Documentation forSolarWinds Platform Self-Hosted

SolarWinds Platform requirements

This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform products.

This document provides SolarWinds Platform requirements for Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large deployments, based on the number of monitored elements, such as nodes, interfaces, or component monitors as determined based on your license.

SolarWinds generally recommends the minimum hardware configurations for deployment in both on-premises environments (whether bare-metal or virtualized) and cloud platforms (such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, or GCP). You may use any cloud instance that meets the specifications outlined below.

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.

General requirements

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

 

CPU cores: 4

RAM: 16 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and monitored endpoints

CPU cores: 8

RAM: 32 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and monitored endpoints

CPU cores: 8/12

RAM: 32 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and monitored endpoints

CPU cores: 12

RAM: 64 GB

Storage: 150 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and monitored endpoints

Additional Polling Engines

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

CPU cores: 8

RAM: 32 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and monitored endpoints

CPU cores: 12

RAM: 64 GB

Storage: 150 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and monitored endpoints

Additional Web Servers

Less than 50 concurrent users

CPU cores: 4

RAM: 16 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and SolarWinds Platform Server

 

Up to 100 concurrent users

CPU cores: 10

RAM: 32 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the database server and SolarWinds Platform Server

SolarWinds Platform database server

CPU cores: 4

RAM: 16 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the SolarWinds Platform Server and Additional Polling Engines

CPU cores: 8

RAM: 32 GB

Storage: 100 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the SolarWinds Platform Server and Additional Polling Engines

CPU cores: 8/16

RAM: 64/128 GB

Storage: 100/400 GB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the SolarWinds Platform Server and Additional Polling Engines

CPU cores: 32

RAM: 256/512 GB

Storage: 2 TB SSD

Network: Low-latency connectivity to the SolarWinds Platform Server and Additional Polling Engines

SolarWinds Platform server / Additional polling engines

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.

Requirement Details
Operating Systems

Following OSs are supported for SolarWinds Platform Server and Additional Polling Engines:

  • Windows Server 2025
  • Windows Server 2022
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016

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.

Deployment restrictions for SolarWinds Platform Agents and SolarWinds Platform products:

  • You cannot install SolarWinds Platform products on domain controllers. Exception: You can install SolarWinds Platform Agents on domain controllers.

  • You cannot install SolarWinds Platform products or any scalability engines on Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, or BlackBerry servers. Exception: You can install SolarWinds Platform Agents on the same server as a Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange or Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry server.

  • Do not install SolarWinds Platform products on the same server as SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM).

Operating system languages
  • English (UK or US)
  • German
  • Japanese
  • Simplified Chinese

IP address version

  • IPv4
  • IPv6
  • Dual stack

CIDR notation is not supported for IPv6 addresses.

Web server

IIS is activated by the Configuration Wizard. You can install this SW manually to reduce your installation time.

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.
Web browser support

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
.NET Framework

.NET frameworks are installed by the Installation Wizard. You can install this SW manually to reduce your installation time. Makre sure you run the same version of .NET on your primary server and any Additional polling engines or Additional web servers in the environment.

  • .NET 4.8

    Make sure that the operating system of your SolarWinds Platform supports .NET 4.8. See .NET Framework system requirements (© 2019 Microsoft, available at https://dotnet.microsoft.com, obtained on October 3, 2019). If your SolarWinds product runs on an operating system that does not support .NET 4.8, consider upgrading your environment to be able to use new features.

  • .NET 8 runtimes

    • Microsoft ASP.NET Core
    • Microsoft .NET Runtime

    The runtimes must be on the same version. Consider opting in to Microsoft Automatic Updates (allow all .NET updates in the registry) to keep runtimes on the same version. See .NET Automatic Updates… in Microsoft Documentation.
Compliance standards supported on Windows versions
  • FIPS
  • STIG
  • Device Guard
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.
Other Localization constraints: German and Japanese only for SolarWinds Platform, NPM, NTA, LA, NCM, SAM, and VMAN Calendar constraints: Gregorian calendar only

SolarWinds Platform 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 http://192.168.0.3:8080.

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-
directional

Send and receive SNMP
information

 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 Additional Web Servers

The Additional Web Server allows more users to access the SolarWinds Web Console without overloading the primary server. Do not install Additional Web Server on the same host as an SolarWinds Platform Server or Additional Polling Engines, this configuration is not supported.

Please note the time zones must match between the Additional Web Server and the Database Server to avoid timestamp issues.

SolarWinds Platform Database SQL Server

The following lists the requirements and recommendations for a SolarWinds Database Server

Requirement Details
SolarWinds Platform SQL DBs

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 deploy all three databases on the same SQL Server.

