Scalability engine guidelines for SolarWinds products

  See this video: Enterprise-Class Scalability for the Orion Platform. /archive/sw-videos.htm?uuid=j6l9jlm429&title=Enterprise-Class Scalability for the Orion Platform

Your SolarWinds Platform installation consists of a main polling server (SolarWinds Platform Web Console and the main polling engine), and the SolarWinds Platform database server. The polling engine gathers device statistics and stores the information on the SolarWinds Platform database server. The main polling server reads the stored information from the SolarWinds Platform database server.

Your main polling engine polls a definite number of elements depending on the SolarWinds Platform product. Too many elements on a single polling engine can have a negative impact on your SolarWinds Platform server. When the maximum polling throughput on a single polling engine is reached, the polling intervals are automatically increased to handle the higher load. To keep default polling intervals, you need to add polling capacity.

What is a scalability engine?

"Scalability engine" is a general term that refers to any server that extends the monitoring capacity of your SolarWinds installation, such as Additional polling engines (APEs), Additional web servers (AWS), or High Availability (HA) backups.

How do I know that I need to scale my SolarWinds Platform product?

When the polling capacity on a polling engine is getting close to the limit or is exceeded, SolarWinds Platform products notify you about it.

• See Notifications in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

  

• Review your alerts. If the Polling rate limit exceeded out-of-the-box alert is enabled, the alert sends an email and adds an entry to All Active Alerts.

  

Select the scalability option suitable for your environment and deployed SolarWinds Platform products

Review the scalability options and compare them with options available for SolarWinds Platform products you have deployed.

Scalability	Supported products	When to select this option
Additional polling engine (APE)	All SolarWinds Platform products except for ETS and EOC	To increase the polling capacity of your deployment, deploy APEs. Centralized Deployment: Poll from the main data center. Add APEs to your remote sites to enhance visibility. » Learn more Distributed Deployment: Install a SolarWinds Platform instance in each remote site and aggregate the data with EOC for a consolidated view. » Learn more
Additional polling engine (APE) for selected products	LA SAM with node-based licenses SCM SRM VMAN	As of SolarWinds Platform 2022.3, additional polling engines are updated to a new, licensing-controlled version. For selected products, the Additional polling engine license is included in the product license. Install an Additional polling engine. During the evaluation period, you will be able to see an APE evaluation license in the License Manager. After the evaluation period, no extra license will be displayed in the License Manager because it is included in your product license. You cannot stack these licenses.
Additional web server	All SolarWinds Platform products	To improve the performance of your SolarWinds Platform Web Console by load-balancing a large number of users or in secured environments where you have your SolarWinds Platform products behind a firewall, deploy Additional polling engines. » Learn more
Stacking licenses	NPM 12.2 and later SAM 6.9 and later with component-based licenses	If you have enough resources on your polling engine server, apply multiple licenses on the server to increase its polling capacity. » Learn more
SolarWinds Platform Collector (Collector)	NAM 2020.2.1 SAM 2020.2.1 with node-based licenses HCO 2022.2 and later	To securely monitor offices over low bandwidth and high latency connections or small offices in remote locations, deploy an SolarWinds Platform Collector. » Learn more
Remote Orion Poller for Additional polling engines (ROP)	IPAM NCM NPM NTA SAM SRM UDT VNQM	Remote Office Pollers have reached End of Sale. Customers under maintenance are still supported. To deploy your SolarWinds Platform product in numerous remote locations without scaling up your installation, deploy a Remote Office Poller for Additional polling engine (ROP, mini-poller). » Learn more
High Availability	All SolarWinds Platform products except for ETS	To implement failover protection for your SolarWinds Platform server and Additional polling engines, deploy High Availability.

Deploy the selected scalability option

Review scalability requirements and find out more about scalability options.

Centralized deployment with Additional polling engines

Centralized Deployment with APEs polls data locally in each region and the polled data is stored centrally on the database server in the primary region. All licenses are shared in a Centralized Deployment. Use this deployment if your organization requires centralized IT management and localized collection of monitoring data.

Why deploy APEs centrally?

Users can view all network data from the SolarWinds Platform Web Console in the Primary Region where the main SolarWinds Platform server is installed.

Users can log in to a local SolarWinds Platform Web Console if an Additional polling engine is installed in a secondary region.

