A deployment strategy is the most comprehensive approach before introducing a network monitoring service to your environment. The deployment strategy for SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) should identify what should be monitored, then prepare servers, devices, and applications (nodes) to be imported into SolarWinds SAM.
Procedures in this chapter are not required pre-deployment, as it is possible after deployment to populate SolarWinds SAM with nodes; however, it is recommended. Even after deployment, you should still enable and configure advanced monitoring services on your vital nodes.
SolarWinds SAM uses three types of protocols to poll management data:
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP): This is the most common network management service protocol. To utilize it, SNMP must be enabled and an SNMP community string must be assigned on the server, device, or application. The community string is essentially a password that is sent between a node and SolarWinds SAM. Once the community string is set and assigned, the node is permitted to expose management data to SolarWinds SAM, in the form of variables. Currently, there are three versions of SNMP: v1, v2c, and v3.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI): This has added functionality by incorporating Windows specific communications and security features. WMI comes preinstalled on Windows by default but is not automatically enabled and configured. WMI is not exclusive to Windows server platforms; it comes installed on all modern Microsoft operating systems, and can also be used to poll desktop operating systems, such as Windows 7.
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP): This is the most basic of the three; it simply sends echo requests (pings) to a server or device for status, response time, and packet loss. SolarWinds SAM uses ICMP in conjunction with SNMP and WMI. Nodes can be configured to poll with ICMP exclusively, but you miss out on CPU, memory, and volume data. Some devices can only be polled with ICMP, although in most instances you will rarely use ICMP exclusively.
This chapter will explain how to prepare for SolarWinds SAM deployment, by enabling and configuring network management services and protocols on:
Windows servers
VMware hosts
Common network devices