You can change the default database names during installation.
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
Azure Cloud deployment guidelines
Azure SQL Database
Small (up to 500 elements)
  • DTU based model: Standard S3 Service Tier
  • vCore based model: 8 vCores
Medium (501 – 2,000 elements)
  • DTU based model, Standard S4 Service Tier
  • vCore based model: 16 vCores
Large (more than 2,000 elements)
  • DTU based model, Standard S4 Service Tier or vCore based model: 16 vCores DTU based model, Standard S7 Service Tier
  • vCore based model: 24 vCores
Extra Large (up to 1,000,000 elements)
  • DTU based model, Premium P15 Service Tier
  • vCore Business Critical model: 40 vCores

 

Azure Managed Instance
Small (up to 500 elements)
  • General Purpose Service Tier
  • Next-get General Purpose enabled
  • Standard-series (Gen5) with 8 vCores
Medium (501 – 2,000 elements)
  • General Purpose Service Tier
  • Next-get General Purpose enabled
  • Standard-series (Gen5) with 16 vCores
Large (more than 2,000 elements)
  • General Purpose Service Tier
  • Next-get General Purpose enabled
  • Standard-series (Gen5) with 24 vCores
Extra Large (up to 1,000,000 elements)
  • Business Critical Service Tier
  • Premium-series with 40+ vCores

 

SQL Server hosted on Azure VM
Small (up to 500 elements)
  • Memory optimized E-Series v5: E4ads_v5
Medium (501 – 2,000 elements)
  • Memory optimized E-Series v5: E8ads_v5
Large (more than 2,000 elements)
  • Memory optimized E-Series v5: E16ads_v5
Extra Large (up to 1,000,000 elements)
  • Memory optimized E-Series v5: E64ads_v5
  • 2 additional Premium SSD storages (for transaction logs and data)
  • Ultra Disk compatibility enabled (for high throughput and high IOPS)
Limits and Recommendations

  • In production environments, the SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform database must use separate servers (physical or virtual machine).

  • If you have your SQL Server deployed on a virtual machine, you must maintain SolarWinds Platform database on a separate physical drive.

  • We strongly recommend using Enterprise edition for Extra Large environments. Express editions of supported MS SQL Server versions are not supported for production environment.

  • Express editions are only supported for evaluation purpose and can be installed on same server as the SolarWinds Platform Server.

  • To achieve optimal performance, use SQL 2016 SP1 or later. Earlier SQL versions do not support the column store index and are thus not recommended for larger deployments.

  • For Extra Large environments, use SQL Server Enterprise 2019 CU4 and later on Windows Server 2019 or later.

  • 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.

  • For Extra Large environment, use CPUs with a total combined PassMark score of 32,000 or higher.

  • For Large environment, use storage with Read/Write I/O: 30,000 IOPs.

  • For Extra Large environment, use storage with 190,000 IOPS. SSD is strongly recommended.

  • Please note that the system configuration, particularly the large number of limitations, groups, and alerts, can have a significant impact on the performance of the SolarWinds Platform database. Ensure that sufficient hardware resources are available to support this load effectively.

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.

SolarWinds Platform supports the following collation settings:

  • 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
SQL Server roles and permissions

The SolarWinds Platform requires following SQL server roles and permissions:

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.
SQL storage recommendations

The following recommendations apply to bare-metal 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.

Database hardware recommendations for extra large environments

For extra large environments with a physical SQL Server, SolarWinds recommends the following hard drive configuration.

These recommendations are not valid for SQL servers running in a virtual environment.

Component Recommendation
SolarWinds Platform database
  • A dedicated RAID 1+0 hard drive for data files (.mdf, .ndf).
  • A dedicated RAID 1+0 hard drive with fast sequential writing for transaction files (.ldf).
SQL Server temporary directory (tempdb) database
  • A dedicated RAID 1+0 hard drive for data files (.mdf, .ndf).
  • A dedicated RAID 1+0 hard drive with fast sequential writing for transaction files (.ldf).
SQL Server host system (Windows) A dedicated hard drive of any type.
NetFlow Traffic Analyzer database

A dedicated SSD storage (100 GB - 1 TB) for NetfFlow Traffic Analyzer data

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 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.
Log Analyzer database

A dedicated SSD storage (100 GB - 1 TB) for Log Analyzer data

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.
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
Deployment restrictions You can’t share the SolarWinds Platform database with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange and Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry servers.
Ports to open 
  • Outbound: 22, 25, 465, 587, 1433, 1434
  • Inbound: 80, 162, 443, 514, 17778
  • Bi-directional: 53, 135, 161, 5671, 17777
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.
Network 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.
Other Localization constraints: German and Japanese only for SolarWinds Platform, NPM, NTA, LA, NCM, SAM, and VMAN
Calendar constraints: Gregorian calendar only