Free SolarWinds SCP-NPM Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

 Web Console maps are interactive and dynamic maps that you can create and customize using the Orion Maps feature in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console. You can display various items on the maps, such as monitored nodes, interfaces and volumes, SAM applications and components, and network links. You can also add custom labels, annotations, and images to themaps. Web Console maps can help you visualize the relationships and dependencies among your network devices and applications, as well as troubleshoot issues and identify root causes. References: Orion Maps, Create and customize maps in the Orion Platform, Orion Maps 2.0, New Alerting, and Palo Alto Networks Monitoring - SolarWinds Lab Episode #77.

 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

 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

NPM can monitor the network bandwidth utilization of your devices, interfaces, and applications using SNMP and NetFlow protocols. Network bandwidth utilization is the amount of data transmitted or received over a network link in a given time period. High network bandwidth utilization can indicate network congestion, packet loss, latency, or other performance issues that can affect the email delivery speed. By looking at the network bandwidth utilization of the devices and interfaces involved in the email communication, you can identify the possible bottlenecks or sources of network problems that might be causing the email slowness. References: Monitor network bandwidth utilization in NPM, Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack, How to Monitor Network Bandwidth Using the Command Line.

 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]

Capacity planning is available for the following metrics of monitored nodes, interfaces, and volumes: CPU utilization on nodes, memory usage on nodes, space usage on volumes, receive(in) utilization on interfaces, and transmit (out) utilization on interfaces1. Capacity planning allows you to monitor capacity usage trends on the network and forecast capacity issues based on historical data and customizable thresholds. You can view capacity forecasting graphs and tables on the details views of nodes, interfaces, and volumes, or use the Top XX Capacity Problems widget to see a list of objects whose usage trend is rising2. References: Monitor capacity usage trends on the network and forecast capacity issues in NPM, Forecast capacity for nodes, interfaces, or volumes in NPM

 According to the SolarWinds NPM Administrator Guide, you can edit the node properties of any device and change the polling method to suit your needs. The polling method determines what data is collected and displayed for the node. The “Most Devices: SNMP and ICMP” polling method collects and displays the most comprehensive data, including CPU load, memory utilization, interface statistics, and more. The “Status Only: ICMP” polling method only collects and displays the node status, average response time, and packet loss. If you want to monitor the other statistics on switch A, you should change the polling method to “Most Devices: SNMP and ICMP”. This will not affect the historical data that has already been collected for switch A, as it will be stored in the database. However, deleting switch A and adding it again, or adding switch A again without deleting it first, will result in losing the historical data or creating duplicate nodes. References: SolarWinds NPM Administrator Guide, page 78-79; Polling methods used by Orion

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”.

 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.

 Packet loss is a measure of how many packets are lost or discarded during transmission over a network. Packet loss can cause network performance issues such as slow response time, jitter, and degraded voice quality. NPM can monitor packet loss on nodes and interfaces using ICMP ping or SNMP statistics. You can review the packet loss metrics on the Node Details or Interface Details views, or create a custom chart or report to compare packet loss across multiple nodes or interfaces. By reviewing the packet loss on the nodes on either side of the connection, you can identify which node or interface is experiencing the problem and troubleshoot the root cause. You can also use the Performance Analysis dashboard (PerfStack) to correlate packet loss with other metrics such as response time, CPU load, memory usage, buffer misses, and interface errors123. References:

• Monitor packet loss in NPM - SolarWinds
• Troubleshoot intermittent network slowdowns with NPM - SolarWinds
• SCP Study Aid - SolarWinds (page 9)