Documentation forNetwork Configuration Manager
Managing network configurations is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Advanced edition. Network Configuration Manager (NCM) is also available in a standalone module.

NCM 2022.3 system requirements

Release date: September 28, 2022

SolarWinds strongly recommends that you install the SolarWinds Platform on a server that is neither public, nor internet-facing. To learn about best practices for configuring your SolarWinds Platform installation securely, see Secure Configuration for the SolarWinds Platform.

The Network Configuration Manager requirements vary based on:

  • The number of nodes
  • The frequency of configuration downloads
  • The length of time that configurations are maintained in the database

For additional information on requirements and configurations, see the Multi-module system guidelines. You should also review your product administration guides and release notes for the exact product requirements beyond these minimums.

Port requirements

The following ports might be needed for the SolarWinds Web Console, depending on how NCM is set up to download and upload configurations.

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
22 SSH/SCP

SCP server

Bidirectional

SSH/SCP default port for NCM to transfer configs

23 Telnet

NCM Business Layer Plugin, NCM Jobs (collector)

Outbound Telnet default port for NCM to transfer configs
25 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound SMTP email default that NCM uses for notification (If SSL/TLS encryption is set up on SMTP server, default port is 465)
69 UDP TFTP Server Inbound TFTP server listens on this port
80 TCP IIS Inbound HTTP default for the SolarWinds Web Console
137 UDP File and Printer Sharing (NB-Name-In) Bidirectional Used to store firmware updates and configuration files remotely
138 UDP File and Printer Sharing (NB-Datagram-In) Bidirectional Used to store firmware updates and configuration files remotely
139 TCP File and Printer Sharing (NB-Session-In) Bidirectional Used to store firmware updates and configuration files remotely
161 UDP SolarWinds Job Engine v2 Outbound SNMP statistics collection, the default for polling in NCM
162 UDP SolarWinds Trap Service Inbound Trap messages listened for and received by the Trap Server
443 TCP IIS Inbound Default port for HTTPS binding
445 TCP File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In) Bidirectional Used to store firmware updates and configuration files remotely
465 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound The port used for SSL-enabled email alert actions
514 UDP SolarWinds Syslog Service Inbound Used to listen for incoming syslog messages
587 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound The port used for TLS-enabled email alert actions
5671 TCP RabbitMQ Bidirectional For encrypted RabbitMQ messaging (AMQP/TLS) into the main polling engine from all SolarWinds Platform servers
17777 TCP

SolarWinds Platform Module Engine

SolarWinds Information Service

SolarWinds Information Service V3

Bidirectional SolarWinds Platform module traffic. Open the port to enable communication from your poller to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, and from the SolarWinds Platform Web Console to your poller. The port used for communication between the SolarWinds Platform Web Console and the poller.
17778 HTTPS SolarWinds Agent Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server Required for access to the SWIS API and agent communication
17779 HTTP SolarWinds Toolset Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server SolarWinds Toolset Integration over HTTP

Ports 4369, 5672, and 25672 are opened by default. These ports can be blocked by the firewall.

Server requirements

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

Type

Requirements

Operating System

  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2

For evaluation purposes only:

  • Windows 10
  • Windows 8.1 including Update 1, 64-bit only (except Standard edition)

Installing SolarWinds Platform products on Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials or Windows Server Core is not supported.

Operating System Language
  • English
  • German
  • Japanese

NCM Server Hardware

CPU Speed

3 GHz dual core dual processor

RAM

6 GB

Hard Drive Space

30 GB

Installing Windows Account

Requires administrator permission on the target server.

File System Access Permissions

Ensure the Network Service account has modify access to the system temp directory: %systemroot%\temp.

Microsoft SNMP Trap Service

Must be installed if you want real time change detection triggered through devices sending SNMP traps.

Microsoft IIS

Version 8.0 or later. DNS specifications require hostnames to be composed of alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), the minus sign (-), and periods (.). Underscore characters (_) are not allowed.

SolarWinds does not support installing NCM on the same server or using the same database server as a Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry server.

Microsoft ASP .NET 2.0 Ajax Extension

Version 1 or later

If this is not found on the target computer, the setup program downloads and installs the component.

Microsoft .NET Framework

.NET 4.8

If the required version is not found on the target computer, the installer downloads and installs it. Ensure that .NET is turned on in Windows Features.

Database requirements

The SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform database must use separate servers.

If you install on a virtual machine, you must maintain your SQL Server database on a separate, physical drive.

You can use Amazon RDS as your database server.

