Application Mapping Tool and Server Infrastructure Map Software
Use server discovery tools to automatically discover applications and servers
Create a comprehensive IT infrastructure map of your systems environment
SAM’s application mapping software is designed to let you easily create a complete map of your systems environment by displaying connections between applications, physical servers, and virtual hosts.
Not only can you monitor the availability status of applications and servers, but you can also drill into location/site-specific maps to quickly identify the actual source of performance issues.
Monitor application and server dependencies by using application mapping software
Understanding the dependencies between applications and their supporting infrastructure can help greatly accelerate troubleshooting. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor’s infrastructure mapping tool offers a dashboard with specific infrastructure components for each application and each application’s status.
Integration with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor can also allow you to analyze your dependencies down to virtual and storage layers.
Integrated mapping features designed to generate in-depth topology maps
SAM application mapping software includes mapping features available with Orion® Maps built to show you managed entities, their statuses, and their relationships. You can visualize each system feature affecting application function—from nodes, volumes, and interfaces to VMware components and WPM processes with zoom, pan, and adjustable layouts.
For a more accurate and intuitive visual of your infrastructure, SolarWinds SAM also offers integration with OpenStreetMaps through the Orion Platform. This means your environment isn’t just an abstraction—you can observe the geographical parameters of your servers and devices, wherever they may be.
Monitor and map network devices, services, and processes no matter their location
With the SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor system mapping software, you can monitor and map network devices, services, and processes whether they’re part of a public, private, or hybrid environment.
Since SAM is part of the SolarWinds Orion Platform, you can use Orion Maps with SAM to more effectively map and monitor the relationships between applications and infrastructure. Orion Maps is built to provide you with more contextual insight into the overall performance of your environment by leveraging metrics from across several SolarWinds products—including SolarWinds SAM, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, and more—into one integrated view. With Orion Maps, you can also group entities, zoom in for more details, and assign icons to create the most informative visualizations. Then, you can use SAM and other SolarWinds software performance data in Orion Maps to see dependencies more easily across your servers, processes, and devices at a glance and in real time.
What is application mapping?
Application mapping is the process of creating a visual display of applications and the underlying infrastructure those applications depend on. Instead of using spreadsheets to note application relationships, admins can now leverage easy-to-use maps.
Application maps can include the connections and dependencies between components, and the status of individual components. For instance, they can show availability and outages for at-a-glance insights into any health and performance issues.
Application maps can be geographic or schematic visualizations. The maps can also be global, regional, or limited to floor, building, or department and customized to show different element types and statuses.
What is IT infrastructure mapping?
IT infrastructure mapping is the process of creating a visual topology of the basic architecture of your networks. Since applications can depend on this infrastructure, this mapping process can help you understand the geographic and interactive layout of your network. For troubleshooting, infrastructure mapping can help you quickly understand how an application issue might relate to a hardware problem.
An IT infrastructure map can include information about your systems architecture, IP/port systems, and data collection systems for servers, databases, routers, firewalls, and similar components.
What is an infrastructure diagram?
An infrastructure diagram is the visual document created by the IT infrastructure mapping process. The resulting infrastructure diagram can show the actual infrastructure and devices on your network at a scale useful for you. The diagram can also show the current availability of your IT infrastructure components.
A key component of your infrastructure diagram is your server infrastructure, which includes different layers of your server operations. A complete server diagram can help show the relationship between the components of your server operating on different layers, like application and cloud layers, so you can better understand application dependencies among across a layer architecture. With this kind of infrastructure diagram, you can gain improved insight into the relationships between elements and individual network components.
How does application mapping work?
The application mapping process starts with discovery, which involves polling servers, applications, and determining their dependencies and interactions. The discovery process can typically be determined through IP ranges and subnets.
Setting up a regular scanning process can allow for up-to-date server discovery. Especially for larger networks, a periodic scanning process is important for maintaining up-to-date documentation of a fluctuating number of nodes. Using a network polling tool with the ability to scan your network can allow you to more easily detect multi-layer server components necessary for application mapping.
An application map can help show you the status of applications, especially whether a component is experiencing downtime. Regular application mapping can also ensure configurations are updated for individual components.
The result of application mapping is a complete picture of your application and server infrastructure allowing you to quickly see when and where problems are occurring.
Why is application mapping important?
Application mapping can allow you to troubleshoot more effectively using a comprehensive understanding of the network’s geography and the working relationships among its components by helping you trace issues back to each step in the dependency chain. The ability to monitor these dependent connections can also allow you to diagnose the source of downtime and other performance issues.
In addition, because applications can provide a great deal of data other than their port and server locations, application mapping can provide a range of useful information. With application maps, it can be possible to simply click on the node in question to see additional status and health details.
Overall, an updated application map can provide a visual understanding to help admins understand performance issues much more quickly, because there’s less textual information to sort through and process.
How does application mapping work in Server & Application Monitor?
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor uses a network polling system with scalable capabilities, suitable for both large and small networks. SAM is built to provide an intuitive dependency mapping software, and visual, customizable geographic maps with drag-and-drop modification.
In addition to the 1,200-plus application monitoring templates included, SAM is designed to allow you to easily configure your application mapping tool to monitor and detect custom applications.
With customizable alerts, SolarWinds SAM can also help you address application issues like dependency uptime, response time, packet loss, and more as soon as possible by helping you more easily drill down into monitoring metrics to quickly solve performance problems.
How does Orion Maps integrate SAM application mapping insights?
Using a comprehensive service mapping tool can provide invaluable insights into your environment.
For example, the mapping feature in the Orion® Platform is designed to auto-generate contextual maps of software and hardware components in your environment, display the relationships, and automatically update as changes occur. When you use SAM to map and monitor your infrastructure in the Orion Platform, you’ll be able to view which services and devices rely on each other and what the network connection between them is like.
For example, when monitoring an Exchange server with SAM in Orion Maps, you’ll be able to see the Exchange application and its dependencies. You can also zoom in to see how many Exchange servers are communicating with one another and understand the connection quality by viewing their packet loss and latency statistics. If you want to drill a little deeper, you can click on the connection between the servers to see the connection type and status or other application dependency details.
- What is application mapping?
- What is IT infrastructure mapping?
- What is an infrastructure diagram?
- How does application mapping work?
- Why is application mapping important?
- How does application mapping work in Server & Application Monitor?
- How does Orion Maps integrate SAM application mapping insights?
What is application mapping?
Application mapping is the process of creating a visual display of applications and the underlying infrastructure those applications depend on. Instead of using spreadsheets to note application relationships, admins can now leverage easy-to-use maps.
Application maps can include the connections and dependencies between components, and the status of individual components. For instance, they can show availability and outages for at-a-glance insights into any health and performance issues.
Application maps can be geographic or schematic visualizations. The maps can also be global, regional, or limited to floor, building, or department and customized to show different element types and statuses.
Accelerate troubleshooting with server and application mapping
Server & Application Monitor
- Gain automatic application and server discovery.
- Start creating geographic maps with customizable visuals.
- Perform multi-layer dependency analysis for easier troubleshooting.
Starts at $1,813
SAM, an Orion module, is built on the SolarWinds Platform