additional study resources, visit THWACK^® or our Customer Success Center^®.

Optimization Guide
Know how to optimize the monitoring performance of a deployment.

Orion enviroment Health Checks
Know how to perform Health Checks to confirm that your Orion environment is functioning correctly.

Troubleshoot Orion Deployment issues with Active Diagnostics
Starting with Orion Platform 2018.2, you can display a list of issues or potential issues that might occur in your deployment directly in the Orion Web Console. For each issue, the Orion Health page suggests links to steps that resolve the issue.

Basic Troubleshooting
Review the basic steps on how you can troubleshoot a SolarWinds application in the event of a SYSTEM DOWN failure.

Basic SolarWinds Orion Platform Troubleshooting Guide
Review the basic steps on how you can troubleshoot a SolarWinds application in the event of a SYSTEM DOWN failure.

Initial checks when experiencing performance issues
Know how to address the most common reasons for performance issues on to your server without sending the diagnostics to SolarWinds support.

Rebuild the Orion Website
Know how to rebuild the Orion website when you encounter issues.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Guide - Website Performance
Understand how to address website performance issues.

Troubleshoot issues with an Orion Web Console SSL certificate
Know how to troubleshoot an issue with an Orion Web Console SSL certificate.

Orion Web Console charts display Data is not available
Read about possible reasons why charts in the Orion Web Console display the error message "Data is not available."

Dependent services for Orion
Know which services to enable for Orion Platform products.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Guide - Services - SWIS
Know about the SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS) as a data access layer for the Orion Platform products.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Guide - Service - Module Engine
Know about the Business Layer/Module used to talk to the database.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting MSMQ/Collector/Job Engine (Polling Issues)
Understand the critical services for polling, including MSMQ, collector, and the job engine.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Recommendation Service
Know about the Windows service (SolarWinds Recommendations) that is responsible for computation.

Rabbit MQ
Know how to access rabbit MQ and its other features.

Best Practices and Troubleshooting for SolarWinds Orion Database
Read about best practices and troubleshooting tips to learn preventive steps to ensure your database maintains stability and performance.

Database Performance

Read the best practices for SQL Server hardware specifications and for SQL Server Instance configuration, information on which logs to examine when troubleshooting a Database Performance issue, or information on which services are involved on the SQL server and the Orion server.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Database Maintenance
Database maintenance is an automatic process that optimizes the size of your SolarWinds Orion database. 

High Availability
SolarWinds High Availability (HA) provides failover protection for your Orion server and additional polling engines to reduce data loss when your main server goes down.

Learn how to troubleshoot and resolve some of the common issues encountered during an upgrade of the Orion Platform.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Guide - Migrations
Learn how to troubleshoot and resolve some of the common issues encountered during and after migrating the Orion Platform to a new server.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting Installations
Read about how to troubleshoot installation issues.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting - Configuration Wizard
Know how to run the Configuration Wizard to optimize a website or make a repair.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting - Alerts
Learn how to troubleshoot common alerting issues.

Suspend data collection or alerts for nodes in Maintenance Mode
During maintenance, nodes might be down for short periods of time. To prevent alert messages and to ensure that your Orion Platform product collects the data you need, place the nodes to Maintenance Mode.

Use alerts to monitor your environment with the Orion Platform
An alert is an automated notification that a network event has occurred, such as a server becoming unresponsive. The network event that triggers an alert is determined by conditions you set up when you configure your alert. Know how to use alerts to monitor your environment.

Troubleshoot ServiceNow
Read the frequently asked questions about ServiceNow integration.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting – Report
Learn how to troubleshoot common reporting issues.

Manage and view reports in the Orion Platform
SolarWinds provides predefined reports for each Orion Platform product. Use the web-based interface to customize these predefined reports and create your own reports.

User accounts
Know the user account types the Orion Web Console supports.

How user accounts work
Before you assign user accounts, consider what tasks the user must perform, what views and menu bars are most suitable, and what type of account to use.

