SolarWinds
SolarWinds Observability (SaaS) & APM
Understand the cloud-native SaaS platform for modern apps and distributed tracing.
SolarWinds Observability is the company's SaaS, cloud-native platform — distinct from the self-hosted HCO — built to monitor modern applications and infrastructure without the customer running the backend. It consolidates capabilities from earlier SolarWinds SaaS acquisitions (AppOptics for metrics/APM, Loggly for logs, Pingdom for uptime/RUM) into one offering covering application, infrastructure, log, database, and digital-experience monitoring.
Switching from owning and running your own monitoring data centre (HCO) to renting a fully managed one (SaaS) that scales on demand — you bring the instrumentation, they run everything else.
Key Concepts
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For applications it provides APM with distributed tracing, metrics, and logs, and it is OpenTelemetry-friendly so you can instrument with OTel and send data in. The SaaS model means quick onboarding, elastic scale, and no platform to maintain — the trade-off being consumption-based cost and data living in SolarWinds' cloud. It positions SolarWinds against the likes of Datadog and New Relic for cloud-native workloads, while HCO continues to serve the on-prem and hybrid base.
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What the interviewer is probing.
What the interviewer is probing.
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1. "How does the SaaS offering differ from HCO?" *Probing:* the distinction. *Stalls:*
"Hosting." *Moves up:* it is the cloud-native platform with APM, digital experience and log
management, rather than the on-premise suite.
1. "How does the SaaS offering differ from HCO?"
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2. "What instrumentation does the APM use?" *Probing:* currency. *Stalls:* "Proprietary." *Moves
up:* OpenTelemetry-based, so instrumentation is portable rather than tied to the vendor.
2. "What instrumentation does the APM use?"
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3. "Why would an organisation choose it?" *Probing:* the practical answer. *Stalls:* "Price."
*Moves up:* an existing SolarWinds estate and a preference for one vendor across network and
application, often at lower cost than the market leaders.
3. "Why would an organisation choose it?"
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4. "What should you check before committing?" *Probing:* the diligence. *Stalls:* "Nothing."
*Moves up:* coverage for your specific languages and frameworks, and the data retention and egress
terms.
4. "What should you check before committing?"