With Centralized Deployment, you can:

• Add, delete, and modify nodes, users, alerts and reports centrally, on the Main SolarWinds Platform server.
• Scale all installed SolarWinds Platform products. Scaling one SolarWinds Platform product increases the capacity of the other SolarWinds Platform products. For example, installing an APE for NPM also increases the polling capacity for SAM.
• Specify the polling engine that collects data for monitored nodes and reassign nodes between polling engines.

All Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as Node Response Times, are calculated from the perspective of the polling engine. For example, the response time for a monitored node in Region 2 is equal to the round trip time from the APE in Region 2 to that node.

For additional information on Centralized Deployment, see the SolarWinds Platform Scalability Tech Tip.

Requirements for APEs

The latency (RTT) between each SolarWinds Platform Additional polling 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.

1. Make sure that your environment meets the requirements for Additional polling engines in Multi-module system guidelines. Extra large environment requirements include:

   • Amazon Web Service: m5.xlarge

   • Microsoft Azure: D4s_v3

   • On premise:

     • Quad core processor or better
     • 32 GB RAM
     • Storage: 150 GB, 15,000 RPM
     • Windows Server 2022, 2019, or 2016, Standard or Datacenter Edition

2. Make sure that you have opened all necessary ports:

   Additional polling engines (APEs) have the same port requirements as the main polling engine. The following ports are the minimum required for an Additional polling engine to ensure the most basic functions.

   Port	Proto- col	Service/ Process	Direction	Description
   161	UDP	SolarWinds Job Engine	Outbound	The port used by the Additional polling engine (APE) to query for SNMP information on the device and to send it to the APE.
   162	UDP	SolarWinds Trap Service	Inbound	The port used by the APE for receiving trap messages from devices.
   1433	TCP	SolarWinds Collector Service	Outbound	The port used for communication between the APE and the SolarWinds Platform database.
   1434	UDP	SQL Browse Service	Outbound	The port used for communication with the SQL Server Browser Service (SolarWinds Platform database) and the APE to determine how to communicate with certain non-standard SQL Server installations. Required only if your SQL Server is configured to use dynamic ports.
   5671	TCP	RabbitMQ	Outbound	The port used for SSL-encrypted RabbitMQ messaging from the Additional polling engine to the main polling engine.
   17777	TCP	SolarWinds Information Service	Bidirectional	The port used for communication between the Additional polling engine and the main polling engine.

3. Use the SolarWinds Installer to deploy the Additional polling engine.

How to deploy?

1. Make sure that your environment meets the requirements for APEs.

2. Use the SolarWinds Installer to deploy the Additional polling engine.

Distributed deployment with main and Additional polling engines in regions

In a distributed deployment, each region is licensed independently, and data is polled and stored locally in each region. Scale each region independently by adding APEs. You can access monitoring data from each region in a central location with the Enterprise Operations Console (EOC).

SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console must be installed and licensed if you want to view aggregated data from multiple SolarWinds Platform servers in a distributed deployment.

Why deploy Additional polling engines in a distributed environment?

With distributed deployment you can:

• Use local administration to manage, administer, and upgrade each region independently.
• Create, modify, or delete nodes, users, alerts, and reports separately in each region.
• Export and import objects, such as alert definitions, Universal Device Pollers, and SAM application monitor templates between instances.
• Mix and match modules and license sizes as needed. For example:
  • Region 1 has deployed NPM SL500, NTA for NPM SL500, UDT 2500, and 3 APEs
  • Region 2 has deployed NPM SLX, SAM500, UDT 50,000, and 3 APEs
  • Region 3 has deployed NPM SL100 only and 3 APEs

EOC 2.0 and later leverage a function called SWIS Federation to query for specific data only when needed. This method allows EOC to display live, on-demand data from all monitored SolarWinds Sites. and does not store historical data.

How to deploy?

1. Make sure that your environment meets the requirements for APEs.

2. Use the SolarWinds Installer to deploy the Additional polling engine.

Additional web servers

Deploying an Additional web server might be helpful in the following cases:

• The number of users logged in to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console at the same time is close to 50.

• SolarWinds Platform Web Console is having performance issues.

  The SolarWinds Platform Web Console performance depends on the performance of the computer where you open the browser. See Browser requirements in the latest system requirements.

How to deploy?

