SCP-NPM SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) Exam Questions and Answers

To add a new subnet of 500 devices for monitoring, the first step is to perform a network discovery using the Network Sonar Wizard in NPM. This wizard allows you to scan your network by IP address range, subnet, or seed device and automatically discover and add nodes and interfaces to NPM for monitoring. You can also specify credentials, polling settings, and custom properties for the discovered devices. Performing a network discovery can help you quickly and efficiently incorporate new devices into NPM without manually adding them one by one. References: Discover your network devices, Specify subnets, Discover devices by subnets

 Alert suppression is a feature that allows you to create conditions that prevent an alert from being triggered or sent if certain criteria are met. This can help you avoid receiving multiple or unnecessary alerts from a single event or a complex situation. For example, if you have a router that connects your SolarWinds server to a remote site with critical devices, you may not want to receive alerts about those devices if the router is down, as the problem is not with the devices but with the router. In this case, you can configure alert suppression to suppress the alerts for the devices if the router is down. To do this, you need to select the option “Suppress the alert if all of the following apply” and add the conditions “Node Name is equal to ‘target’” and “Node Status is equal to ‘Down’”. This means that the alert will be suppressed only if both conditions are true, i.e., the router with the name ‘target’ is down. If the router is up or has a different name, the alert will not be suppressed. References: Alert suppression - SolarWinds; Alert Suppression - Forum - Network Performance Monitor (NPM) - THWACK

Orion agents are software components that you can install on nodes to collect and send data to the Orion server. Orion agents do not require a separate license, as they are included in the license of the Orion Platform product that you are using, such as NPM. You can install and use as many agents as you need, as long as you do not exceed the number of licensed nodes, interfaces, or volumes for your product. Orion agents can use either agent-initiated or server-initiated communication, depending on your network configuration and security requirements. References: NPM Administrator Guide, page 67; SCP Study Aid - NPM, page 15.

Orion Maps 2.0 supports displaying Palo Alto firewalls as network devices, along with their interfaces, zones, policies, and traffic data. You can also view the firewall status, alerts, and events on the map. To add a Palo Alto firewall to an Orion Map, you need to have Network Insight for Palo Alto enabled in NPM, and discover the firewall using SNMP and API polling. References: Orion Maps 2.0, New Alerting, and Palo Alto Networks Monitoring - SolarWinds Lab Episode #77, SolarWinds Lab Episode 77: Orion Maps 2.0, New Alerting, and Palo Alto Networks Monitoring - Orange Matter, Network Insight for Palo Alto Networks in NPM

 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]

 NetPath is a feature of NPM that helps you identify network problems faster by automatically creating a map of the problem area, with a wide variety of supporting information. NetPath displays the performance details of devices inside and outside of your network. NetPath can analyze paths to any network segment, whether it is on-premise, cloud, or hybrid. NetPath uses distributed monitoring and path analysis to discover how applications are delivered through the network to your users. You can deploy agents on Windows computers that act as synthetic users and use advanced probing to discover and test the network path that traffic takes to any network endpoint, such as your local file print server, your website, or external websites. NetPath can also incorporate data from NPM, NCM, and NTA about your on-premises gear, as well as data from the Internet nodes and providers12. References: 1: Discover your network paths in NPM3, 2: NetPath - Easy Visual Network Path Analysis | SolarWinds4

You can make bulk changes to nodes in NPM using the Manage Nodes feature. This allows you to select multiple nodes and edit their properties, such as the polling method, the polling frequency, the SNMP credentials, the custom properties, and more. You can also use the Edit Nodes feature to assign or unassign pollers to nodes, such as the Universal Device Poller (UnDP), the Hardware Health Poller, the Wireless Poller, and more12. References: 1: Change the polling method for a node3, 2: Manage pollers using Device Studio4

 Device Studio is a feature in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console that allows you to create custom pollers for devices or technologies that are not supported by default in NPM. You can use Device Studio to create pollers for CPU and memory, as well as other metrics, by defining the object identifiers (OIDs) and formulas that you want to poll. Device Studio currently supports SNMP and WMI polling technologies, and you can test, assign, and edit your custom pollers from the Manage Pollers page. References: Create pollers in Device Studio for NPM, Device Studio, Device Studio Poller.

High Traffic Utilization alerts are triggered when the interface’s received or transmitted percent utilization exceeds a specified threshold. However, this may not reflect the actual network congestion, as traffic spikes can occur momentarily and then subside. To avoid false alerts, you can configure the alert to trigger only when the traffic utilization remains high for a sustained period, such as 5 minutes or more. This way, you can filter out the transient traffic peaks and focus on the persistent issues that affect the network performance. References:

• How do I create a high transmit percent utilization alert to monitor interface bandwidth
• Trouble with High receive percent utilization alert
• How alerts work

According to the SolarWinds Platform Agent requirements, the average resource consumption of an agent is less than 1% CPU, max 1 MB of memory, and 1 MB storage on the target computer. The agent software is designed to be lightweight and efficient, and does not impact the performance of the monitored devices. The other options are incorrect, as they either overestimate or underestimate the resource consumption of the agent, or imply that the agent does not use any local resources at all. References: SolarWinds Platform Agent requirements, section “SolarWinds Platform Agent resource consumption”.

