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Multi-module system guidelines for the SolarWinds Platform

This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform products.

This topic provides recommendations for deploying multiple SolarWinds Platform products. These are guidelines only. You can choose to use more or less hardware, but your performance may vary depending on your deployment scenario.

If you have only one SolarWinds Platform module, see the system requirements for that module in the Success Center.

Use the SolarWinds Installer to run a System Check. You do not have to complete the installation to receive an install report. The installer runs a series of checks per product to verify that your server meets system requirements and recommendations. You will receive informational and warning messages that recommend actions and best practices to optimize performance.

Before you read on, answer the following questions:

  • What is the size of the environment you want to monitor with the SolarWinds Platform?
  • How many and which SolarWinds Platform products do you want do use to monitor your environment?
  • Where do you want to deploy the SolarWinds Platform, in the cloud or on premises?

Size of monitored environment and SolarWinds Platform products installed

Small

For the purposes of this article, "small environments" mean up to three modules from the following list:

  • IPAM IP1000 - IP4000
  • NCM DL50 - DL200
  • NPM SL100 - SL500 (including up to 10 remote agents for DPI)
  • SAM, based on license type
    • Up to SAM100 (node-based licensing)
    • AL150 or AL300 (component-based licensing)
  • UDT UT2500 - 5000
  • VMAN VMS8 - VMS64
    If you use VMAN Recommendations, increase the total memory on the server by 4 GB.
  • VNQM IPSLA 5 - IPSLA 25 (up to 5,000 operations)
  • WPM 5 - WPM 20

You can install Log Analyzer, NTA, or SCM as part of a small deployment, but it is not included in this configuration. Use the Medium Deployment guidelines for these SolarWinds Platform products.

Medium

For the purposes of this article, "medium environments" include the following modules:

  • NPM SL500 - SL2000,
  • NTA for NPM SL2000
    • 50,000 FPS received sustained on the main polling engine

and 2 - 4 additional modules:

  • IPAM IP16,000
  • Log Analyzer LA10 - LA250
  • NCM DL500 - DL1000
  • SAM, based on license type
    • SAM100 to SAM300 (node-based licensing)
    • AL700 or AL1100 (component-based licensing)
  • SCM SCM50 - SCM1000
  • UDT UT10,000 - 25,000
  • VMAN VMS112 - VMS320
    If you use VMAN Recommendations, increase the total memory on the server by 8 GB.
  • VNQM IPSLA 25 - IPSLA 50 (up to 10,000 operations)
  • WPM 50 - WPM 200

Large

For the purposes of this article, "large environments" include the following modules:

  • NPM SLX (with multiple polling engines)
  • NTA for NPM SLX
    • 50,000 FPS received sustained on the main polling engine
    • Up to 6 polling engines (5 in addition to the main polling engine) for 300,000 FPS received sustained
  • Any combination of these modules:
    • IPAM IPX
      • 750,000 IP
    • Log Analyzer LA250 - LA1000
    • NCM DLX
      • 1 Additional Polling Engine (APE) for every 10,000 devices, for NCM 7.1 and later
      • Maximum of 30,000 devices per NCM instance (that is, NCM server + 2 NCM APEs)
    • SAM, based on license type
      • SAM400 (node-based licensing)
      • AL1500 (component-based licensing)
    • SCM SCM5000
    • UDT UTX
      • 150,000 ports per polling engine
    • VMAN VMS480 and higher
      • Per VMAN Recommendations, increase the total memory on the server by 16 GB.
      • 1 APE for every 10,000 VMs. VMAN APEs do not require extra licenses.
    • VNQM IPX
      • ~5,000 IP SLA operations per polling engine

Xlarge

For the purposes of this article, "xlarge environments" monitor up to 1,000,000 elements. Monitoring these environments requires deploying Additional Polling Engines to scale your deployment.

For SAM, monitoring capacity is measured in terms of component monitors instead of elements.
For example, a SAM1000 deployment of SAM 2020.2 that uses WinRM for application monitor polling, represents an "xlarge" environment that supports:

  • 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. Stacking is not supported.
  • Up to 550K component monitors.

Disk Performance is measured using IOPS.

