SolarWinds Platform requirements
This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform products.
Requirements depend on various variables, such as:
- SolarWinds Platform deployment in the cloud vs on premises.
- Size of the environment to be monitored. This topic provides requirements for small, medium, large and extra large deployments, based on the number of monitored elements, such as nodes, interfaces, or component monitors, based on your license. See Licensing model for SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted.
- Review your product Administrator Guides and release notes for the exact product requirements beyond these minimums.
- SolarWinds recommends reviewing the latest SolarWinds Platform Release Notes.
- SolarWinds does not provide a comprehensive list of all supported devices. If your device supports standard SNMP MIB2, it can be monitored with the SolarWinds Platform. See Supported vendors and devices.
What requirements are you looking for?
- Requirements for supported cloud solutions:
- On-premises deployment requirements overview:
- SolarWinds Platform Web Console browser requirements
Amazon Web Service
| 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 |
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| Additional Web Servers |
Less than 50 concurrent users: m4.xlarge More than 50 concurrent users: m4.2xlarge or larger |
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Microsoft Azure
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). |
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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 |
Gen5 |
Gen5 |
Gen5 |
|
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 |
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Google Cloud Platform
| 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 |
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| SolarWinds Platform server software |
Google Cloud Platform virtual machines with a supported Windows version:
Desktop OS's only for evaluations; NOT recommended for production environments. |
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| SolarWinds Platform database on GCP SQL server |
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SolarWinds Platform database deployed on a GCP VM |
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| Additional Polling Engines | Only relevant for environments that monitor over 12,000 elements. |
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| Additional Web Servers |
Less than 50 concurrent users
More than 50 concurrent users
|
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On premises
To deploy a single SolarWinds Platform product locally, on a server, review the following recommendations.
The minimum/recommended requirements are based on the most common element distribution (nodes, volumes, and interfaces) and polling technology used (ICMP/SNMPv2).
Using other polling methods (SolarWinds Platform Agent, WMI, or SNMPv3) with authentication or more complex element types (applications, firewalls, load balancers, or wireless controllers) will increase hardware requirements for the server.
| Requirements |
Small |
Medium (501-2,000 elements) |
Large (more than 2,000 elements) |
XL (up to 1,000,000 elements) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted | ||||
| Minimum / Recommended | ||||
| SolarWinds Platform server hardware
|
CPU: 4 Cores / 8 Cores RAM: 16 GB / 32 GB |
CPU: 8 Cores / 12 Cores RAM: 32 GB / 64 GB |
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|
SolarWinds Platform server software |
Desktop OS's only for evaluations; NOT recommended for production environments.
Compliance standards supported on Windows versions:
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| SolarWinds Platform database server
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Production environment requirements
Recommended:
Supported:
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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 |
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Windows Server 2025 Windows Server 2022 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2016 |
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| 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 2025 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. |
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Ports to open
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Outbound: 22, 25, 465, 587, 1433, 1434, Inbound: 80, 162, 443, 514, 17778 Bi-directional: 53, 135, 161, 5671, 17777 |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| Other | Localization constraints: German and Japanese only for SolarWinds Platform, NPM, NTA, LA, NCM, SAM, and VMAN Calendar constraints: Gregorian calendar only |
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More information on hardware recommendations for the SolarWinds Platform server
Use the recommended hardware configuration to avoid potential performance issues caused by a heavy load or custom configurations such as increased data retention or more frequent polling intervals.
RAID recommendations only apply to physical environments. If you have your SolarWinds Platform server installed on a virtual machine, these recommendations do not apply to your environment.
Processor speed
Use processors that work at 2.4 GHz or faster.
CPU
Do not enable Physical Address Extension (PAE).
HD
Two 146 GB 15K (RAID 1/Mirrored Settings) hard drives are recommended with a dedicated drive for the server operating system and SolarWinds installation.
Some common files may need to be installed on the same drive as your server operating system. You may want to move or expand the Windows temporary directories.
More information on software requirements for the SolarWinds Platform server
Do not install SolarWinds Platform products on the same server as SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM).
The following table lists software requirements and recommendations for a SolarWinds installation on both physical and virtual computers.
| Software Requirements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Operating system |
Desktop operating systems, such as Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit Pro or Enterprise, are supported for evaluation environments only. To make a smooth transition from your evaluation to production deployment, SolarWinds recommends that you avoid installing evaluations on desktop operating systems. Support differences between SolarWinds Platform Agents and SolarWinds Platform products
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| Operating system languages |
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IP address version |
IPv4 IPv6 Dual stack CIDR notation is not supported for IPv6 addresses. |
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Web server |
If you are not using Windows Authentication, make sure the Anonymous Authentication is enabled for the SolarWinds NetPerfMon website. Anonymous Authentication is used with the default forms-based authentication. IIS is activated by the Configuration Wizard. You can install this software manually to reduce your installation time. |
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.NET Framework |
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More details on requirements for the SolarWinds Platform database Server
During installation, SolarWinds Platform creates the following three databases:
-
SolarwindsOrion - Primary SolarWinds Platform database.