Unable to log to the Web Console using a domain account
Learn how to troubleshoot when users are unable to log in using domain credentials to the Orion Web Console and there are no obvious errors or issues with the accounts.

Active Directory user: Login failure. User name and/or password incorrect
Learn how to troubleshoot when the OrionWeb.log shows "Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer". When attempting to log into the Orion Web Console, an Active Directory (AD) user enters the correct username and password but gets the message < Login failure. User name and/or password incorrect.>.

Login failure. User name and/or password incorrect
Know how to reset an admin username and password.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting - Network Discovery
Read about Network Discovery troubleshooting steps and issues.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting MSMQ/Collector/Job Engine (Polling Issues)
Learn how to troubleshoot polling issues.

Verify WMI connection
Learn how to ensure that the WMI service is installed and running and that you can successfully connect to WMI on a monitored node.

Testing WMI Connectivity with WBEMTest
Know how to use the Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation tester tool to check WMI connectivity with monitored nodes, applications and services.

WMI connection Failing
Learn how to resolve an issue where WMI-based monitors fail to connect to a target server.

Orion Agents
An agent is software that provides a communication channel between the Orion server and a Windows or Linux/Unix computer. Products install plugins on agents to collect the data that the agents send back. This can be beneficial in situations such as:

Cloud monitoring
Cloud service platforms provide on-demand computing resources to third-party organizations over the Internet. As organizations migrate systems to the cloud to distribute workloads, deliver applications, and expand resources for growing databases, infrastructure can become difficult to map in sprawling environments, leading to lost resources or hidden instances.

How does QoE work?
Quality of Experience (QoE) uses Packet Analysis Sensor to provide packet- level traffic information about key devices and applications that you specify.

Manage QoE Packet Analysis Sensors
You can manage nodes that are defined as QoE Sensors, as well as the nodes and applications that are watched by each node.

QoE data unavailable
Troubleshoot an issue when there's no data is displayed on the charts and tables at the QoE View.

Orion Platform Troubleshooting - Maps
Read about Network Atlas & Orion Maps.

View monitored objects on maps in the Orion Platform
Maps in the Orion Web Console can show monitored nodes, interfaces and volumes, SAM applications and components, and network links.

Technical troubleshooting for common "ConnectNow" issues
Understand the different troubleshooting options for common "Connect Now" issues.

Troubleshoot intermittent network slowdowns with NPM
An example that describes creating a Performance Analysis dashboard (PerfStack™) that correlates metrics to investigate the cause of the network slowdown.

Troubleshooting Analysis Projects
Troubleshooting data issues in PerfStack.

Troubleshooting environmental issues with Performance Analysis dashboards
Learn how to create analysis projects with the Performance Analysis (PerfStack™) dashboard.

1. You receive a 500 - Internal Server Error when you launch the Orion Web Console. You suspect the cause is a corrupted web.config file. You rebuild the Orion website to try and resolve the issue. What should you do before you delete SolarWinds NetPerfMon from IIS Manager?
1. Run the Configuration Wizard
2. Delete Temporary ASP.Net files
3. Record the Website Directory and Bindings of the Orion website
4. Delete the SolarWinds Orion Application Pool
2. You want to check if all services for the Orion Platform and running. You also want to stop and start these services as needed. Which tool can you use to complete these tasks with the least amount of effort?
1. Orion Service Manager
2. services.msc
3. SQL Management Studio
4. Task Manager

Learn about NPM product features and related technologies.

Monitoring best Practices
A network is a collection of devices that are connected and can communicate with one another over a common transport or communication protocol. Here communication can refer to the transfer of data among users or instructions between nodes in the network, such as computers, mobile devices, output devices, management elements, servers, routing and switching devices, etc.

Set up monitoring Cisco ASA firewalls in NPM
Learn about data monitoring for Cisco^® ASA firewalls.

Set up Network Insight for F5^® BIG-IP^® load balancers in NPM
To monitor the servers and connections in your load balancing environment, make sure your F5 devices meet the correct requirements.

