SAM Application Monitoring Templates

In Server and Application Monitor (SAM), an application is a collection of component monitors inherited from a template when you assign the template to a node. SAM includes over 250 out-of-the-box application monitor templates and access to a rich repository of templates shared by other SAM customers in our online IT community, THWACK. A template can be customized, exported and imported to/from a file. To learn more about the application/template relationship, see Manage SAM templates and component monitors. For details about individual templates, see the SAM Template reference

How to list application monitoring templates

To list currently existing templates in your environment, use a SELECT ... FROM Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate query. See Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate Schema Reference for all the available properties. The following snippet generates a list of all available templates and displays them in the PowerShell console:

$applicationTemplates = Get-SwisData -SwisConnection $swis -Query "SELECT ApplicationTemplateID, Name, Uri FROM Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate"
$applicationTemplates | ForEach-Object { Write-Host "ID:" $_.ApplicationTemplateID; Write-Host "Name: " $_.Name; Write-Host "Uri: " $_.Uri; Write-Host }

How to import an application monitoring template

The Orion SDK includes an ImportTemplate verb on the Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate entity that you can use to automate the importing of templates into SAM. For example, to import a template from a MyTemplate.apm-template file, invoke the following PowerShell code:

# Load the template to a variable
$applicationTemplate = (Get-Content -Path ".\MyTemplate.apm-template" | Out-String)
# Import template
$result = Invoke-SwisVerb -Swis $swis Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate ImportTemplate @($applicationTemplate)
$applicationTemplateId = $result.InnerText
Write-Host "Imported template Id: $applicationTemplateId"

How to export an application monitoring template

Similarly, when you know the ID of a template, you can export it to a file. The following code exports the template with ID 1 to MyTemplate.apm-template.

$applicationTemplateId = 1
# Export the template to a variable
$result = Invoke-SwisVerb -Swis $swis Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate ExportTemplate @($applicationTemplateId)
$exportedTemplate = $result.InnerText
# Save the template to a file
$exportedTemplate | Out-File ".\MyTemplate.apm-template"

How to change the name of an application monitoring template

To change the name of a template, you need Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the template and the following call: Set-SwisObject. The URI can be constructed as shown in the example below, or found by selecting the Uri column of the ApplicationTemplate entity (see the "How to list application monitoring templates" example above).

$uri = "swis://$hostname/Orion/Orion.APM.ApplicationTemplate/ApplicationTemplateID=$templateId"
$properties = @{
    Name="My new template";
}
Set-SwisObject $swis -Uri $uri -Properties $properties

How to assign a node to a given template.

The Orion SDK includes an CreateApplication verb on the Orion.APM.Application entity that you can use to assign a node to a template. To perform this operation you are supposed to know the nodeId, applicationTemplateId and credentialSetId.

To get a nodeId by the IP address you can run:

$ip = "10.140.127.221"
$nodeId = Get-SwisData $swis "SELECT NodeID FROM Orion.Nodes WHERE IP_Address=@ip" @{ ip = $ip }

To get a credentialSetId by the Name, run the following command:

$credential = "MyCredential"
$credentialSetId = Get-SwisData $swis "SELECT ID FROM Orion.Credential WHERE CredentialOwner='APM' AND Name=@credential" @{ credential = $credential }

Note: Credentials from the SAM credential library are expected to have credentialSetId > 0. But the CreateApplication method accepts the following special IDs for credentials as well:

<None>
    $credentialSetId = 0

<Inherit Windows credential from node> (should be used only for WMI nodes)
    $credentialSetId = -3

<Inherit credentials from template>
    $credentialSetId = -4

Finally, to assign a node to a template, invoke the following PowerShell code:

$applicationId = (Invoke-SwisVerb $swis "Orion.APM.Application" "CreateApplication" @($nodeId, $applicationTemplateId, $credentialSetId, "false")).InnerText

The last parameter determines whether to skip duplicates or not, with "true" meaning duplicates will be skipped and "false" meaning they won't.

How to delete an application monitoring template

DeleteTemplate verb can be used to delete a template of a given ID, as shown in this example:

Invoke-SwisVerb -swis $swis Orion.Apm.ApplicationTemplate DeleteTemplate @($applicationTemplateId)

How to list component monitors within templates

Templates are comprised of individual component monitors that pull specific data. For example, the HTTPS Monitor template includes only one component monitor, HTTPS monitor. The more complex AppInsight for Exchange template includes over 70 component monitors, such as Replication Status, Database Copies, Exchange Monitoring, and Active Client Logons. Note: In the Orion SDK, entities related to component monitors have "ComponentTemplate" in their titles. You can use the Orion.APM.ComponentTemplate entity to extract a list of all component monitors in a template. (See Orion.APM.ComponentTemplate Schema Reference for all the available properties.) The following snippet generates a list of all component monitors in a given template.

$componentTemplates = Get-SwisData -SwisConnection $swis -Query "SELECT ID, Name, ComponentType, IsDisabled, Uri FROM Orion.APM.ComponentTemplate WHERE ApplicationTemplateID = @applicationTemplateId" @{ applicationTemplateId = $applicationTemplateId }
$componentTemplates | ForEach-Object { Write-Host "ID:" $_.ID; Write-Host "Name: " $_.Name; Write-Host "IsDisabled: " $_.IsDisabled; Write-Host "Uri: " $_.Uri; Write-Host }

How to enable or disable component monitors in templates

Similarly to how we changed the name of a template in the example above, we can change component monitor properties. For example, to enable or disable a component, use the following code to change the IsDisabled property:

$uri = "swis://$hostname/Orion/Orion.APM.ComponentTemplate/ID=$componentTemplateId"
$properties = @{
    IsDisabled="True";
}
Set-SwisObject $swis -Uri $uri -Properties $properties

How to list component monitor settings

Component monitors have different settings, as represented by key-value pairs. If you know the ID of a component monitor (its $componentTemplateId value), you can list the settings by running the following code:

$componentTemplateSettings = Get-SwisData -SwisConnection $swis -Query "SELECT Key, Value, ValueType, Required, Uri FROM Orion.APM.ComponentTemplateSetting WHERE ComponentTemplateID = @componentTemplateId" @{ componentTemplateId = $componentTemplateId }
$componentTemplateSettings | ForEach-Object { Write-Host "Key:" $_.Key; Write-Host "Value: " $_.Value; Write-Host "ValueType: " $_.ValueType; Write-Host "Required: " $_.Required; Write-Host "Uri: " $_.Uri; Write-Host }

How to change the settings of a component monitors

If you know the ID of a component monitor ($componentTemplateId) and the key of the setting ($key), you can set a new value ($value).

$uri = "swis://$hostname/Orion/Orion.APM.ComponentTemplateSetting/ComponentTemplateID=$componentTemplateId,Key=`"$key`""
$properties = @{
    Value=$value;
}
Set-SwisObject $swis -Uri $uri -Properties $properties