Transcript
in SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, along with the What's New page added to the Discovery Central page and its benefits. The redesigned Discovery Central page reduces clicks to add specific entity monitoring. Clicking Add Data takes you to this specific area of the software and adds particular types of entities, such as application monitoring, without multi-click steps through the settings, product settings, etc. All entity monitoring starts in the same place instead of scattered around the software, depending on the entity type. This is a modernized page, which was much needed with the UI upgrade and is far easier to navigate and includes things such as search features. It also allows for modifying and configuring existing entity monitoring all in one place, as we'll see in the demo in just a moment. This basically creates one-stop shopping for all things needed in entity monitoring and managing that monitoring. Of particular interest is the Network Discovery section. Here is where you can add data, and you can add it either in an advanced way or a very simplified way. This is going to be very useful for customers that are just getting started or are in an evaluation as it provides, as you will see in the demo, a quick way to add basic entity monitoring to take a look at the software, kick the tires so to speak, and see how it's going to benefit you in your environment. Please take a close look at the demo to see how to do this as it's very easy and very quick. Additionally, we have a What's New page added here. The What's New page is a quick and easy way to learn about the major features and enhancements in the particular release with quick links to relevant areas of the software or of the documentation, again as we will see briefly in the demo. This is very easy to view and consume and is sometimes easier to quickly see what is new than the detailed release notes, however it still provides a quick access to those release notes for more detailed information on a feature of interest. It also separates observability self-hosted specific features for ones that are also available in addition to observability self-hosted to module-based installs also. Additionally, it clearly shows what's new and what is a previous feature that has been improved. So, let's take a look at the redesigned Discovery Central page and the What's New page. In this install, I'm going to go ahead and navigate to the Discovery page. And you'll see right away that it's very different. If you are upgrading, you'll land on the new What's New page. If the install is fresh, you'll be directed to the redesigned Discovery page. I'm going to start with the What's New page. As discussed, the What's New page walks through the primary features and improvements in the new release. This is organized by observability self-hosted, along with module and platform. And you can see observability exclusives, module and platform, and then any others that are also included. They are also tagged as mentioned as improvements or new. You can click learn more for documentation or view the dashboard to go right to the feature itself. If I go back to the Discovery page, now again at the top we have some primary tiles for recommended actions, including a network discovery. This is a great place to go to get started, especially if you're new or evaluating, as it will allow you to add basic entities to monitor to learn about the software, and then you can learn about adding the additional types of entities as you go. We're going to talk about this tile here in a little more detail in a few minutes. Now this install already has some entities being monitored, and you can see those listed here. Very small, modest discovery, but it does have a few things that we are monitoring. I also have some basic application monitoring added, and from there I can add more, or I can configure or modify the ones that I already have. And once again, clicking on configure is going to jump me right to that area of the software. And you can see from the breadcrumb trails that this is settings, SAM settings, manually assigned application monitors. But instead of having to navigate through the software to find these, I'm one click and I'm in the place I need to be. I can click my back button and it goes right back to Discovery Central. Expanding a feature will give you some details about the feature, and in a lot of cases a link to documentation to learn more about it, such as cloud discovery and cloud monitoring. Once again, if I click manage from here, it's going to jump me right to that cloud monitoring area. And from the breadcrumb trail you can see that this is a multi-step navigation, but I didn't need to do that in order to get here. Of course, I have no cloud monitoring at the moment, but I could do that right away by starting with add cloud account and then use the documentation to help guide me through the process of adding cloud monitoring. Once again, I can hit the back button and go right back to Discovery Central. So it's a nice shortcut to these different areas where I can add and configure without having to remember where to go in the software or go through the multiple clicks to get there. So I find that to be pretty handy not only as a time saver, but also as a memory saver, so that I don't have to remember where to go in the software to do certain things. I can also come up and filter by specific entities or search even by types of nodes for what kind of monitoring that I want to do, such as maybe router. Router is going to be in network and network discovery, so it'll guide me to the right area to configure monitoring for that specific device type. If I cancel out, it takes me right back out to the Discovery Central page. Again, I can expand these. I can see what I'm monitoring, and I can learn more about