SolarWinds SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Fundamentals Observability-Self-Hosted-Fundamentals Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (February 2026)

The ability to create or modify reports is a high-level administrative function in the SolarWinds Platform, distinct from the ability to simply view them. According to theSolarWinds Platform User Account Managementguide, this is controlled by theReport Managementright.

To restrict a specific group of users from creating or editing reports while still allowing them to view existing ones, the administrator mustremove the "Manage Reports" permissionfrom their user accounts. When this right is set to "No," the"Manage Reports" buttonis hidden from the "All Reports" view for that user. They can still click on and run any report they have access to, but they will lack the interface options to enter the "Report Builder," change schedules, or delete entries. This provides a secure way to delegate report consumption to the wider team while centralizing report creation within a smaller group of "power users" or administrators. Option D is incorrect as it refers toAlerts, which is a separate permission set entirely.

In the SolarWinds Platform, "Administrator" rights in the Web Console grant extensive control over monitoring configurations, but they are distinct from "System Administrator" or "Security Administrator" roles. According to theSolarWinds Platform User Account Managementguide, a Web Console Administrator can manage nodes, create alerts , build reports , and customize dashboards.

However, for security reasons, the ability to managepasswords—specifically the credentials used for polling (SNMP strings, WMI service accounts, or external integration secrets)—is often restricted. While an admin canassignan existing credential to a node, the ability to add, edit, or view the clear-text/obfuscated passwords within the centralizedCredential Libraryis a separate, higher-level security permission. This prevents a standard Web Administrator from potentially harvesting sensitive service account passwords from the database. This "separation of duties" ensures that while a user can manage the monitoring environment, they cannot necessarily compromise the security of the underlying infrastructure accounts.

In the SolarWinds Platform, the "Node" acts as the primary parent object for all other monitored elements related to that IP address or hostname. According to theSolarWinds Platform Node Managementguide, the deletion process follows a strict parent-child relationship hierarchy.

When an administrator selects a node and chooses to delete it, thenode and all its associated objects are immediately removed (B)from the active monitoring database. Associated objects include interfaces, volumes, hardware health sensors, and application monitors (such as those assigned via SAM). This is an irreversible action. Unlike "Unmanaging" or "Muting," which keep the node record intact, "Delete" purges the entity and its historical data pointers from the current view.

It is important to understand that while the records are removed from the web console immediately, the actual data rows in the SQL database may be marked for deletion and cleared during the next scheduled "Database Maintenance" (Option C). However, from the perspective of the user and the monitoring engine, theresultis immediate: the node stops being polled, its alerts are cancelled, and it no longer appears in any dashboards or reports. The platform does not allow "orphaned" objects; you cannot have a monitored interface in the database if its parent node has been deleted (Option D).

In the SolarWinds alerting workflow, "Acknowledgment" is a critical state change that coordinates the human response to an incident. According to theSolarWinds Platform Alerting Guide, acknowledging an alert communicates to the rest of the team that a specific technician has taken ownership of the issue.

The formal definition of acknowledgment is thatthe issue is being worked on and the alert will not be escalated. This is the most important functional result of the action: it halts the automated escalation chain. If an alert was configured to email a manager after 30 minutes of inactivity, acknowledging the alert at the 15-minute mark cancels that pending manager email. It signals to the system—and other operators—that active troubleshooting is underway and further automated "noise" is unnecessary.

It is important to note that acknowledgmentdoes notmean the issue is resolved (Option A); the alert remains active in the "All Active Alerts" list (though often filtered into an "Acknowledged" category) until the underlying trigger condition is cleared by the monitoring engine. It is a procedural tool for incident management, ensuring that once a human engages with a problem, the platform's automated notification logic steps aside to let them work without further distraction.

When creating a web-based report in the SolarWinds Platform, the first step is defining the "Selection Method" for the entities you want to include. According to theSolarWinds Platform Reporting Guide, the platform offers two primary user-friendly ways to define the scope of a report:

Static Selection: This method allows the administrator to manually pick specific nodes, interfaces, or applications from a list. This is best suited for reports targeting a fixed set of infrastructure, such as "Core Data Center Switches".

Dynamic Query Builder: This is the most powerful method for automated reporting. It allows you to define a set of rules—such as "Vendor is Cisco" and "Department is Finance"—that automatically update the report's content as new devices are added to monitoring that match those criteria.

While advanced users can useSWQL(SolarWinds Query Language) orSQLto define a custom selection,PostgreSQL(Option B) is not used as the backend database for the SolarWinds Platform. Furthermore, whilePowerShell(Option C) can be used toextractdata via the SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS) API, it is not a selection method used within the native Web-Based Report builder interface.

To prevent "alert noise" caused by temporary performance spikes, the SolarWinds Platform allows for threshold persistence. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, simply setting a threshold at 90% would trigger an alert the moment a single poll returns a high value.

