SCP-500 SolarWinds Orion Platform Architecture & Administration 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which built-in SolarWinds Orion feature automatically scans IP ranges to discover new network devices?
- Agent Push Deployment
- Network Sonar Discovery (Correct answer)
- SNMP Trap Receiver
- Syslog Collector
Correct answer: Network Sonar Discovery
Network Sonar Discovery uses ICMP, SNMP, and other probes to automatically scan IP ranges and identify manageable devices for import into Orion.
Question 2: Which polling protocol does SolarWinds Orion use to monitor Windows servers without requiring SNMP to be enabled?
- ICMP
- Telnet
- WMI (Correct answer)
- TFTP
Correct answer: WMI
WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is a native Windows technology that Orion uses to collect detailed CPU, memory, and service data from Windows systems agentlessly.
Question 3: What is the key connectivity advantage the SolarWinds Agent provides over agentless SNMP/WMI polling?
- Supports more MIB objects
- Initiates outbound connections over a single port, enabling monitoring through firewalls (Correct answer)
- Reduces SQL database size
- Increases web console refresh rate
Correct answer: Initiates outbound connections over a single port, enabling monitoring through firewalls
The SolarWinds Agent communicates outbound on port 17778, allowing Orion to monitor devices behind firewalls without requiring administrators to open multiple inbound ports.
Question 4: What information does the 'List Resources' wizard provide when adding a new node in SolarWinds Orion?
- All active alerts and events for that node
- Available interfaces, volumes, CPU, and memory components that can be monitored (Correct answer)
- A list of users who can access the node
- All SNMP trap OIDs registered by the device
Correct answer: Available interfaces, volumes, CPU, and memory components that can be monitored
List Resources polls the target node and presents all discoverable components — interfaces, disk volumes, CPU, memory — so the administrator can choose exactly what to monitor.
Question 5: What security improvement does SNMPv3 provide over SNMPv2c?
- Faster polling throughput
- Authentication and optional encryption of SNMP messages (Correct answer)
- Support for additional MIB trees
- Automatic community string rotation
Correct answer: Authentication and optional encryption of SNMP messages
SNMPv3 adds per-user authentication (MD5 or SHA) and optional data encryption (DES or AES), replacing SNMPv2c's insecure plaintext community strings.
Question 6: What does ICMP polling in SolarWinds Orion specifically measure for a monitored node?
- CPU and memory utilization
- Node availability and round-trip response time (Correct answer)
- Interface bandwidth utilization
- Application service component status
Correct answer: Node availability and round-trip response time
ICMP (ping) polling checks whether a node responds to echo requests, reporting availability (up/down) and latency (response time in milliseconds).
Question 7: In SNMPv2c, which community string is conventionally used for read-only access in default device configurations?
- admin
- private
- public (Correct answer)
- monitor
Correct answer: public
'public' is the widely known default read-only SNMP community string; it should always be changed in production environments as it is a well-known security risk.
SCP-500 SolarWinds Orion Platform Architecture & Administration 2
Which built-in SolarWinds Orion feature automatically scans IP ranges to discover new network devices?