that monitoring just by expanding the category. Now if I scroll down, you'll also see storage and web transactions that are locked with advanced licensing. This is because these, while integrated technically with observability self-hosted, are licensed separately. Now the nice thing about this is that I can contact sales right away about licensing that, but I can also launch an instant evaluation just by clicking try now. This will put me into a screen where I can launch an instant 30-day fully functional evaluation of that particular feature and try it for free. So if I want to kick the tires on this and see if it's something that I want to use, I can have that 30-day fully functional evaluation pretty much with one click and a very short evaluation form that we ask you fill out. So that's an instant evaluation of anything that may not be contained. If you're on a module-based install, you can do the same thing for an instant evaluation of observability self-hosted pieces. Let's go back to this network discovery. If I click add data, if you've used the software for a while, you'll probably see some things that look pretty familiar. I can discover my network doing a sonar discovery, or I can add a single node or a group of single nodes. That looks pretty familiar for those of you that have used the software, but we've added a couple of twists that I do want you to be aware of. If I click on discover my network, it does launch you into the discovery wizard, which also should look pretty familiar if you've used the software before. This is our standard discovery. If I click start, it's going to start me through this process. What I want you to note right here at the top is that it is turned on to simplified network by default. This is the scan that once you provide a range or a subnet and you give it credentials for SNMP and Windows, notice that this is a pretty short navigation here. It will go out and add some basic entities, scan those subnets, find the entities, nodes, volumes, interfaces, that type of thing, and add them for monitoring automatically. If you've done discoveries before, you know that in a normal traditional discovery, you find the entities, you choose what to add, and then you add them. The simplified discovery is very good if you know that the subnet and all the entities that you're going to find, you do actually want to add, so you just do it and go. Or if you are evaluating the software, we recommend using this with a modest, maybe a 24-sider or a small subnet to add some entities to monitor so that you have something to monitor. It's difficult to learn how to use the software if you're not monitoring something already. So use the simplified discovery, add the entities, have something to monitor to get you started, get your feet under you, attend SolarWinds Academy classes, or even just navigate the software itself, learn how we do things, and then you will also learn how to add additional entities. Anytime you're already monitoring, and you're already learning the software. So this is a very good way to evaluate the software. You want to kick the tires on a 30-day eval, great. Do a basic scan, add those entities, and start monitoring so you can figure out how good the software is going to work for you, and what it's going to do for you. Now if I switch this toggle on, you'll notice it adds a bunch more configurations, including configuring the monitoring itself. This is where it will go and scan and find entities, and then allow you to choose the ones you want to add as well. So that would be the normal network sonar discovery that if you've used our software for a while, you're very familiar with. So all you have to do is turn on the advanced. Or you can turn it off and just add some basic monitoring to get started. So when you turn on that advanced monitoring, in addition to being able to select the entities, you also have the discovery settings and scheduling. So if you want to schedule a discovery, you will have to use the advanced setting in order to do that. From here, the steps, whether you're on the advanced or you're on the simplified, are pretty much the same as running a network sonar discovery always has been. So it's the same as it is in previous versions of Observability Self-Hosted and even Legacy modules. We cover running network discoveries and the related settings very thoroughly in the SolarWinds Academy Observability Self-Hosted Fundamentals course. So if you are unfamiliar with the process or configuring these multiple steps, I encourage you to view that on-demand training. If you are doing an evaluation or you're just getting stand-up and you want to start with some basic entities, all you need to do is fill out this piece here, where do you want the software to look. Make sure that your SNMP v3 credentials are correct, your WMI credentials are correct. Run the scan and it will add nodes, volumes, interfaces, and maybe some basic application monitoring as well. So if you want to just evaluate the software or you're a brand new customer and you just want to get started before you start learning from the Academy classes, the simplified scan is the way to go. Please refer to the links attached to this video for product FWAC posts and the product release notes for version 2026.2, which includes a larger discussion on this and other exciting updates and features in this release. You can also attend SolarWinds Academy office hours or instructor-led training sessions for further information and assistance in using these features. These resources are available to current customers, so if you are evaluating the software, please understand that once you become a customer, you will have access to an extensive library of training and access to SolarWinds Academy trainers to help you configure and use your software going forward. Thank you.
