Cloud technology is on the rise more than it ever has been. Organizations are now opting for going for a cloud infrastructure instead of building a physical network. This is a smarter approach as compared to buying all the physical hardware and then setting up a network. Cloud technology is used everywhere these days and some part of every large network relies on its cloud environment as well.
The reliability of having a cloud infrastructure is on point and therefore, it’s usage increases day by day. Other than being light on the finances as compared to physical hardware, setting up a cloud network is way more easier than having to do it physically. All it requires is a little configuration from the network administrators and you are good to go.
Now, in case you have a full network based on cloud technology or some instance of your network depends on your cloud environment, you will have to ensure that your cloud infrastructure remains safe and always operational. Even a slight issue or problem can cause downtime or potential network outages which are never a good sight. Therefore, in order to ensure an always functional cloud environment, you will have to monitor it to gain visibility into the asset information which plays a vital role. This means having to deploy a cloud monitoring solution that gives you extended functionalities.
Consequently, it enables you to have more visibility into your asset management and performance monitoring so that you have everything right under your control.
What is the Orion Platform?
Solarwinds Orion Platform (try out here) is a masterpiece to say the least. The Orion Platform integrates several of the industry-favorite Solarwinds network and application management products including Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Storage Resource Monitor, and more into one simple environment. Different organizations of various network sizes often have a complicated and complex IT infrastructure which makes it very tough and challenging. With the Orion Platform, you can get rid of that worry as everything is in one packed inside a very user-friendly interface.
You will be able to monitor the application performance with real-time visibility of software, user experience and much more on the Orion Platform.
On the Orion Platform, with the help of IP Address Manager, Network Automation Manager, Server and Application Monitor and Virtualization Manager, you can easily monitor your cloud environment and add it to the Orion platform. Therefore, make sure you have one of the tools downloaded (from the links provided) and installed in your network to be able to continue through this guide.
You can also request a free trial of the Orion Platform which will be provided by Solarwinds. Once you have one of the tools deployed, you will have to configure your cloud account for the Orion Platform so that it can collect the required data for monitoring. If you do not know how to do this, don’t worry as Solarwinds has a documentation that guides you through this which can be found here. With that being said, let us get into the guide without any further ado.
Adding your Cloud Account to the Orion
To get started with monitoring your cloud account, you will first have to add it to the Orion Platform. This can be easily done via their user-friendly interface. Here’s how to do this:
- First of all, login to the Orion web console as an administrator.
- Click on the My Dashboards drop-down menu and then navigate to Cloud. This will take you to the Cloud Summary page.
- Since this is the first you are adding a cloud account, you will be greeted with the Getting Started dialog box. Click on the Monitor My Cloud Instances button.
Adding an Account - After that, select your cloud service provider, either Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Microsoft Azure. Then, click Continue.
Cloud Service Provider - On the Cloud Settings page, you will have to provide a display name for the cloud account and the credentials. Hit the Test button to make sure the provided credentials are correct.
- You can optionally click on the Toggle Auto Monitoring Off option for virtual machines/instances that are to be added later on either via automated discovery or manually.
- Finally, click the Continue button to complete the wizard.
Exploring the Summary of the Cloud Instances
With that, you have successfully added your cloud account to the Orion Platform. You will be able to see the summary of the added account on the Cloud Summary page after a while. The platform first has to gather enough data to be able to give you a summary of the instances. To view the summary page, go to Dashboard > Cloud. Once you add multiple cloud accounts, you can check the individual details by moving your cursor to the name of the specific cloud account. In case a VM or instance is a managed node, you will be able to see additional details about it on the Summary Page including CPU usage details, packet loss and more.
