Documentation forSolarWinds Platform

Deployment sizing guidelines for the SolarWinds Platform

This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform products.

This topic provides recommendations for deploying multiple SolarWinds Platform products. These are guidelines only. You can choose to use more or less hardware, but your performance may vary depending on your deployment scenario.

If you have only one SolarWinds Platform module, see the system requirements for that module in the Success Center.

Use the SolarWinds Installer to run a System Check. You do not have to complete the installation to receive an install report. The installer runs a series of checks per product to verify that your server meets system requirements and recommendations. You will receive informational and warning messages that recommend actions and best practices to optimize performance.

Before you read on, answer the following questions:

  • What is the size of the environment you want to monitor with the SolarWinds Platform?
  • How many and which SolarWinds Platform products do you want do use to monitor your environment?
  • Where do you want to deploy the SolarWinds Platform, in the cloud or on premises?

Size of monitored environment and SolarWinds Platform products installed

Small

For the purposes of this article, "small environments" mean up to three modules from the following list:

  • IPAM IP1000 - IP4000
  • NCM DL50 - DL200
  • NPM SL100 - SL500 (including up to 10 remote agents for QoE)
  • SAM, based on license type
    • Up to SAM100 (node-based licensing)
    • AL150 or AL300 (component-based licensing)
  • UDT UT2500 - 5000
  • VMAN VMS8 - VMS64
    If you use VMAN Recommendations, increase the total memory on the server by 4 GB.
  • VNQM IPSLA 5 - IPSLA 25 (up to 5,000 operations)
  • WPM 5 - WPM 20

You can install Log Analyzer, NTA, or SCM as part of a small deployment, but it is not included in this configuration. Use the Medium Deployment guidelines for these SolarWinds Platform products.

Medium

For the purposes of this article, "medium environments" include the following modules:

  • NPM SL500 - SL2000,
  • NTA for NPM SL2000
    • 50,000 FPS received sustained on the main polling engine

and 2 - 4 additional modules:

  • IPAM IP16,000
  • Log Analyzer LA10 - LA250
  • NCM DL500 - DL1000
  • SAM, based on license type
    • SAM100 to SAM300 (node-based licensing)
    • AL700 or AL1100 (component-based licensing)
  • SCM SCM50 - SCM1000
  • UDT UT10,000 - 25,000
  • VMAN VMS112 - VMS320
    If you use VMAN Recommendations, increase the total memory on the server by 8 GB.
  • VNQM IPSLA 25 - IPSLA 50 (up to 10,000 operations)
  • WPM 50 - WPM 200

Large

For the purposes of this article, "large environments" include the following modules:

  • NPM SLX (with multiple polling engines)
  • NTA for NPM SLX
    • 50,000 FPS received sustained on the main polling engine
    • Up to 6 polling engines (5 in addition to the main polling engine) for 300,000 FPS received sustained
  • Any combination of these modules:
    • IPAM IPX
      • 750,000 IP
    • Log Analyzer LA250 - LA1000
    • NCM DLX
      • 1 Additional Polling Engine (APE) for every 10,000 devices, for NCM 7.1 and later
      • Maximum of 30,000 devices per NCM instance (that is, NCM server + 2 NCM APEs)
    • SAM, based on license type
      • SAM400 (node-based licensing)
      • AL1500 (component-based licensing)
    • SCM SCM5000
    • UDT UTX
      • 150,000 ports per polling engine
    • VMAN VMS480 and higher
      • Per VMAN Recommendations, increase the total memory on the server by 16 GB.
      • 1 APE for every 10,000 VMs. VMAN APEs do not require extra licenses.
    • VNQM IPX
      • ~5,000 IP SLA operations per polling engine

Xlarge

For the purposes of this article, "xlarge environments" monitor up to 1,000,000 elements. Monitoring these environments requires deploying Additional Polling Engines to scale your deployment.

For SAM, monitoring capacity is measured in terms of component monitors instead of elements.
For example, a SAM1000 deployment of SAM 2020.2 that uses WinRM for application monitor polling, represents an "xlarge" environment that supports:

  • 1 Main Polling Engine (up to 10K component monitors) and up to 100 APEs.
  • 1 APE for every ~40K component monitors at no extra licensing cost. Stacking is not supported.
  • Up to 550K component monitors.

Disk Performance is measured using IOPS.

CPU recommendations use the PassMark score (© 2018 PassMark® Software, obtained at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html on April 9, 2018).

How do I find out the PassMark score of my server?

