Documentation forNetFlow Traffic Analyzer
Analyzing network traffic and bandwidth is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Advanced edition. NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) is also available in a standalone module.

NTA Flow Storage database deployment options

The NTA Flow Storage database runs on a MS SQL server. You can either deploy the NTA Flow Storage database on one server with the SolarWinds Platform database, or deploy it on a dedicated server, depending on the size of your environment.

Use the native SQL management tools to monitor performance and resource utilization on your SQL server, and to tune your database server.

SolarWinds Platform database and the NTA Flow Storage database on one SQL server

SolarWinds recommends you install the NTA Flow Storage database and the SolarWinds Platform database on one SQL server. For a complete overview of requirements, see the NTA system requirements.

When evaluating SolarWinds NTA, MS SQL Server 2016 SP1 Express is installed by default. The Express edition of MS SQL server is supported in a production environment, but there are certain recommendations you should consider. For more information, see Impact of using SQL Express server for flow data storage.

Review the following requirements for installing the SolarWinds Platform database and NTA Flow Storage database on one SQL server:

  • You must have a Standard or Enterprise edition of MS SQL Server 2016 SP1 or later for the NTA Flow Storage database.
  • During configuration, you need to provide credentials to a compliant version of the SQL server used for the Flow Storage database.

When to install the NTA Flow Storage database on a separate server

You can install the NTA Flow Storage database and the SolarWinds Platform database on separate SQL servers. This option considers building a separate SQL server for the NTA Flow Storage database.

SolarWinds NTA requires MS SQL Server 2016 SP 1 or later to run the NTA Flow Storage database.

The list below provides key resources to monitor and situations when you should consider a dedicated server for the NTA Flow Storage database:

  • You are experiencing performance issues on the SQL server with co-located SolarWinds Platform database and NTA Flow Storage database.
  • The NTA pages take a long time to load.
  • Flow processing is slow. You see dropped packets in the logs, charts are empty or they have gaps, or you see less data than expected.
  • Log files contain long running queries or SQL client timeout errors.
  • The SQL server is heavily utilized.
  • The performance of other SolarWinds Platform modules is affected.