Network Insight for Palo Alto - monitor Palo Alto firewalls with NPM
Network Insight for Palo Alto firewalls automates the monitoring and management of your Palo Alto infrastructure to provide visibility and help ensure service availability.

Monitor Cisco Nexus devices in NPM
With Network Insight for Cisco^® Nexus, you can monitor the health and performance of your Nexus devices, view configured virtual Port Channels (vPCs) and their peer vPCs.

Monitor Cisco ACI devices in NPM
Thanks to the broad coverage of Cisco OIDs, you can poll many statistics for hardware components that make up ACI, such as Nexus leaf and spine switches.

Troubleshoot UCS device monitoring in the Orion Platform
Learn about issues you may encounter when monitoring UCS devices in the Orion Platform.

Cisco UCS configuration downloader tool
Learn how to download a USC configuration and configure the tool for the output required by SolarWinds support.

NetPath graph issues: basic troubleshooting
Learn how to troubleshoot NetPath graph issues.

NetPath Services – Video
Learn how to use NetPath to discover and troubleshoot your network paths hop-by-hop – not just the part of the network that you manage, but also nodes and links of your providers.

Orion Platform NPM Troubleshooting – UNDP
Learn about troubleshooting UNDP pollers.

How does NPM calculate interface bandwidth?
Learn how NPM calculates interface bandwidth, and what conversion factors it uses.

Troubleshooting hardware health in the Orion Platform
Learn how to troubleshoot hardware health issues.

Timeouts during hardware health polling
Learn how to resolve timeout issues.

1. You investigate false positive alerts on your hardware health. You check the HardwareHealth.Collector.Jobs log file and notice several lines of timeouts. What is the next best course of action?
1. Increase SNMP timeout for hardware health polling
2. Recreate your hardware health pollers
3. Disable and re-enable your hardware health pollers
4. Truncate hardware health data tables in the Orion database
2. You test your configuration of a poller with UnDP and receive an OID Not Supported error. What could cause this error? Select all that apply.
1. The device's MIB is not in the Orion MIB database
2. You used the incorrect SNMP Get type in the UnDP poller
3. The device does not provide any information on the specified OID
4. You incorrectly configured the polling frequency

SAM Administrator Guide
SolarWinds SAM gives you the tools to monitor your applications and environment through a single web console. SAM includes custom collections of templates, application monitors, and alerts to intelligently monitor application status and issues. Monitor over 250 application types including application servers, authentication servers, database servers, and more.

Orion Platform SAM troubleshooting - Components
Learn how to isolate the source of an "Unknown" status for an application, which logs to examine to see additional information regarding the issue, and how to use various tools to attempt to replicate the issue outside of SAM.

Use PowerShell in SAM
Some SAM templates include component monitors that use PowerShell scripts to gather information. You can also create custom scripts for SAM templates that support PowerShell scripts.

SAM Template Reference
SolarWinds SAM provides over 250 predefined templates to help get you started monitoring servers and applications. Each template consists of multiple component monitors designed to poll for specific metrics about an application, process, or event.

AppInsight
Learn about the available Applnsight templates.

Monitor with AppInsight for IIS
AppInsight for IIS automatically monitors your IIS environment to identify IIS server, website, and application pool performance issues.

Troubleshoot AppInsight for Active Directory
AppInsight for Active Directory monitors physical and virtual Active Directory environments to identify issues about domain controllers, replication, and more.

AppInsight for Exchange connection troubleshooting
Learn how to troubleshoot "Test failed" or other errors in SAM when testing credentials by replacing the IP with hostname in AppInsight for Exchange.

Monitor with AppInsight for SQL
Identify performance and troubleshoot issues for SQL databases and queries with AppInsight for SQL.

Troubleshoot application dependency issues in SAM
Learn what to do if the Application Connections widget of a Node or Application Details page displays sample data with a "Why don't I see any connections?" message.

SAM Troubleshooting Hardware Health
If these conditions cannot be met, the Hardware Health resources will not be displayed at all. Please note that manager or agent from proper manufacturer is needed, for SNMP and WMI, to Hardware monitoring work properly.