1. Make sure you have all ports required Additional polling engines open:

   Port	Protocol	Service/Process	Direction	Description
   80	TCP	World Wide Web Publishing Service	Inbound	Default Additional polling engine port. Open the port to enable communication from your computers to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console. 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.
   443	TCP	IIS	Inbound	The default port for https binding.
   1433	TCP	SolarWinds Information Service	Outbound	The port used for communication between the SolarWinds Platform server and the SQL Server. Open the port from your SolarWinds Platform Web Console to the SQL Server.
   5671	TCP	RabbitMQ	Outbound	The port used for SSL-encrypted RabbitMQ messaging from the Additional web server to the main polling engine.
   17777	TCP	SolarWinds Information Service	Outbound	SolarWinds Platform module traffic. Open the port to enable communication from all polling engines (both main or additional) to the Additional web server, and from the Additional web server to polling engines.

2. Use the SolarWinds Installer to deploy the Additional polling engine. See Installing Additional polling engines.

Learn more: Optimize the performance of SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

Remote Office Pollers

To deploy your SolarWinds Platform product in numerous, remote locations when you do not need to scale up your installation, use a Remote Office Poller for Additional polling engine (ROP, mini-poller).

Select a Remote Office Poller by the number of elements you need to poll:

• ROP250 polls up to 250 elements.
• ROP1000 polls up to 1000 elements.

How to deploy?

1. Make sure that all deployed products support this option.

2. Make sure that your environment meets the requirements for APEs.

3. Use the SolarWinds Installer to deploy Remote Office Pollers. follow the steps for installing Additional polling engines.

SolarWinds Platform Collectors

SolarWinds Platform Collector (Collector) is a lightweight distributed polling engine that you can use to monitor devices in your environment agentlessly through WMI and SNMP.

Why deploy?

• Collectors use the Agent technology to communicate with the SolarWinds Platform
• Collectors do not need a direct connection to the database
• Collectors are easy to deploy in remote locations, thanks to their simplified architecture
• Collectors can poll/cache over unreliable networks (store up to 24 hours with no connection to the polling engine)

Requirements

Requirement	Description
Supported operating systems	Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2022 Windows 10 Windows 11 Not Supported on Linux and AIX The server where you deploy the agent must have a unique hostname.
Ports to open	Open only one port. The Collector agent is NAT friendly, supports authenticated proxy traversal. You can thus easily deploy the Remote Collector in your DMZ, branch office locations, and even in the cloud, with very few or no firewall policy changes.
SolarWinds Platform products that support SolarWinds Platform Collector	NAM 2020.2.1 SAM 2020.2.1 HCO 2022.2 and later
Other requirements	Agents installed on the SolarWinds Platform server CANNOT be promoted to Remote Collectors. Only Agent-initiated mode is supported (Server-initiated mode is NOT supported). The Agent server must have .NET 4.8 or later installed. Hardware requirements for Agent servers depend on the number of elements polled by the SolarWinds Platform Collector. If the number of elements you plan to monitor is close to the upper polling limit (1,000 elements), follow the requirements for small deployments of the SolarWinds Platform. If the number of monitored elements is low, requirements for SolarWinds Platform Agent on Windows are enough.

What is supported?

SolarWinds Platform Collector (Collector) does not provide full support for all metrics polled by Additional polling engines. For more details, see SolarWinds Platform Collector support.

Product supporting Collector	Supported features
NAM 2020.2.1 (IPAM, NCM, NPM, NTA, UDT, VNQM)	Common SolarWinds Platform metrics Node CPU Node Memory Node Status Node Response Volumes NPM Device Studio Device View Duplex Mismatch FiberChannel Hardware Health Interfaces Multicast NEC Nexus Routing & VFR Switch Stack Topology UnDP VLANs Wireless Wireless Heatmaps
SAM (node-based licenses only)	AppInsight for Active Directory AppInsight for IIS AppInsight for SQL AppInsight for Exchange Most application monitor templates Asset inventory Hardware Health

Collector Scalability limits

• Maximum of 100 Collectors per polling engine

• Maximum 1000 elements per Collector

• Maximum 48,000 elements supported per polling engine by all SolarWinds Platform Collectors.

  

Upgrade/migration details

• Upgrades occur over the same single port the SolarWinds Platform Collector uses to Communicate to the SolarWinds Platform server
• Plugins are deployed automatically to SolarWinds Platform Collector as new SolarWinds Platform products are installed
• When you upgrade the main SolarWinds Platform server, Collectors are upgraded automatically
• You can move nodes between SolarWinds Platform Collector and/or APEs

How to deploy?

