Documentation forSolarWinds Platform

Encrypt database connections with SSL

This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform products.

When you configure the database settings in the Configuration wizard, you can choose to encrypt the network traffic between the SolarWinds Platform server and the SQL Server using the SSL certificate on the SQL Server.

  • If you have scalability engines deployed, encrypt the connection to SQL Server with SSL both on the main polling engine and any deployed scalability engines, such as additional polling engines, web servers, or High Availability backup servers.

  • If you are running NTA 4.4 and later, you can also encrypt the network traffic between the SolarWinds Platform server and the NTA Flow Storage database. When configuring the NTA Flow Storage in the Configuration wizard, select Encrypt connections with SSL.

  • This option does not apply to legacy desktop applications, such as Orion Report Writer. To encrypt database connections to and from those applications, the SQL Server must require encryption.

Enable encrypting connections with SSL

  1. Launch the Configuration wizard on the server hosting your main polling engine, go to the Database Settings step.

  2. Select Encrypt connections with SSL and complete the wizard.

    This option in the Configuration wizard requires a provisioned SSL certificate on the SQL Server. You do not need to force the SQL Server to require encryption.

    See Enable encrypted connections to the Database Engine (© 2021 Microsoft, available at https://docs.microsoft.com, obtained on August 18, 2021.)

    The SSL certificate is trusted automatically.

  3. If you have scalability engines deployed, repeat the steps on the servers hosting the scalability engines, such as additional polling engines, additional web servers, High Availability backup servers, or free poller servers you have deployed. See Scalability Engine Guidelines.