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 2020.2.6 system requirements

Release date: July 15, 2021

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

What requirements are you looking for?

On-premise requirements for NTA

NetFlow Traffic Analyzer requires an appropriate SolarWinds NPM version hosted on the same server. To deploy NTA locally, on a server, review the Multi-module system guidelines.

You cannot install Orion Platform products on the same server as SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM).

NTA Flow Storage database requirements

NTA and Orion Platform use two SQL databases - the Orion database and the NTA SQL Flow Storage database. The Orion database stores SolarWinds Orion configuration data and all collected performance and syslog data. The NTA Flow Storage database is where SolarWinds NTA stores your flow data.

Type Recommendation
SQL server

SolarWinds recommends using a single SQL server instance for both the NTA Flow Storage database and the Orion database.

  • SQL Server 2016 SP1 or 2016 SP2
  • SQL Server 2017
  • SQL Server 2019

SolarWinds supports Express, Standard, or Enterprise versions of the SQL server.

Sizing

Hardware recommendations for the NTA SQL Flow Storage database

For an example configuration, see User scenario: Recommended SQL server disk configuration.

Orion database requirements

For a complete overview of requirements for deploying the Orion database in an environment with SolarWinds NTA, see the Multi-module system guidelines.

Port requirements

The following table lists ports that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer uses to communicate with other devices and servers.

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
80 TCP World Wide Web Publishing Service Bidirectional Port used for web console and any other web servers.
137 UDP NetBIOS Outbound

Port for outbound traffic if NetBIOS name resolution is turned on.

When NTA is trying to resolve the NetBIOS names of servers in their conversations, you may find a large amount of outbound UDP 137 traffic from the NTA collector to a number of external addresses. You can confirm the traffic by using the Flow Navigator to match the outbound connections to existing conversations.

This is normal behavior when NetBIOS is enabled. An easy way to demonstrate the behavior is to disable NetBIOS in NTA and watch all outbound connections terminate.

161

UDP

TCP

SolarWinds Job Engine v2 Outbound Port used for sending and receiving SNMP information, including polling CBQoS-enabled devices.
1433 TCP

SolarWinds NetFlow Service

SolarWinds NetFlow Storage Service

Outbound Port used for communication between the NetFlow Service and the existing SQL server.

1434

UDP

SolarWinds NetFlow Service

SolarWinds NetFlow Storage Service

SQL Browse Service

Outbound The port used for communication between the NetFlow Service and the Orion database. This port is required only if your SQL Server is configured to use dynamic ports.
2055 UDP SolarWinds NetFlow Service Inbound Port for receiving flows on any SolarWinds NTA collector.
5671 TCP RabbitMQ Bidirectional Rabbit MQ messaging.
17777 TCP SolarWinds Information Service Bidirectional

Port for sending and receiving traffic between SolarWinds NPM and other Orion Modules.

Port used for communication between remote Flow Storage Database and NTA Main Poller.

17778 HTTPS and TCP SolarWinds Information Service Bidirectional Open to access the SolarWinds Information Service API and agent communication.
17791 TCP SolarWinds Agent Bidirectional Open for agent communication on any SolarWinds Orion server running Windows Server 2016.
Device-specific       Any port required by a specific device.

For a complete list of the port requirements for the SolarWinds Orion server, see the Port Requirements document.

Cloud deployment

When deploying NTA in cloud, SolarWinds recommends using the native SQL service for the NTA SQL Flow Storage database. You can install the NTA SQL Flow Storage database onto the following:

Additional resources

You should also review the following resources for the exact product requirements beyond these minimums.