The correct configuration to ensure onlysustainedhigh utilization triggers an action is toset the node to change CPU status if the threshold is met for multiple polling cycles. This is found in the "Edit Node" properties under the Thresholds section. For example, if the polling interval is 2 minutes and you set the condition to "10 minutes" (or 5 consecutive polls), the CPU status will only transition to Warning or Critical after the utilization has stayed above 90% for that entire duration. This filtering happens at the node/status level, ensuring that the alert engine only fires when there is a legitimate, sustained performance bottleneck rather than a transient spike caused by a routine background process.

In the SolarWinds Platform, report access is governed by both functional permissions and account limitations. While "Disable Manage Reports" (Option B) prevents a user from editing or creating reports, it does not necessarily hide the "Reports" menu or prevent the user from viewing existing reports they have access to. To completely remove the visibility and accessibility of all reports for a specific user account, anAccount Limitationmust be applied.

According to theSolarWinds Platform User Account Managementdocumentation, account limitations act as a security filter that restricts what the user can see throughout the entire Web Console. By navigating toSettings > All Settings > Manage Accounts, selecting the user, andediting theirReport Limitation, an administrator can choose "No Reports". This configuration ensures that when the user logs in, the Reports section will either be empty or completely hidden from their navigation bar, regardless of their other permissions. This is the most effective method for high-security environments or multi-tenant deployments where certain users should have zero visibility into the historical performance data or inventory summaries contained within the reporting engine.

According to theSolarWinds Platformconfiguration documentation, the option toEncrypt connections with SSLduring the database configuration wizard specifically dictates the security level of the communication channel between the application server and the database backend. When this box is checked, the platform ensures thatthe network data between SolarWinds' Hybrid Cloud Observability Platform server and the SQL server will be encrypted. This security measure is critical for protecting the integrity and confidentiality of the performance metrics, configuration data, and credentials as they traverse the internal network between these two primary architectural components.

This encryption utilizesTransport Layer Security (TLS)to wrap theTDS (Tabular Data Stream)protocol used by Microsoft SQL Server. By enabling this feature, the platform prevents potential "man-in-the-middle" attacks where an adversary could sniff network traffic to intercept sensitive monitoring data or administrative information stored within the SQL database. It is important to note that for this setting to function correctly, theSQL Servermust be configured with a valid SSL/TLS certificate that is trusted by the SolarWinds application server.

This setting differs from simple credential encryption (Option C) or secure storage (Option B) because it applies toall datatransmitted during the session, not just the initial login exchange. Furthermore, while the configuration wizard does require a login account (Option A), that account's specific permissions are a separate functional requirement from the underlying encryption of the transport layer. Enabling SSL encryption is a standard best practice for organizations following strict compliance frameworks likeHIPAA,PCI-DSS, orSOC2, where protecting data-in-transit is a mandatory requirement even on internal, "trusted" network segments. This centralized encryption toggle simplifies the deployment of high-security observability environments by orchestrating the secure connection parameters through the standard SolarWinds Configuration Wizard interface.

Network Discovery is an automated process to scan subnets and import new infrastructure. However, the discovery engine includes logic to prevent duplicate entries and ignore non-relevant assets. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, if specific devices are missing from the results, the most common administrative cause is theDiscovery Ignore List.

The "Ignore List" is a database of IP addresses or MAC addresses that the platform has been explicitly told to skip. This often happens if a device was previously discovered but the administrator chose "Ignore this node" during the import phase. The system remembers this choice to prevent the device from reappearing in every subsequent scan. Additionally, the platform automatically ignores any node that isalready presentin the "Manage Nodes" list to avoid creating redundant monitoring objects.

While a timeout (Option C) or incorrect polling method (Option D) could cause a node to fail to respond with its full metadata, the device would typically still appear in the discovery results as a "Generic" or "ICMP-only" device rather than being skipped entirely. Only theIgnore Listor pre-existing status causes a device to be excluded from the discovery results table during a scan of a valid subnet.

The export capabilities for chart-based reports are designed to provide both a visual representation and the underlying raw data. According to theSolarWinds Platform Administrator Guide, when viewing or scheduling a report that contains charts or graphs, the system supports two primary export formats:

PDF: This format is the standard for visual reports. It captures the rendered chart exactly as it appears in the Web Console, making it ideal for email distribution to management or for archival purposes where the visual trend is more important than the individual data points.

CSV (Comma Separated Values): When a chart is exported to CSV, the platform extracts the time-series data points used to generate that chart. This allows technical staff to import the raw performance numbers into external tools like Excel for deeper statistical analysis that may not be possible within the standard web view.

While the broader reporting engine supportsExcel (.xls)for tabular reports (as seen in Question 8), the specific function for exportingchart componentsoften defaults to CSV for the data layer and PDF for the visual layer.XML(Option D) is typically reserved for reportdefinitions(transferring a report from one server to another) rather than exporting the data results of a chart.