NPM polls static properties, such as interface speed and duplex mode, from the firewall devices using SNMP. NPM also collects traffic statistics, such as bytes in and bytes out, from the firewall interfaces using SNMP or NetFlow. NPM then calculates bandwidth consumption based on the total amount of bytes coming through the firewall over a given time interval. Bandwidth consumption is expressed as a percentage of the interface speed. For example, if a firewall interface has a speed of 100 Mbps and NPM polls 10 MB of bytes in and 10 MB of bytes out in one minute, the bandwidth consumption is 20% [(10 MB + 10 MB) / 100 Mbps * 100%]1. References: Monitor firewalls with NPM, Calculate bandwidth utilization on an interface

 Device Studio Poller is a feature that allows users to create custom pollers for devices or technologies that are not supported by default in NPM. It can poll multiple OIDs for a given technology, perform logical operations or transformations on the polled data, and display the polled values in existing resources. However, it does not collect data from Orion Failover Engine or Hot Standby Engines, which are features of Orion High Availability that ensure continuous monitoring in case of primary server failure12. References: 1: Create pollers in Device Studio for NPM3, 2: When Good OIDs Go Bad: Customizing Device Pollers, 3: Manage Pollers (AKA Device Studio) question

The Universal Device Poller (UnDP) is a feature of SolarWinds NPM that allows you to create custom monitors for almost any statistic provided by SNMP based on its Management Information Base (MIB) and object identifier (OID). An OID is a unique identifier for a variable that can be polled or set via SNMP. The UnDP retrieves management data in the OID format from the devices that support SNMP. The other formats (WMI, XML, ANSI 1) are not used by the UnDP. References:

• Monitor custom statistics based on OIDs with Universal Device Pollers
• NPM Universal Device Pollers

To identify the custom poller within the trigger condition, you need to use the Unique Name of your UnDP. The Unique Name is a user-defined identifier that you assign to your custom poller when you create it using the Universal Device Poller tool. The Unique Name is also used to reference the custom poller in the Orion database and the web console. When you select “I want to alert on: Custom Poller” in the alert configuration, you can choose the specific custom poller by its Unique Name from the list of available pollers. You can also use the Unique Name to filter, group, or sort the custom poller data in reports, charts, or tables. References: Create a custom poller, Create an alert for a custom poller, View custom poller data

 Traps are unsolicited messages sent by network devices to report events or issues. The Orion Platform can receive and process traps from any device that supports SNMP. To alert on a select message, you can use the Traps in Orion Alerts feature, which allows you to configure the default trap alert to fire on the trap message you select to alert on. You can also customize the alert conditions, actions, and triggers to suit your needs. For example, you can alert on traps thatmatch a specific OID, source, or severity, and send an email, log a ticket, or run a script when the alert is triggered. References: Configure SNMP traps in NPM, Traps in Orion Alerts, Create alerts for SNMP traps

An alert limitation is a filter that restricts the scope of an alert to a specific set of objects, such as nodes, interfaces, applications, or groups. You can use an alert limitation to create an alert that only applies to a select set of nodes in your network, and exclude the rest. To set an alert limitation for the nodes to be included in the alert, follow these steps1:

• Click Alerts & Activity > Alerts > Manage Alerts.
• Find the alert that you want to edit or create a new alert.
• On the Trigger Condition tab, define the condition that triggers the alert, such as Percent Loss is greater than or equal to 50.
• On the Scope of Alert tab, select Limit the scope of this alert to a specific subset of objects.
• Choose the method to define the subset of objects, such as Select objects manually, Use a custom SWQL query, or Use a custom SQL query.
• Select or enter the criteria to filter the objects, such as the node name, IP address, group, custom property, or any other attribute.
• Click Add Selected Objects to add the objects to the alert limitation.
• Click Next and complete the rest of the alert configuration.

You can now save and enable the alert, and it will only notify you when packet loss meets or exceeds 50% for the nodes that you have selected in the alert limitation. References: 1: Limit the objects an alert applies to

According to the SolarWinds NPM Administrator Guide, you can use Orion groups to organize your network objects based on any criteria, such as location, device type, department, etc. You can then apply account limitations based on Orion groups to restrict user access to only the network objects that belong to a specific group. For example, you can create two Orion groups, one for Sydney and one for Perth, and assign the devices in each location to the corresponding group. Then, you can use the single group Account limitation to limit the users in Sydney to only view the Sydney group, and the users in Perth to only view the Perth group. References: SolarWinds NPM Administrator Guide, page 163-165; Limit users to specific network areas in the SolarWinds Platform

NPM uses SNMP to collect utilization statistics from network devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, etc. If NPM only shows Availability and Response Time statuses for a device, it means that SNMP is not configured correctly on that device or NPM cannot access the device via SNMP1. Some possible reasons for this are:

• The device does not support SNMP or SNMP is disabled on the device
• The device has a different SNMP version or community string than NPM
• The device has a firewall or access control list that blocks SNMP traffic from NPM
• The device has a misconfigured SNMP agent or MIB To troubleshoot this issue, you can use the SNMP Test Tool in NPM to verify the SNMP settings and connectivity of the device2. You can also check the device logs and configuration to ensure that SNMP is enabled and properly configured3. References: 1: Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide - Troubleshoot SNMP issues 2: Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide - Test SNMP access 3: Network Performance Monitor Getting Started Guide - Troubleshoot SNMP issues

 The best way to monitor an SNMP metric that NPM is not monitoring out-of-the-box is to create a custom poller using the Universal Device Poller (UnDP) tool. A custom poller allows you to monitor specific aspects of your network devices using SNMP, by selecting the OIDs that correspond to the metrics you want to collect. You can then assign the custom poller to the devices you want to monitor, and view the results in the Orion Web Console, as charts, tables, or gauges. You can also use custom pollers to create alerts and reports based on the collected data. References: Monitor custom statistics based on OIDs with Universal Device Pollers in NPM, Create a custom poller, Assign Universal Device Pollers to devices monitored in NPM