SolarWinds Observability-Self-Hosted-Fundamentals Online Access

In the SolarWinds Platform, visibility of specific reports is managed throughReport Limitations. According to theSolarWinds Platform Reporting Guide, even if a user has general permissions to view nodes, an administrator can restrict their access to specific reports to ensure data privacy or to simplify their workspace.

By creating a report limitation, you define a rule—such as filtering by a custom property or report category—and apply it directly to a user's account settings. Once applied, the user will only see the reports that match the criteria of that limitation when they navigate to the Reports section of the Web Console. This is different from a standardAccount Limitation(Option D), which restricts the visibility of the nodes themselves across the entire platform. Using a report-specific limitation allows the user to still monitor the nodes in real-time views while preventing them from accessing sensitive historical or inventory data contained in specific PDF or web-based reports.

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.

In the SolarWinds Platform, transferring report definitions between different instances (such as Site A and Site B) requires a format that captures the underlying logic, SQL/SWQL queries, and layout metadata. According to theSolarWinds Platform Reporting Guide, while CSV, PDF, and DOC are formats used for exporting theresultsof a report (the data), they do not contain the instructions needed to recreate the report itself on a different server.

To share a report's structure, the administrator must use theExport/Import XMLfunctionality. By selecting the report in the Report Manager and choosing "Export," the system generates a specialized.xml file. This file contains the complete definition of the report, including the datasource filters, selected columns, chart configurations, and formatting rules. When this XML file is imported into the second SolarWinds instance, the platform parses the code and creates a new entry in the local database. This is the standard method for migrating custom reports from a test environment to production or sharing successful reporting templates across a geographically distributed organization with multiple independent polling installations.

AlertStackin Hybrid Cloud Observability (HCO) uses alert clusters to group related active alerts into a single actionable incident. According to theSolarWinds HCO Alertingdocumentation, these clusters are designed to provide context beyond the alert itself by correlating different types of data.

Metric Values (D): Alert clusters include the specific performance data that triggered the alert, such as high CPU load percentages or interface latency values. This allows the administrator to see the "why" behind the incident immediately within the cluster view.

Audit Events (A): To assist in root cause analysis, alert clusters can include relevant audit events. For example, if a node goes down immediately after a configuration change, the audit event showing who logged in and what they changed will be correlated within the cluster to provide a timeline of events leading to the alert.

While "device status" is often the result of an alert, the cluster is specifically built to aggregate the underlyingmetricsandevents(Audit/Events) to give a comprehensive picture of the environment's health.