Preface

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) is a comprehensive network-monitoring service that provides a variety of tools designed to prevent downtime and quickly pinpoint network-related issues. SolarWinds SAM is suitable for organizations of all sizes, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises.

The chief responsibility of a network or systems administrator is to ensure high availability of IT services. Therefore, it is vital to have around-the-clock network surveillance and to be alerted when issues arise. Deploying SolarWinds SAM will help accomplish this and ensure that service-level agreements are met.

The product can be hosted on a server with specifications as low as a single core 2.4 GHz CPU, with 4 GB RAM and 4 GB free hard disk space. These minimum requirements may not suffice for larger networks, although the application rarely needs to be hosted on a "high-end" dedicated server. Supported operating systems include Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012, running in 32-bit mode. Procedures throughout this book are applicable to Windows Server 2008 R2 and will translate well to the other supported versions.

This book will provide a practical overview of SolarWinds SAM, and include tutorials on how to systematically and expeditiously begin monitoring your entire network. It will explain how to deploy the product and tailor it for your environment, with an emphasis on best practices concerning bandwidth and security implications. After completing this book, you will have sufficient hands-on experience to thoroughly monitor all servers, applications, and network devices encompassed within your organization.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Deployment Strategy, prepares administrators for deploying SolarWinds SAM by providing tutorials on configuring monitoring services and protocols on servers, common network devices, and VMHosts.

Chapter 2, Installing and Configuring SolarWinds SAM, serves as a quick installation and Network Sonar Wizard walkthrough for deploying SolarWinds SAM.

Chapter 3, Customizing SolarWinds SAM, provides tutorials for adding, managing, and classifying nodes. Groups and dependencies are also covered, followed by procedures on how to back up all the customizations.

Chapter 4, Events, Traps, and Alerts, contains examples and procedures on how to enable, configure, and manage events, SNMP traps, and alerts.

Chapter 5, Syslog, Reporting, and Network Atlas, consists of an overview of how to decipherer and utilize the Syslog, run reports, and includes a tutorial on how to design a network map via the Orion Network Atlas utility.

Appendix, Troubleshooting, includes troubleshooting tips on some common network monitoring service and SolarWinds SAM issues.

What you need for this book

Before you get started, you will need to have the SolarWinds SAM physical media on hand, or have previously downloaded the fully functional 30-day trial from:

http://www.solarwinds.com/server-application-monitor.aspx

A machine running Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012 should be available for installing the product.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for network and systems administrators new to network-monitoring services and/or SolarWinds SAM.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

C:\>telnet 192.168.1.230

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Add button."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[e-mail]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Piracy

Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at <[e-mail]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

You can contact us at <[e-mail]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.