Configure certificate error handling for Hardware Health polling
By default, SAM ignores certificate errors during Hardware Health polling. You can update that setting so users are prompted to verify untrusted connections before proceeding.

Difference in Hardware Health by manufacturer and polling method for servers
Read information on the different vendors and polling methods used when polling Hardware Health on a server.

Monitor container services in the Orion Platform
Containers are lightweight, executable packages of software that include everything needed to run an application: code, system tools, system libraries, and settings.

Supported container environments
Learn about the several container environments (also called "orchestrators") the Orion Platform supports.

Monitor Cisco UCS devices in the Orion Platform
The Cisco^® Unified Computing System (UCS) is designed to provision, migrate, and manage internetworking systems in data centers.

Troubleshoot UCS device monitoring in the Orion Platform
Read about issues you may encounter when monitoring UCS devices in the Orion Platform.

1. An application monitor reports unknown status. You use WMI to monitor the application. To investigate, you decide to replicate the monitoring task outside of SAM. Which tool can you use?
1. AppInsight
2. WBEMtest
3. SNMPwalk
4. SSH
2. After you disable the Enable Total Counters feature of AppInsight for the Active Directory, the AppInsight for Active Directory applications display as down. You also find warnings in the SAM log files. How can you resolve this issue?
1. Restart the Orion Collector Service
2. Restart SWISv2
3. Reassign AppInsight for Active Directory to the Domain Controller
4. Reboot the Domain Controller

Troubleshoot issues with NCM configuration files
Learn how to resolve issues with downloading and managing config files and viewing config file information.

Specify Config Settings for NCM
Use the Config Settings page to specify how NCM manages your device configurations.

Troubleshoot NCM device connections
When you experience problems connecting to a device, you may need to perform a session trace to troubleshoot the issue.

Limit the number of simultaneous uploads or downloads of network configs
If you experience issues on your server, you can limit the number of simultaneous uploads or downloads.

Using NCM Connection Tester
Learn how to use the Connection Tester tool as an alternative to PuTTY and other clients.

NCM error: Test failed. Connection refused by x.x.x.x
Learn how to troubleshoot the NCM error: Test failed. Connection refused by x.x.x.x.

1. You receive a Test Failed. Connection Refused by x.x.x.x error you test a connection profile for a 2621XM router. How can you best resolve this issue?
1. Enable Session Tracing
2. Gather a log file and disable Session Tracing
3. Test the connection profile to a Juniper router
4. Recreate the connection profile
2. An Interface Config widget does not display after an upgrade. Why?
1. You installed the NPM and NCM Orion server
2. You did not download the latest running config from the device after the upgrade
3. You assigned the incorrect device template to the device
4. NCM is using the generic device template for the device

Troubleshooting in SolarWinds NTA
Learn how to troubleshoot various issues you can encounter in NTA, such as NetFlow issues, chart issues, database connection issues, or CBQoS issues.

How SolarWinds NTA works
SolarWinds NTA collects Class Based Quality of Service (CBQoS) and flow data, processes it, and together with performance data collected by SolarWinds NPM, presents the data in graphs and reports to show bandwidth use on your network.

Troubleshoot Long Flow Errors in SolarWinds NTA
Invalid flow errors recorded in the NetFlow Analyzer may result when a flow duration exceeds the cache timeout values.

Troubleshoot CBQoS issues
Learn how to troubleshoot CBQoS issues in NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA).

1. What protocol does SolarWinds NTA not support for Sampled Flow Support?
1. NetFlow Lite
2. Cisco Wireless Controller NetFlow
3. sFlow
4. IPFIX
2. NTA is unable to poll CBQoS data on a monitored Cisco device. What is the most likely the cause?
1. The node is polled by ICMP instead of SNMP
2. The node is polled by SNMP instead of ICMP
3. The node is polled by SNMP instead of WMI
4. The node is polled by ICMP instead of WMI

Orion Platform

1. C
2. A

NPM

1. A
2. B, C

SAM

1. B
2. A

NCM

1. D
2. B

NTA

1. B
2. A