Passed Exam Today SCP-NPM

NPM can monitor the virtualization host hardware health, VM sprawl, and virtualization host and VM performance metrics using the Virtualization Manager Integration feature1. However,NPM cannot display the virtualization environment tree, which shows the hierarchical relationship between the virtualization hosts, clusters, datastores, and VMs. This feature is only available in Virtualization Manager2, a separate product that can be integrated with NPM. References: 1: Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide - Monitor virtual infrastructure 2: Virtualization Manager Getting Started Guide - View the virtualization environment tree

 SNMP traps are unsolicited messages sent by network devices to report events or issues. If NPM receives too many traps from devices that are not managed by NPM, or traps that are not relevant for monitoring, the performance of the Orion Web Console can be affected. To resolve this issue, you can point the devices to a trap manager, such as Kiwi Syslog Server, and configure it to filter out unwanted traps before forwarding the remaining ones to the Orion Platform. This way, NPM will only process the traps that are important for monitoring and alerting, and reduce the load on the database and web server. References: Configure SNMP traps in NPM, Filter traps in Kiwi Syslog Server, [Forward traps to another host in Kiwi Syslog Server]

One possible reason for not being able to show the polled results as charts on the Orion Web Console is that you did not set the poller to collect historical statistics. Historical statistics are required for displaying charts and gauges in the web console, as they provide the data points for plotting the trends and values over time. If you only set the poller to collect current statistics, you will only be able to view the polled results as tables or lists in the web console. To set the poller to collect historical statistics, you need to edit the poller and select the Keep Historical Data option in the Poller Properties page. You can also specify the retention settings for the historical data, such as the frequency and duration of data collection and storage1. References: Create a custom poller

 According to the SolarWinds NPM Administrator Guide, you can edit the node properties of any device and change the polling method to suit your needs. The polling method determines what data is collected and displayed for the node. The “Most Devices: SNMP and ICMP” polling method collects and displays the most comprehensive data, including CPU load, memory utilization, interface statistics, and more. The “Status Only: ICMP” polling method only collects and displays the node status, average response time, and packet loss. If you want to monitor the other statistics on switch A, you should change the polling method to “Most Devices: SNMP and ICMP”. This will not affect the historical data that has already been collected for switch A, as it will be stored in the database. However, deleting switch A and adding it again, or adding switch A again without deleting it first, will result in losing the historical data or creating duplicate nodes. References: SolarWinds NPM Administrator Guide, page 78-79; Polling methods used by Orion