Free Practice Questions for SolarWinds Hybrid-Cloud-Observability-Network-Monitoring Exam

To test connections from two separate locations using NetPath or similar functionality in Hybrid Cloud Observability, you need to create two probes and assign each probe to an agent at each respective location. This allows network path and experience monitoring from the point of view of both locations.

Exact Extract from Official Guide:

“To monitor network paths from multiple locations, create a separate probe for each location and assign the probe to an agent deployed at that site.”

— (Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide, “NetPath and Probes” section)

By default, SolarWinds Log Analyzer retains log data for 7 days. This means log messages are searchable and available in the web console for one week unless the retention settings are adjusted.

The documentation states:

" Log Analyzer ' s default retention period for storage and search is 7 days. Administrators can adjust this period as required to meet compliance or storage needs. "

With Network Insight features (including for Palo Alto and F5 BIG-IP devices) installed alongside Network Configuration Manager and Performance Monitoring, you can monitor:

High availability details: Provides information on device redundancy, failover status, and clustering.

Policy details: Enables insight into firewall, security, and NAT policies for managed devices.

Access lists and VPNs may be monitored in other modules, but the primary, advanced insight is for high availability and policy configurations.

Device Studio is specifically designed to build custom pollers for missing or vendor-specific metrics that are not natively included in node details. It is best used to enrich the node details with custom OID-based metrics from devices.

From the documentation:

“Use Device Studio to build pollers for new metrics not present in the default node details, particularly for custom or third-party equipment.”

The most common cause of mismatch between bandwidth (SNMP) numbers and flow (NetFlow, sFlow, etc.) numbers is that not all network traffic is included in the flow export. SNMP bandwidth counters include all traffic traversing the interface, but NetFlow or other flow records may only represent sampled or filtered subsets, or may miss certain traffic due to export or device configuration limitations. This is a well-documented and expected difference in the SolarWinds platform.

In SolarWinds, the OID description is determined by the MIB database. If a particular OID description is missing or incorrect, the recommended action is to update the MIB database. This can be done by requesting the latest MIB database from SolarWinds support, which regularly releases updates to support new devices and OIDs.

Enabling DNS resolution but not storing hostnames immediately results in:

Reduced database memory/storage used for DNS info, as hostnames aren’t stored with each flow record.

Less database space used for flows, since flow records will reference IPs rather than resolved DNS names.

Reduced SQL server reads/writes since the platform does not immediately resolve and store hostnames with every received flow, decreasing load.

DNS names will still appear in reports where resolved dynamically, so option C is incorrect.

According to the SolarWinds documentation:

" The maximum number of resources that can be displayed in any flow chart or view is 50. Attempting to display more may impact performance and will not be rendered in the UI. "

This ensures optimal performance and usability of the charts within the platform.

The “top talkers” feature tracks the highest-bandwidth consumers in your network. Lowering the optimization value means more flows and more detailed data are collected and stored, which can increase the storage requirement on your server.

Exact Extract from Official Guide:

“Decreasing the Top Talkers optimization value results in the storage of more detailed data, which increases the database and storage requirements.”

— (Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide, “NetFlow and Top Talkers Optimization” section)

NBAR2 (Next Generation Network-Based Application Recognition) is Cisco ' s deep packet inspection technology used to classify network traffic at the application layer. It provides visibility by inspecting packet payloads, not just ports, and is supported in SolarWinds for advanced application recognition.

SolarWinds documentation states:

" NBAR2 allows supported Cisco devices to classify traffic by application using deep packet inspection. This provides detailed application visibility within SolarWinds network monitoring solutions. "