What Else Can SAM (Server & Application Monitor) Do? Getting the Most from AppInsight Templates
Are you wondering what SolarWinds means when we say “template”? A template is a combination of code, scripts and more built within SAM that essentially tells you what to monitor, writes scripts for you and automates running scripts on a recurring basis. There are standard templates and custom templates, and our AppInsight templates are the SuperMan (or Batman) of templates.
With that question answered, I can get to what else SAM can do with AppInsight Templates.
We all know that SolarWinds helps us in our daily tasks by answering that age-old question: “Is it the network or the application?” What happens when we run into trouble with SolarWinds itself? Who watches the watchmen? Server and Application Monitor, that’s who. With SAM, we trace down troubles before they become a real headache.
AppInsight application templates include support for IIS, Exchange, and SQL. These super templates instantly give you insight (get it?) into results like performance, troubleshooting, threshold monitoring, and application health.
Using the IIS and SQL App Insight templates, we can easily answer the top concerns we hear from SolarWinds users.
Example Use Case:
Monitoring SolarWinds products in their installed environment. (We all should be able to relate to this example)
Top questions/concerns from users of SolarWinds
- My website is running slow for SolarWinds
- Netflow pages are not loading
- My report never shows
So how do you prove where the problem lies since there are so many operating parts? The answer is SAM AppInsight templates!
We will start with implementing the IIS and SQL AppInsight templates.
1. Go to SAM Settings and then Application templates. Scroll to the app insight and should see these three:
2. Assign the Appinsight for IIS on your Webserver hosting your SolarWinds website. By checking the IIS template and then pressing the assign to node button above. (Remember to apply to any additional web servers as well).
3. Edit the Application and you will see a "Configure Server" button - make sure you are using an administrator (or SA for SQL Logins) account, ad click this to configure your server for AppInsight.
4. Now follow the same steps (1-3) to add in your AppInsight for SQL to your SolarWinds SQL server.
Once complete you will see data like the following:
IIS information:
SQL Information:
These steps allow you see monitoring data that gives you insight into possible causes of “slowness” within SolarWinds that users might have reported.
You have your basic application performance statistics, but now you have the added in-depth application information that will help you load balance your application servers. Why does this matter? Now you are able to tell if and where a bottleneck is happening with the slowness. If it is, compare with your AppInsight information to know that the application components are or are not running correctly and as expected.
If you are seeing high wait times, timeouts, or resources climbing at certain peaks of the day, then you can spec out and forecast improvement upgrades to your application servers.
At the end of the day, it’s no longer a finger pointing issue. You have the actual data that will support your pin pointed issues so that you and your teams are able to solve issues within your network.
Let me know how you use templates within SAM. Perhaps you have an awesome one that you have shared on thwack! I’d love to hear about your usages and how they have helped.
As always thank you!
~ Dez ~
Wow I just found this and need to run these on my main Orion instance... Sometimes it seems like the website isn't always as responsive as it should be. I've been considering adding an additional webserver but I realize it won't help much if it's the SQL or some issue with the VM's everything are running on. The new NTA noSQL database has helped some... and another recent problem was with 11.5.2 NPM and much was fixed by a couple hotfixes. (One really rough problem with some of the Service that run NPM restarting all day and looking like there was a memory leak) I think the hotfixes have helped a lot with it but more insight would help me.
Yes, and if you were monitoring the SolarWinds application you would be able to directly see if the application has sped up and processes quicker
~Dez
I do also have a small license of WPM so I have NPM, SAM, NTA, Vman, and WPM. I should be able to see every part of the Orion Server working minus the Store part at the very bottom. I am working on getting the AppInsightSQL part setup with one of our DBA's.
This document was generated from the following discussion: What Else Can SAM (Server & Application Monitor) Do? Getting the Most from AppInsight Templates