1. Deploy a SolarWinds Platform Agent using the agent-initiated communication, for example using the Add node wizard or manually.

   • Agents deployed on Additional polling engines or the Main SolarWinds Platform server cannot be used as SolarWinds Platform Collectors.
   • Converting an Agent installed on the main polling engine or on a Additional polling engine is not supported.
   • Collectors cannot poll nodes polled via an Agent.
   • Collectors require that the Agent uses agent-initiated communication.

2. Promote the node to a Remote Collector:

   1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings > Manage Agents.

   2. Select the node hosting the future Collector and click More Actions > Promote Agent to Remote Collector.

      Promoting an agent to an Collector deploys new agent plugins on the node that enable the agent to poll other devices.

      

      To see a list of Collectors deployed on your polling engine, click Settings > All Settings > Manage Remote Collectors, or click the Remote Collectors tab on the Manage Agents page.

3. Specify nodes you want to poll with the SolarWinds Platform Collector:

   • When discovering nodes on your network with the Network Sonar Wizard, select the SolarWinds Platform Collector in The Scan the network using the drop-down.

     
     

   • When adding nodes for monitoring with the Add Node wizard, select the polling method and select the Remote Collector in the Polling Engine drop down.

     
     

   • To use the Collector for polling nodes that are already monitored with SolarWinds Platform, go to the node details page, click Edit Node and specify the Collector in the Polling Engine drop-down.

Uninstall/Demote Collectors to Agents

You cannot change SolarWinds Platform Collectors back to a SolarWinds Platform Agent. To make Collector from another Agent, uninstall the SolarWinds Platform Collector/Agent from the original server and deploy an Agent to the new target server.

1. Navigate to the Manage Nodes page and Remove or reassign all nodes assigned to the Collector.

2. Navigate to Settings > Polling Engines page and remove the Collector polling engine.

   The Delete unused polling engine button appears only when there are no nodes assigned to the Collector.

3. Navigate to the Manage Agents page and delete the Collector agent.

   Now you can promote another agent to SolarWinds Platform Collector.

Stack licenses

If your polling engines have enough resources available, you can stack the licenses for some SolarWinds Platform products, such as NPM. Stacking licenses enhances the polling capacity of your main polling engine or APE. A stack requires only one IP address, regardless of the number of APEs.

If the resources on your polling engine are already constrained and you cannot allocate additional resources, consider installing an APE.

How to deploy?

1. Check that all deployed products support this option.

   In some deployment types (for example, SAM with node-based licensing), APE licenses are stacked automatically.

2. Make sure that your environment meets the requirements for Additional polling engine in Multi-module system guidelines.

3. Assign multiple licenses to a polling engine with the web-based License Manager. The maximum number of licenses you can apply to a single server depends on the SolarWinds Platform product.

   1. In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings > License Manager.

   2. Click Add/Upgrade License, enter the activation key and registration details, and click Activate.

      The activated license with activation details displays in the License Manager.

   3. In the License Manager, select the license, and click Assign.

   4. Select a polling engine, and click Assign.

      The license is stacked on the selected polling engine, and its polling capacity is extended.

Scalability Engine Guidelines by Product

The following sections provide guidance for using scalability engines to expand the capacity of your SolarWinds installation.

In your SolarWinds Platform deployment, you can use WMI to poll a maximum of 2,100 nodes per polling engine.

SolarWinds Platform products

Other SolarWinds products

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) IP Address Manager (IPAM) Log Analyzer (LA) NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) Network Automation Manager (NAM) Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Network Performance Monitor (NPM) SolarWinds Platform features SolarWinds Platform Agents Quality of Experience (QoE) Patch Manager (SPM) Server & Application Monitor (SAM) Server Configuration Monitor (SCM) Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) User Device Tracker (UDT) Virtualization Manager (VMAN) VoIP & Network Quality Manager (VNQM) Web Performance Monitor (WPM)

Dameware in Centralized Mode Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) Engineer's Toolset on the Web Security Event Manager (SEM) Serv-U FTP Server and MFT Server Web Help Desk

 