  1. Download the Pass Mark Performance Test (© 2018 PassMark® Software, obtained at https://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm on April 9, 2018).
  2. Run it on your server to find out a PassMark score of your server.

SolarWinds Platform deployed in the cloud

SolarWinds Platform products support the following cloud solutions:

You can also deploy Hybrid Cloud Observability directly from your cloud provider marketplace:

Amazon Web Services

In Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes are not your dedicated hardware devices. For databases used by SolarWinds Platform products, SolarWinds recommends using dedicated instance EBS volumes for medium and large deployments. For large deployments, SolarWinds recommends EBS with provisioned IOPS for high performance for intensive database workloads.

To deploy your SolarWinds Platform using Amazon Web Service, consider using the following templates.

Requirements

Small

(up to 500 elements)

Medium

(501-2,000 elements)

Large

(more than 2,000 elements)

XL (up to 1,000,000 elements)

SolarWinds Platform server

m4.xlarge

m4.2xlarge

m5.2xlarge

m5.4xlarge

SolarWinds Platform database using Amazon RDS for SQL Server db.r5.xlarge db.r5.2xlarge db.r5.4xlarge db.r5.16xlarge

SolarWinds Platform database deployed on an Amazon VM

r4.xlarge

r4.2xlarge

r5d.4xlarge

r5ad.24xlarge

Additional Polling Engines Only relevant for environments that monitor over 12,000 elements.

m5.xlarge

Additional Web Servers

Less than 50 concurrent users: m4.xlarge

More than 50 concurrent users: m4.2xlarge or larger

Requirements for additional databases

small

medium

large

xl
NTA Flow Storage Database see medium r3.xlarge r5d.4xlarge r5d.4xlarge
Log Analyzer Database see medium r3.xlarge r5d.4xlarge r5d.4xlarge

Microsoft Azure

To deploy your SolarWinds Platform on Microsoft Azure, consider using the following instance types, based on your deployment size.

To create a new database or a new database user in the Configuration Wizard, use an account with appropriate privileges.

Requirements

Small

(up to 500 elements)

Medium

(501-2,000 elements)

Large

(more than 2,000 elements)

XL (up to 1,000,000 elements)

SolarWinds Platform server

D3_v2

D4_v2

DS4_v2

DS5_v2

SolarWinds Platform database using Azure SQL DB

All installed products must run on Orion Platform 2019.2 or later.

Time zone setting of the SolarWinds Platform server must be in the same time zone as Azure SQL DB time zone (UTC).

DTU Standard Tier S3 or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 2 or better

DTU Standard Tier S3 or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 2 or better

DTU Standard Tier S4 or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 2 or better

DTU P15

vCore Hyper-Scale 40 vCPU

SolarWinds Platform database using Azure SQL Database managed instance

Gen5
4 vCores

Gen5
8 vCores

Gen5
16 vCores

Gen5
40 vCores

SolarWinds Platform database deployed in an Azure VM

A4_v2

DS4_v2 Standard

E8s_v3

E64as_v4

IOPS 30,000+

Additional Polling Engine Only relevant for environments that monitor over 12,000 elements at default polling intervals. D4s_v3 D4s_v3
Additional Web Server

Less than 50 concurrent users: DS12_v2

More than 50 concurrent users: DS4_v2 or larger

Requirements for additional databases

small

medium

large

xl
NTA Flow Storage Database - DS12_v2 D15_v2 D15_v2
Log Analyzer Database - DS12_v2 D15_v2 D15_v2

SolarWinds Platform deployed on premises

Requirements

Small
(up to 500 elements)

Medium

(501-2,000 elements)

Large

(more than 2,000 elements)

XL (up to 1,000,000 elements)

Hybrid Cloud Observability Essentials

Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced
Minimum / Recommended
SolarWinds Platform server hardware

 

More details

CPU: 4 Cores / 8 Cores

RAM: 16 GB / 32 GB

CPU: 8 Cores / 12 Cores

RAM: 32 GB / 64 GB

SolarWinds Platform server software

More details

Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2016

Desktop OS's only for evaluations; NOT recommended for production environments

 

FIPS-compliant OS's

STIG- compliant OS's

Device Guard-compliant OS's

 

SolarWinds Platform database server

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More details

Production environment requirements

  • In production environments, the SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform database must use separate servers (physical or virtual machine). For details on SQL Express, see MS SQL Express limits.
  • If you have your SQL Server deployed on a virtual machine, you must maintain SolarWinds Platform database on a separate physical drive.

