SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor v12.x & Custom Coded Resources

Since SolarWinds® released SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) v12, you may experience trouble to get your custom code working again. If you came across this:

Or this:

Don’t worry, a solution exists for both issues but first let’s get an understanding what happened here.

SolarWinds have decided to do some changes in the Website deployment, as part of their inner upgrade process which is triggered by the well-known Configuration Wizard:

1. Clean build of the Orion website: This will create a new website folder under \inetpub\SolarWinds and, luckily, a backup of your previous site will be in place under the name \inetpub\SolarWinds.backup.RandomSequenceOfCharacters. So, all your custom code files still exist, that’s a relief!
2. Pre-compilation of the code files: (.aspx, .ascx, etc) This allows to speed up the web optimisation process as most of the website ASP and .NET files now are pre-compiled!

These are significant changes; however we need to find a way of preserving any custom code developed for Orion.

The Solution

The first step is to edit the “/inetpub/SolarWinds/PrecompiledApp.config” file as follows:

Before:
[code]<precompiledapp version="2" updatable="false"></precompiledapp>[/code]

After:
[code]<precompiledapp version="2" updatable="true"></precompiledapp>[/code]

Please note: the above file may not exist in all installations. In such case, do not create it or the web console will not run.

Those changes will allow custom code to run, i.e. no more “has not been pre-compiled, and cannot be requested” error messages.

Next goal is to maintain the custom code files in the working Website folder. We will be using a Windows scheduled task along with the old, well-known robocopy utility.

Step 1: Create a well-known directory which will host your custom code files. We will be using C:\inetpub\SolarWindsCustomResources in this article. Notice how we preserve the folder structure.

Step 2: Create a scheduled task to run daily (or at any interval you wish) which will copy the files from: C:\inetpub\SolarWindsCustomResources to the: C:\inetpub\SolarWinds\Orion\NetPerfMon\Resources folder. In the actions tab enter ‘robocopy’ in the program/script field, and the following arguments:
‘/E C:\inetpub\SolarWindsCustomResources\Orion\NetPerfMon\Resources\ C:\inetpub\SolarWinds\Orion\NetPerfMon\Resources\’

Now all the resource files should be synchronised with the Orion website folder.

Step 3: Last step is to rebuild the cached web resources file in the Orion platform. Navigate to c:\ProgramData\SolarWinds\Orion\ and rename the WebResourceCache.xml file to WebResourceCacheOLD.xml.

Then, open IIS Manager and select the SolarWinds Orion Application Pool under Application Pools. Hit the Recycle button. This process will force the resource files to be refreshed.

All your custom resources should now be visible under the ‘classic category’ dropdown when adding a resource to a view:

Our resource is now back on the web console!

Make sure to check our future posts for more tips and tricks in the Orion platform!