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted

SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Scalability Engine Guidelines
Main polling engine limits	48,000 elements at standard polling frequencies: Node and interface up/down: 2 minutes/poll Node statistics: 10 minutes/poll Interface statistics: 9 minutes/poll 25 - 50 concurrent SolarWinds Platform Web Console users To monitor more than ~1,000,000 elements, consider using SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console. When you are not using or evaluating the Log Viewer, the following limits apply: SNMP Traps: ~500 messages per second (~1.8 million messages/hr) Syslog: 700 - 1,000 messages/second (2.5 - 3.6 million messages/hr) When using the Log Viewer, the limit is 1,000 events per second (syslogs and SNMP traps combined).
Scalability options	Additional polling engines (APEs) are only available for the Enterprise Scale Edition. A polling engine can poll up to 72,000 elements.
SolarWinds Platform Collector	Yes
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary SolarWinds Platform server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds Platform database.
Other considerations	How much bandwidth does SolarWinds require for monitoring? See SolarWinds Platform server Hardware Requirements in the SolarWinds Platform documentation.

Dameware in Centralized Mode

Dameware Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	150 concurrent Internet Sessions per Internet Proxy 5,000 Centralized users per Centralized Server 10,000 Hosts in Centralized Global Host list 5 MRC sessions per Console

Database Performance Analyzer (DPA)

DPA Scalability Engine Guidelines

Scalability options

Less than 20 database instances monitored on a system with 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM 21 - 50 database instances monitored on a system with 2 CPU and 2 GB RAM 51 - 100 database instances monitored on a system with 4 CPU and 4 GB RAM 101 - 250 database instances monitored on a system with 4 CPU and 8 GB RAM More than 250 database instances monitored through Central Server mode See Link together separate DPA servers in the DPA Administrator Guide

Engineer's Toolset on the Web

Engineer's Toolset on the Web Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	45 active tools per Engineer's Toolset on the Web instance 3 tools per user session 1 active tool per mobile session 10 nodes monitored at the same time per tool 48 interfaces monitored at the same time per tool 12 metrics rendered at same time per tool

Enterprise Operations Console (EOC)

EOC Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	Starting with EOC 2.2, EOC is successfully tested with 100 SolarWinds Sites with a total of 1 million elements (nodes, interfaces, volumes, and so on). Starting with EOC 2020.2.6, EOC supports up to 2 million elements.
WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations	Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the EOC server and any remote SolarWinds Platform servers or APEs.
Connectivity	For redundancy, multiple EOC servers can be connected to the same SolarWinds Site.
Latency	SolarWinds recommends that latency between the EOC server and connected SolarWinds Sites be less than 100 ms (both ways). EOC can function at higher latencies, but performance might be affected.  EOC was tested with up to 500 ms of latency and remained functional, but performance (specifically with reports) was affected.

IP Address Manager (IPAM)

IPAM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	3 million IPs per SolarWinds IPAM main polling engine Additional 1 million IPs per APE
Remote Office Poller	Yes

Log Analyzer (LA)

LA Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability limits	One LA instance can handle up to: 1000 events per second 3.6 million events per hour Up to 90 million events per day

NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

NTA Scalability Engine Guidelines
Remote Office Poller	Yes
Main polling engine limits	50k FPS per polling engine For more information, see Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
Scalability options	Up to 300k FPS 50k FPS per polling engine For more information, see Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	1.5% - 3% of total traffic seen by exporter
Other considerations	See Flow environment best practices in the NTA Getting Started Guide.

Network Automation Manager (NAM)

NAM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Main polling engine limits	48,000 elements at standard polling frequencies: Node and interface up/down: 2 minutes/poll Node statistics: 10 minutes/poll Interface statistics: 9 minutes/poll 25 - 50 concurrent SolarWinds Platform Web Console users To monitor more than ~1,000,000 elements, consider using SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console. When you are not using or evaluating the Log Viewer, the following limits apply: SNMP Traps: ~500 messages per second (~1.8 million messages/hr) Syslog: 700 - 1,000 messages/second (2.5 - 3.6 million messages/hr) When using the Log Viewer, the limit is 1,000 events per second (syslogs and SNMP traps combined).
Scalability options	Additional polling engines (APEs) are stacked automatically. You can poll up to 48,000 elements per server. NAM is licensed by nodes only. It follows the same model as SAM or SCM. For example, NAM 4000 license covers 4,000 nodes. Interfaces and volumes do not consume a node license and therefore are not bound by the 4,000 node limit. Starting with Orion Platform 2020.2, a maximum of 100 APEs per instance with up to 1,000,000 elements monitored per instance. When you add one of the following modules to your NAM environment, you can either use NAM polling engines for these modules or deploy Additional polling engines for these modules: SAM (node license) SCM (node license) SRM VMAN
Stackable Polling Engines	Polling engines are stacked automatically if you are using the unified NAM license key (NAM 2019.4 and later). You can monitor up to 48,000 elements per server at standard polling frequencies. When you exceed 48,000 elements polled by a polling engine, polling intervals will be automatically extended. If you are using a license key for each product in the bundle (NAM earlier than 2019.4), scalability limits for individual products apply.
SolarWinds Platform Collector	Yes
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary SolarWinds Platform server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds Platform database.
Other considerations	How much bandwidth does SolarWinds require for monitoring? See SolarWinds Platform server Hardware Requirements in the SolarWinds Platform documentation.

Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

NCM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Remote Office Poller	Yes
Main polling engine limits	~10K devices
Scalability options	Each SolarWinds NCM instance can support up to 100 APEs.  A maximum of 100 APEs per instance is supported. Each APE can support ~10K devices. However, the number of devices in the entire environment (the primary engine + all APEs) cannot exceed ~30K.  Examples: The primary engine and two APEs could support 10K devices each, for a total of 30K devices. The primary engine and 20 APEs could support around 1,400 devices each, but the combined total cannot exceed the 30K maximum.  Integrated standalone mode

Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

NPM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Stackable Polling Engines	Up to four total polling engines may be installed on a single server, for example one Primary Polling Engine with one to three Additional polling engines, or four Additional polling engines on the same server. By stacking a polling engine 4 times, you can poll up to 48,000 elements per server. A stack requires only 1 IP address, regardless of the number of APEs.
Remote Office Poller	ROP250 supports 250 elements ROP1000 supports 1000 elements
Main polling engine limits	~12k elements at standard polling frequencies: Node and interface up/down: 2 minutes/poll Node statistics: 10 minutes/poll Interface statistics: 9 minutes/poll 25 - 50 concurrent SolarWinds Platform Web Console users To monitor more than ~1,000,000 elements, consider using SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console. When you are not using or evaluating the Log Viewer, the following limits apply: SNMP Traps: ~500 messages per second (~1.8 million messages/hr) Syslog: 700 - 1,000 messages/second (2.5 - 3.6 million messages/hr) When using the Log Viewer, the limit is 1,000 events per second (syslogs and SNMP traps combined).
Scalability options	One polling engine for every ~12,000 elements. See How is SolarWinds NPM licensed? Starting with Orion Platform 2020.2, a maximum of 100 APEs per instance with up to 1,000,000 elements monitored per instance.
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary SolarWinds NPM server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds Platform database.
NetPathTM scalability	The scalability of NetPath™ depends on the complexity of the paths you are monitoring, and the interval at which you are monitoring them. In most network environments: You can add up to 100 paths per polling engine. You can add up to 1,000 paths per SolarWinds Platform instance. You can add 10 - 20 paths per probe. See NetPath requirements for more information.
Other considerations	How much bandwidth does SolarWinds require for monitoring? See SolarWinds Platform server Hardware Requirements in the SolarWinds Platform documentation.

SolarWinds Platform Agents

SolarWinds Platform Agents Scalability Engine Guidelines

Scalability options

The achievable SolarWinds Platform Agent scalability varies with actual usage and configuration. Up to 1000 Agents with minimal load have been tested. However, SolarWinds recommends not exceeding 500 agents per polling engine. Using Agent features, such as ADM, SCM, or NetPath, might change scalability limits. For details, see scalability details for individual features. Combining Agents with SolarWinds Platform Collectors reduces the total number of SolarWinds Platform Agents supported per polling engine. For each Collector you use, the Agent scalability is reduced by ten SolarWinds Platform Agents (1 Collector = 10 SolarWinds Platform Agents).

Patch Manager

Patch Manager Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	1,000 nodes per automation server 1,000 nodes per SQL Server Express instance (SQL Server does not have this limitation) SQL Express is limited to 10 GB storage. For large deployments, SolarWinds recommends using remote SQL.