-
SolarwindsOrionLog - Database used for logging syslogs, traps, and other log data.
-
SolarwindsFlowStorage - Database used for storing flow data.
You can change the default database names during installation.
You can deploy all three databases on the same SQL Server.
Make sure the database user you use to connect to your SQL Server has the db create privilege. Without this privilege, the upgrade will not complete.
SQL Server versions
Use Standard or Enterprise editions of the following SQL versions. Support for Microsoft SQL Server Service Packs and Cumulative Updates is assumed unless otherwise noted.
Supported versions
- SQL Server 2022 Cumulative Update 1 or later (including installations on Linux)
- SQL Server 2019 (including installations on Linux)
- SQL Server 2017 (including installations on Linux)
- SQL Server 2016 SP1, SP2, or SP3
- SQL on Linux
Which SQL Server edition to use?
- For XL environments, use only Enterprise versions.
- Express editions are supported only for evaluations.
Recommendations
- To achieve optimal performance, use SQL 2016 SP1 or later. Earlier SQL versions do not support the columnstore index and are thus not recommended for larger deployments.
- Use the Simple database recovery mode to ensure best performance.
- Use 64-bit version of SQL Server.
- You can set the database recovery model to Full Recovery if your SolarWinds Platform database is hosted on a SQL Cluster or if you use Always On Availability. However, you must back up your database regularly and ensure that volume you store your transaction log has free space that is at least equal to or greater than the size of your SolarWinds Platform database. Your transaction logs will continue to grow indefinitely until a database backup is performed and the transactions committed to the database. We recommend daily database backups when you use the Full Recovery model.
MS SQL Express Limits
MS SQL Express can be installed on the same server as the SolarWinds Platform server.
When using MS SQL Express, make sure you are aware of the following limits:
| Feature | Limit |
|---|---|
| Maximum database size | 10 GB |
|
Maximum computing capacity used by a single instance - SQL Server Database Engine Maximum computing capacity used by a single instance - Analysis Services or Reporting Services |
Limited to lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores |
| Maximum memory for buffer pool per instance of SQL Server Database Engine | 1410 MB |
| Maximum memory for Columnstore segment cache per instance of SQL Server Database Engine | 352 MB |
| Maximum memory-optimized data size per database in SQL Server Database Engine | 352 MB |
| SolarWinds Platform groups | up to 100 groups |
| SolarWinds Platform concurrent users | up to 5 users logged in simultaneously |
| SolarWinds Platform performance | Complex groups, limitations, or alerts can affect performance of your deployment. |
SQL Server Collation
The SolarWinds Platform does not support case-sensitive databases.
The SolarWinds Platform supports CI database on an CS SQL Server.
- English with collation setting
Latin1_General_CI_AS - English with collation setting
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS - English with collation setting
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS - German with collation setting
German_PhoneBook_CI_AS - Japanese with collation setting
Japanese_CI_AS - Simplified Chinese with collation setting
Chinese_PRC_CI_AS
Server roles and permissions
Required server roles:
- dbcreator
- public
- securityadmin
Permissions:
- You need read permissions to the master database.
- You don't need dbcreator permissions if you are installing a SolarWinds Platform product with a pre-existing blank database.
Hard drive space
The following recommendations apply to physical environments only. If you have your SolarWinds Platform database installed on a virtual machine, these recommendations do not apply to your environment.
- Due to intense I/O requirements, a RAID 1+0 drive is strongly recommended for the SolarWinds database, data, and log files with a dedicated drive for the server operating system and tempdb files.
- Other RAID configurations can negatively affect your SQL Server's performance.
- Mirrored drives for the OS and RAID 1+0 for database data files are recommended.
- Solid state drives (SSD) are recommended for all components.
Some common files may need to be installed on the same drive as your server operating system. You may want to move or expand the Windows or SQL temporary directories.
Database hardware recommendations for large environments
For large environments with a physical SQL Server, SolarWinds recommends the following hard drive configuration.
These recommendations are not relevant for SQL Servers running in a virtual environment.
- A hardware RAID Controller with a battery backed-up write back cache
- Disk Subsystem 1 Array 1: 2x 146 GB 15K disks RAID 1 (mirroring) for the OS
- Disc Subsystem 2 Array 2: 2x 146 GB 15K disks RAID 1 (Pagefile + Extra Storage)
- Disk Subsystem 3 Array 3: with 6x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 array for your SQL MDF and FILEGROUPS.
- Disk Subsystem 4 Array 4: with 4x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 array 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
Authentication
Either mixed-mode or Windows authentication. If you require SQL authentication, you must enable mixed mode on your SQL server.
Other software
SolarWinds recommends you install the SQL Server Management Studio component on your SolarWinds Platform database server.
The SolarWinds Installer installs the following required x86 components if they are not found on your SolarWinds Platform database server:
- SQL Server System Common Language Runtime (CLR) Types. SolarWinds Platform uses secure SQL CLR stored procedures for selected, non-business data operations to improve overall performance.
- Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
- Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects
You cannot share the SolarWinds Platform database with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, and Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry servers.
Server port requirements
- Ports 4369, 25672, and 5671 are opened by default on the main server for RabbitMQ messaging. These ports can be blocked by the firewall. When running SolarWinds High Availability, ensure ports 4369 and 25672 are open.
SolarWinds does not recommend the use of HTTP (Port 80). Please use HTTPS (Port 443) to ensure that any web-related connections are secure.
| Port | Protocol | Service/Process | Direction | Description | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| user-defined, default: 22 | SSH |
SolarWinds Job Engine v2 IIS |
Outbound from the SolarWinds Platform server to the device | Port for accessing ASA devices through CLI | Device-based |
|
25 |
TCP |
SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 | Outbound |
SMTP port for non-encrypted messages |
n/a |
| 53 | UDP | SolarWinds Job Engine v2 | Bi- directional |
Resolving DNS queries | n/a |
|
80 |
TCP |
IIS | Inbound |
HTTP default for the SolarWinds Platform Web Console website. If you specify any port other than 80, you must include that port in the URL used to access the SolarWinds Platform Web Console. For example, if you specify an IP address of 192.168.0.3 and port 8080, the URL used to access the web console is The port might also be used for Cisco UCS monitoring. |
Non |
| 135 | TCP | Microsoft EPMAP (DCE/Microsoft RPC Locator service) | Bi- directional |
Required for devices polled via WMI. Used to initiate communication with the remotely managed host. | |
|
161 |
UDP |
SolarWinds Job Engine v2 SolarWinds Cortex |
Bi- |
Send and receive SNMP |
SNMP v1 and v2 are unencrypted. SNMP v3 uses AES and 3DES encryption. |
|
162 |
UDP |
SolarWinds Trap Service SNMP Informs |
Inbound |
Receive trap messages |
n/a |
|
443 |
TCP |
IIS | Inbound |
Default port for https binding. |
SSL |
|
465 |
TCP |
SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 | Outbound |
SMTP port used to send TLS-enabled email alert actions |
SSL |
|
514 |
UDP |
SolarWinds Syslog Service | Inbound |
Receive syslog messages |
n/a |
|
587 |
TCP |
SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 | Outbound |
SMTP port used to send TLS-enabled email alert actions |
TLS |
| dynamic, random, greater than 1024 | TCP | SolarWinds Job Engine v2 | Bi- directional |
(DCE/Microsoft RPC Locator service) Microsoft EPMAP, only if you monitor nodes via WMI. This port is used by the SolarWinds Job Engine v2 service to communicate with Windows nodes. See WMI portocalypse on THWACK. | |
|
1433 |
TCP |
SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 SolarWinds Administration Service SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Orion Module Engine |
Outbound |
Communication between the SolarWinds Platform server and the SQL Server. |
n/a |
|
1434 |
UDP |
SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 SolarWinds Administration Service SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Orion Module Engine SQL Server Browse Service |
Outbound |
Communication with the SQL Server Browser Service to determine how to communicate with certain non-standard SQL Server installations. Required only if your SQL Server is configured to use dynamic ports. |
n/a |
|
5671 |
TCP |
RabbitMQ |
Bi- directional |
For encrypted RabbitMQ messaging (AMQP/TLS) into the main polling engine from all SolarWinds Platform servers (additional polling engines, HA servers, or additional web servers). Sending messages to RabbitMQ. |
TLS 1.2 |
| 17732 |
HTTPS/TCP |
SolarWinds Certificate Management Service | Bi- directional |
The port used for secure communication between the certificate management clients and certificate management service. | SSL/TLS |
| 17733 | TCP | SolarWinds Job Engine v3 | Internal only | The local port used by the SolarWinds Job Engine v3 for communication with the collector. | SSL/TLS |
|
17774 |
HTTPS/TCP |
SolarWinds REST Endpoint | Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server |
Required for access to the SWIS API. |
SSL |
|
17777 |
TCP |
SolarWinds Orion Module Engine SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Cortex |
Bi- directional |
Communication between services and SolarWinds Orion module traffic. Communication between the SolarWinds Platform Web Console and the polling engines. Communication between the main server and pool members. |
RSA handshake, AES 256 communication using WCF TLS 1.2 with Cortex |
|
17778 |
HTTPS |
SolarWinds Agent | Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server |
Required for agent communication. |
SSL |
See SolarWinds Port requirements for a comprehensive list of port requirements for SolarWinds products.
Optional, individual components, such as SolarWinds Platform Agents and High Availability, have additional port requirements.
SolarWinds Platform Web Console browser requirements
Performance of the computer where you open the browser significantly influences the speed of the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.
SolarWinds Platform supports two most recent versions of the following web browsers available at the release date:
- Firefox
- Chrome
SolarWinds Platform also supports the following browsers:
- Microsoft Edge
Browser requirements:
- JavaScript enabled
- Cookies enabled