Type Requirements
Language

SolarWinds supports using NCM with database servers set up in the following languages, but only supports storing characters in the UTF-8 character set.

  • English
  • German
  • Japanese
SQL Server versions

Use Express, Standard, or Enterprise versions of the following. NCM supports the latest service pack unless otherwise noted.

  • SQL Server 2019
  • SQL Server 2017
  • SQL Server 2016 with SP1 or later
  • Azure SQL Database
    Click here
    for additional Azure SQL Database requirements.

SQL Server Express should be used only for small deployments or evaluations. If you plan to use SQL Server Express, see SQL Server Express considerations.

If you select the Lightweight Installation option, SQL Server Express 2017 is installed locally.

You can use the following database select statement to check your SQL Server version, service pack or release level, and edition:

select SERVERPROPERTY ('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')

SQL server collations

The following SQL server collations are supported:

  • 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
Authentication Either mixed-mode or Windows authentication. If you require SQL authentication, you must enable mixed mode on your SQL server.
Protocols

Your database server must support mixed-mode authentication or SQL authentication and have the following protocols enabled:

  • Shared memory
  • TCP/IP
  • Named Pipes
x86 components

The following x86 components must be installed:

  • SQL Server System Common Language Runtime (CLR) Types
  • Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
  • Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects

If the components are not found on the target computer, the setup program downloads and installs the components.

Supported Web Console browsers

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 with Active scripting

    In SolarWinds Platform 2024.2.1 products, some pages are not compatible with IE 11. Classic Dashboards continue to support IE 11.

    Do not enable Enterprise Mode on Internet Explorer. This setting forces Internet Explorer to emulate version 7, which is not supported.

  • Microsoft Edge
  • Mozilla Firefox (the two most recent versions available at the release date)
  • Google Chrome (the two most recent versions available at the release date)

Browser requirements:

  • JavaScript enabled
  • Cookies enabled

Additional information

  • The SolarWinds NCM Information Service requires that the Net.TCP Port Sharing service be enabled and port 17777 open for TCP traffic to the NCM server. By default, this service is disabled. The setup program sets the service to manual. Resetting the service setting to disabled is not recommended.

  • To take advantage of the numerous integration points in NCM, install the SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset on the same server. You can also take advantage of integration points built into the Web Console by installing the Toolset on computers used to access the Web Console.

SQL Server Express considerations

The following factors determine whether you can successfully deploy NCM on a SQL Server Express database:

  • SQL Server Express should be used only for deployments with the following license tiers:

    • NCM DL50
    • NCM DL 100
  • Does your deployment include other SolarWinds Platform products? The performance of a SQL Server Express database decreases with each additional SolarWinds Platform product you deploy.

  • A SQL Server Express database has a maximum size of 10 GB. The following factors determine how much space NCM requires:

    • The number of nodes managed by NCM
    • The size of the configs on the managed nodes
    • The number of configs per node

    By default, NCM stores the last 30 configs for each node in the database. You can reduce the amount of space required by each node by modifying settings in the following NCM jobs:

Scalability

NCM 2020.2 was tested for scalability in a standalone deployment of three servers: one server hosts the main server and the other two servers each host an additional polling engine. The main server manages up to 10,000 nodes, as does each additional polling engine. Therefore, the deployment supports up to 30,000 nodes total.

The standard SolarWinds Platform deployment has the SolarWinds Platform on the main server, polling for node status at the default rate. This deployment supports two NCM operations, inventory update and configuration download, performed per day on all 30,000 nodes.

Though the main server and each additional polling engine can manage up to 10,000 nodes, the actual total depends on the system hardware of the server hosts, the types of devices being monitored, and the number of jobs being run concurrently. Should you need to manage more devices, and you decide to add servers, consider consolidating your views of multiple servers with the SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console (EOC). For more information, see Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products.

Factors that affect scalability

The server requirements table above lists the minimum CPU and RAM requirements for the NCM server. CPU and RAM requirements depend on the number of nodes being managed in your NCM deployment.

If scalability issues arise, you can adjust the following:

  • Increase the server CPU speed and the amount of RAM
  • Decrease the number of simultaneous transfers
  • Decrease the frequency of uploads, downloads, and inventory jobs
  • Increase the node polling interval for up/down monitoring

Inventory jobs may run longer than expected in larger environments. To remedy this situation, break large inventory jobs into smaller jobs that do not include as many nodes, and space these jobs over a longer period of time. Adjusting server CPU and memory will enhance user interface performance and job execution speed.

If you are deploying multiple SolarWinds Platform modules, see the multi-module system guidelines.