Quality of Experience (QoE)

QoE Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	Maximum throughput (NPAS and SPAS): 1 Gbps Maximum number of nodes per sensor (NPAS): 50 nodes Maximum number of node and application pairs (NPAS and SPAS): 50,000 pairs Maximum number of sensors deployed on your network: 1,000 sensors Maximum number of applications per node or sensor (NPAS and SPAS): 1,000 applications per node

Security Event Manager (SEM)

SEM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	Up to 216 million events per day (2,500 events per second) 5,000 rule hits per day

Server & Application Monitor (SAM)

SAM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Stackable polling engines	If using the unified SAM license key (SAM 2020.2 and later) with node-based licensing, polling engines are stacked automatically. You can monitor up to 40,000 component monitors per server at standard polling frequencies. When you exceed that limit, polling intervals are automatically extended. With component-based licensing, 2 polling engines can be installed on a single server. Stacking is supported. For details, see the SAM licensing model.
Remote Office Poller	Yes
Main polling engine limits	With node-based licensing, ~10K component monitors at standard polling frequencies. This allows space for other main polling engine tasks, such as alerting and reporting. With component-based licensing, ~8-10K component monitors. 25 — 50 concurrent SolarWinds Platform Web Console users
Scalability options	For SAM 2020.2 and later, with node-based licensing: 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. APE licenses are stacked automatically; scalability is built-in with node-based licensing. Up to 550K component monitors. For SAM 2020.2 and later, with component-based licensing: 1 polling engine for every 10K monitors and up to 100 APEs. Stacking is supported. Up to 550K component monitors. For SAM 2019.4.x and earlier: 1 polling engine for every ~8-10K component monitors with a maximum of 150K component monitors per primary SAM installation (1 Main Polling Engine and 14 APEs). For tips on maximizing your polling capacity, see SAM polling recommendations. To extend beyond these component monitor capacities and surface additional monitored data in a single pane of glass, consider purchasing the SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console.
SolarWinds Platform Collector	Supported in SAM 2020.2.1 or later, with node-based licensing only.
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the SolarWinds Platform server and any APEs connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds Platform database server. Bandwidth requirements depend on the size of the relevant component monitor. Based on 67.5 KB / WMI poll and a 5-minute polling frequency, the estimate is 1.2 Mbps for 700 component monitors.

Server Configuration Monitor (SCM)

SCM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	A SolarWinds Platform instance with SCM installed can process up to 280 changes/second combined.

Serv-U FTP Server and MFT Server

Serv-U FTP Server and MFT Server Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	500 simultaneous FTP and HTTP transfers per Serv-U instance 50 simultaneous SFTP and HTTPS transfers per Serv-U instance For more information, see the Serv-U Distributed Architecture Guide.

Storage Resource Monitor (SRM)

SRM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Stackable Polling Engines	No, one APE instance can be deployed on a single host
Remote Office Poller	Yes Poller remotability is a feature enabling the local storage, of up to ~1 GB of polled data per poller in case the connection between the polling engine and the database is temporarily lost.
Main polling engine limits	Maximum of 40K LUNs per polling engine (primary or additional) 25 - 50 concurrent SolarWinds Platform Web Console users
Scalability options	Use APEs for horizontal scaling The upper limit that can be handled by a single SRM instance is 160K LUNs. For larger environments, please contact SolarWinds for further assistance.
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary SRM server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds database.

User Device Tracker (UDT)

UDT Scalability Engine Guidelines
Remote Office Poller	Yes
Main polling engine limits	100k ports
Scalability options	1 APE per 100k additional ports Maximum of 500k port per instance (1 Primary Polling Engine and 4 APEs)
WAN and/or bandwidth considerations	None
Other considerations	UDT version 3.1 supports the ability to schedule port discovery In UDT version 3.1 the Max Discovery Size is 2,500 nodes/150,000 ports

Virtualization Manager (VMAN)

VMAN Scalability Engine Guidelines
Scalability options	1 APE per 10000 monitored virtual machines For the VMware events feature, VMAN supports a flat amount of 1000 VMware events per second, regardless of deployment size and number of APEs. Important: VMware events utilize the Log Viewer and count toward Log Viewer/Log Analyzer's 1000 EPS limit.
Main polling engine system requirements	The main polling engine should be upgraded to meet greater polling demands as the virtual environment increases in size. See the VMAN Deployment Sizing Guide.
Deployment Sizing Guide	For VMAN-specific sizing and scaling guidelines, see the VMAN Deployment Sizing Guide.