CPU recommendations use the PassMark score (© 2018 PassMark® Software, obtained at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html on April 9, 2018).

How do I find out the PassMark score of my server?

  1. Download the Pass Mark Performance Test (© 2018 PassMark® Software, obtained at https://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm on April 9, 2018).
  2. Run it on your server to find out a PassMark score of your server.

SolarWinds Platform deployed in the cloud

SolarWinds Platform products support the following cloud solutions:

Amazon Web Services

In Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes are not your dedicated hardware devices. For databases used by SolarWinds Platform products, SolarWinds recommends using dedicated instance EBS volumes for medium and large deployments. For large deployments, SolarWinds recommends EBS with provisioned IOPS for high performance for intensive database workloads.

Requirements

small

medium

large

xl

SolarWinds Platform server

m4.large Recommended: m4.xlarge

m4.xlarge

 m5d.2xlarge m5.2xlarge

Primary database server

Amazon RDS service

Deploying SQL in an Amazon VM

 

 

db.r5.large

 

 

db.r5.xlarge

 

 

db.r5.2xlarge

 

 

db.r5.8xlarge

m4.large r4.xlarge r5d.2xlarge r5d.4xlarge
NTA Flow Storage Database see medium r3.xlarge r5d.4xlarge r5d.4xlarge
Log Analyzer Database see medium r3.xlarge r5d.4xlarge r5d.4xlarge
Additional Polling engine server Only relevant for environments that monitor over 12,000 elements at default polling intervals. m5.xlarge m5.xlarge
Additional Web Servers

Less than 50 concurrent users: m4.xlarge

More than 50 concurrent users: m4.2xlarge or larger

Microsoft Azure

Requirements

small

medium

large

xl

SolarWinds Platform server

A4_v2 DS12_v2 DS4_v2 DS4_v2

Primary database server

 

 

 

 

Azure SQL

 

 

 

 

Azure Managed Instance

 

 

SolarWinds Platform database deployed in an Azure VM

 Azure SQL recommended:

Only products on Orion Platform 2019.2 and later.

The SolarWinds Platform server must be set to use the same time zone as Azure SQL (UTC by default).

Starting with Orion Platform 2019.4, SolarWinds Platform products do not support memory-optimized tables.

DTU Standard Tier S3 or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 2 or better

DTU Standard Tier S3 or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 2 or better

DTU Standard Tier S4 or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 2 or better

DTU Standard Tier S9 (up to 100k elements), S12 (up to 400k elements) or better

vCore General Purpose Tier 16 (up to 100k elements), 30 (up to 400k elements) or better

Azure Managed Instance:

4 vCores

Azure Managed Instance:

8 vCores

Azure Managed Instance:

16 vCores

Azure Managed Instance:

64 vCores

Database server:

A4_v2

Database server:

DS4_v2 Standard

Database server:

E8s_v3

Database server:

E32-8s_v3
NTA Flow Storage Database - DS12_v2 D15_v2 D15_v2
Log Analyzer Database - DS12_v2 D15_v2 D15_v2
Additional polling engine server Only relevant for environments that monitor over 12,000 elements at default polling intervals. D4s_v3 D4s_v3
Additional Web Server

Less than 50 concurrent users: DS12_v2

More than 50 concurrent users: DS4_v2 or larger

SolarWinds Platform deployed on premises

Require-ments

small

medium

large

xl

SolarWinds Platform server

Physical server or virtual machine (VM)

  • CPU: 4 cores + 1 core for each additional module
  • RAM: 8 GB + 2 GB for each additional module

    How do I calculate hardware requirements?

  • Storage: 150 GB, 15,000 RPM
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC
  • Windows Server 2019, 2016 or 2012 R2, Standard or Datacenter Edition

The SolarWinds Installer installs IIS and .NET 4.8 or later if they are not already on your server.
Primary database server

Standard or Enterprise Edition of the following SQL versions:

  • SQL Server 2019, including Linux installs
  • SQL Server 2017, including Linux installs
  • SQL Server 2016
  • SQL Server 2014
  • SQL Server 2012 (SP4 recommended)

SolarWinds recommends SQL Server 2016 SP1 or later.

Support for Microsoft SQL Server Service Packs and Cumulative Updates is assumed unless otherwise noted.