Recommended:

  • For XL environments, use SQL Server Enterprise 2019 CU4 and later on Windows Server 2019

Supported:

Quad core processor or better

8 GB/16 GB RAM

20 GB/40 GB HD

Dual quad core processor or better

16 GB/64 GB RAM

50 GB/100 GB HD

Dual quad core processor or better

64 GB/128 GB RAM

100/400 GB HD

 

CPUs with a total combined PassMark score of 32,000 or higher

256 GB/512 GB RAM

2 TB HD

Read/Write I/O:

30,000 IOPs / 190,000 IOPS or better recommended, SSD strongly recommended

Additional Polling Engines

CPU: 4 Cores / 8 Cores

RAM: 16 GB / 32 GB

CPU: 8 Cores / 12 Cores

RAM: 32 GB / 64 GB

Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2016

Additional Web Server Relevant for environments where the number of concurrent users is close to 50.

8-core processor or better

16 GB RAM

60 GB HD

Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2016

Requirements depend on the number of concurrent users. The more users are logged in at the same time, the more RAM, HD space, and cores you need.

Ports to open

 

More details

Outbound: 22, 25, 465, 587, 1433, 1434,

Inbound: 80, 162, 443, 514, 17778

Bi-directional: 53, 135, 161, 5671, 1777

Account privileges

SolarWinds recommends that SolarWinds Platform administrators have local administrator privileges on the SolarWinds Platform server to ensure full functionality of local SolarWinds tools.

User accounts limited to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console do not require local administrator privileges.

Users running the Configuration wizard must have DBO specified as the default database schema.

All SolarWinds services run under the LocalSystem account in order to protect critical and sensitive information, such as primary SolarWinds Platform certificates, or database credentials, from being accessed by shared accounts with lower privileges.

Latency

The latency (RTT) between each SolarWinds Platform engine and the database server should be below 200 ms. Degradation may begin around 100 ms, depending on your utilization and the size of your deployment. In general, higher latency will impact larger deployments more than smaller deployments.

Ping the SolarWinds Platform SQL Server to find the current latency and ensure a reliable static connection between the server and the regions.

Requirements for additional databases

small

medium

large

xl
NTA Flow Storage Database -

Physical server or virtual machine

  • Quad core processor or better
  • 16 GB RAM
    Note: Increase the NTA Flow Storage database RAM as the database size increases.
  • 100 GB - 1 TB of storage capacity on local NTFS disk
    Note: More or less space may be required, depending on your data retention policies and the number of stored flows. You need approximately 8 GB of additional storage for every 1,000 flows per second retained for 30 days. For example, if you want 50,000 flows per second stored for 30 days, you need a base of 100 GB plus an additional 400 GB of storage.
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC
Log Analyzer Database -

Physical server or virtual machine

  • Quad core processor or better
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 100 GB - 1 TB of storage capacity on local NTFS disk
    Note: More or less space may be required, depending on the number of stored events. Log Analyzer supports 1,000 Events per Second across all polling engines.
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC
  • MS SQL Server 2016 with SP1 and later, Standard or Datacenter Edition
  • Supported collations:

    • English with collation setting SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
    • English with collation setting SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS

RAID recommendations

RAID recommendations are only relevant if your primary database is deployed on a physical server. They are NOT relevant if your database is deployed on a virtual machine.

More or less space may be needed depending on your data retention policies, number of elements measured, and polling frequency.

RAID recommendations

small

medium

large

RAID 1+0 configuration (RAID 5 not supported)

RAID 1+0 configuration (RAID 5 not supported)

Hardware RAID Controller (software RAID not supported)

  • Hardware RAID Controller (software RAID not supported)
    • Disk Subsystem 1 Array 1: 2 x 146 GB 15,000 disks RAID 1 (mirroring) operating system
    • Disk Subsystem 2 Array 2: 2 x 146 GB 15,000 disks RAID 1 (Pagefile + extra storage)
    • Disk Subsystem 3 Array 3: with 6x 15,000 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 arrays to allow for maximum write performance. This is for your SQL MDF AND FILEGROUPS
    • Disk Subsystem 4 Array 4: with 4x 15,000 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 arrays to allow for maximum write performance. This is for your SQL LDF Transaction LOG file
    • Disk Subsystem 5 Array 5: with 4x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 array for your tempdb data file
    • Disk Subsystem 6 Array 6: with 4x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 0 array for your tempdb log file