VoIP & Network Quality Manager (VNQM)

VNQM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Remote Office Poller	Yes
Main polling engine limits	~5,000 IP SLA operations ~200k calls/day with 20k calls/hour spike capacity
Scalability options	1 APE per 5,000 IP SLA operations and 200,000 calls per day Maximum of 15,000 IP SLA operations and 200,000 calls per day per SolarWinds VNQM instance (SolarWinds VNQM + 2 VNQM APEs)
WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations	Between Call Manager and VNQM: 34 Kbps per call, based on estimates of ~256 bytes per CDR and CMR and based on 20k calls per hour

Web Help Desk (WHD)

WHD Scalability Engine Guidelines
Deployments with fewer than 20 techs	You can run Web Help Desk on a system with: A supported 32-bit operating system A 32-bit Java Virtual Machine (JVM) 4GB RAM (up to 3.7GB for the tech sessions, JVM support, operating system, and any additional services you need to run on the system) This configuration supports 10 - 20 tech sessions with no onboard memory issues. To adjust the maximum memory setting, edit the MAXIMUM_MEMORY option in the WebHelpDesk/conf/whd.conf file.
Deployments with more than 20 techs	If your deployment will support more than 20 tech sessions, SolarWinds recommends installing Web Help Desk on a system running: A supported 64-bit operating system A 64-bit JVM 3GB RAM for 20 tech sessions plus 1GB RAM for each additional 10 tech sessions To enable the 64-bit JVM, add the following argument to the JAVA_OPTS option in the /library/WebHelpDesk/conf/whd.conf file: JAVA_OPTS="-d64" To increase the max heap memory on a 64-bit JVM, edit the MAXIMUM_MEMORY option in the WebHelpDesk/conf/whd.conf file. For other operating systems, install your own 64-bit JVM and then update the JAVA_HOMEoption in the WebHelpDesk/conf/whd.conf file to point to your Java installation.

Web Performance Monitor (WPM)

WPM Scalability Engine Guidelines
Remote Office Poller	Not directly supported, but recordings may be made from multiple locations.
Main polling engine limits	12 monitored transactions per WPM Player. See the next row for details.
Scalability options	SolarWinds recommends one transaction location per 12 monitored transactions. You can use the Player Load Percentage widget to estimate the number of transactions assigned to a machine that hosts a WPM Player. Many factors are involved, including: The complexity of assigned transactions. The length of playback for each transaction. The length of intervals between each transaction playback. The processor speed and RAM available on the machine hosting the WPM Player. The amount of SEUM-User or domain accounts involved in playback. See How WPM works and Manage SEUM-User accounts. If you notice a high load percentage, consider increasing the time intervals between polls and/or adding more players to a given location to distribute loads more evenly. See Player Load Percentage in THWACK to learn more.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does each module have its own polling engine?

A standard, licensed APE may have all relevant modules installed on it, and it performs polling for all installed modules. An APE works the same way as your main polling engine on your main server. For example, if you have NPM and SAM with component-based licensing installed, install one APE and it performs polling for both NPM and SAM.

For products that do not require an extra license for an APEAPE, including LA, SAM (node-based licensing only), SCM, SRM, and VMAN, the APE only polls data for the product they're included with, along with SolarWinds Platform data. For example, a SAM APE returns SAM data and basic node metrics provided by the SolarWinds Platform such as status and volume, but not NPM-specific data such as interfaces.

Are polling limits cumulative or independent? For example, can a single polling engine poll 12k NPM elements AND 10k SAM monitors together?

Yes, a single polling engine can poll up to the limits of each module installed, if sufficient hardware resources are available.

Are there different size license available for the Additional polling engine?

No, the APE is available with an unlimited license.

Can you add an Additional polling engine to any size module license?

Yes, you can add an APE to any size license.

Adding an APE does not increase your license size. For example, if you are licensed for an NPM SL100, adding an APE does not increase the licensed limit of 100 nodes/interfaces/volumes, but the polling load is spread across two polling engines.

What happens if the connection from a polling engine to the SolarWinds Platform database server is lost?

If there is a connection outage to the SolarWinds Platform database server, polling engines cache the polled data on the APE servers.

The amount of data that can be cached depends on the disk space available on the polling engine server. The default storage space is 2 GB per polling queue.

When the connection to the database is restored, the SolarWinds Platform database server is updated with the locally cached data, the oldest data is processed first.

If the database connection is broken for a longer than an hour, the collector queue becomes full, the oldest data is discarded until a connection to the database is re-established.