See details on RAID (physical servers)
  • Quad core processor or better
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 100 GB (or more)
  • Eight processor cores or more
  • 64 GB RAM
  • 250 GB (or more)
  • Eight processor cores or more
  • 128 GB RAM
  • 1 Gb LAN port

Minimum:

  • CPUs with a total combined PassMark score of 32,000 or higher
  • 256 GB RAM
  • Disk: Read/Write I/O Performance of 30,000 IOPs
  • MS SQL: Enterprise edition only

Recommended:

  • 4 CPU/ 60 cores
  • 512 GB
  • 190,000 IOPS or better
  • 1 Gbit dedicated NIC
NTA Flow Storage Database -

Physical server or virtual machine

  • Quad core processor or better
  • 16 GB RAM
    Note: Increase the NTA Flow Storage database RAM as the database size increases.
  • 100 GB - 1 TB of storage capacity on local NTFS disk
    Note: More or less space may be required, depending on your data retention policies and the number of stored flows. You need approximately 8 GB of additional storage for every 1,000 flows per second retained for 30 days. For example, if you want 50,000 flows per second stored for 30 days, you need a base of 100 GB plus an additional 400 GB of storage.
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC

Storing flow data in NTA

  • NTA 4.4 and later use a second database for storing flow data and require an instance of MS SQL Server 2016 SP1 or later. SolarWinds recommends that you host the SolarWinds Platform database and NTA Flow Storage on the same SQL Server. See NTA current version requirements for more details.
Log Analyzer Database -

Physical server or virtual machine

  • Quad core processor or better
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 100 GB - 1 TB of storage capacity on local NTFS disk
    Note: More or less space may be required, depending on the number of stored events. Log Analyzer supports 1,000 Events per Second across all polling engines.
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC
  • MS SQL Server 2016 with SP1 and later, Standard or Datacenter Edition

  • Supported collations:

    • English with collation setting SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
    • English with collation setting SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS
Additional polling engine server    

Virtual machine recommended

  • Quad core processor or better
  • 8 GB + 2 GB for each additional module
  • 150 GB, 15,000 RPM
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC
  • Windows Server 2019, 2016, or 2012 R2

The SolarWinds Installer installs .NET 4.8 if it is not already on your server.

  • Quad core processor or better
  • 32 GB RAM
  • Storage: 150 GB, 15,000 RPM
  • 1 x 1 Gb dedicated NIC
  • Windows Server 2019, 2016 or 2012 R2, Standard or Datacenter Edition

If you use multiple modules on an APE, add 1 CPU core and 2 GB RAM for each additional module. See How do I calculate my hardware.

RAID recommendations

RAID recommendations are only relevant if your primary database is deployed on a physical server. They are NOT relevant if your database is deployed on a virtual machine.

More or less space may be needed depending on your data retention policies, number of elements measured, and polling frequency.

RAID recommendations

small

medium

large

RAID 1+0 configuration (RAID 5 not supported)

RAID 1+0 configuration (RAID 5 not supported)

Hardware RAID Controller (software RAID not supported)
  • Hardware RAID Controller (software RAID not supported)
    • Disk Subsystem 1 Array 1: 2 x 146 GB 15,000 disks RAID 1 (mirroring) operating system
    • Disk Subsystem 2 Array 2: 2 x 146 GB 15,000 disks RAID 1 (Pagefile + extra storage)
    • Disk Subsystem 3 Array 3: with 6x 15,000 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 arrays to allow for maximum write performance. This is for your SQL MDF AND FILEGROUPS
    • Disk Subsystem 4 Array 4: with 4x 15,000 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 arrays to allow for maximum write performance. This is for your SQL LDF Transaction LOG file
    • Disk Subsystem 5 Array 5: with 4x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 array for your tempdb data file
    • Disk Subsystem 6 Array 6: with 4x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 0 array for your tempdb log file

    How do I calculate hardware requirements for my deployment?

    Your first SolarWinds Platform product must meet the minimum system requirements for that product. Typically, you need a single quad-core processor and 8 GB of RAM. For each additional module on the same system, add one CPU core and 2 GB of RAM.

    Modules CPU RAM
    1

    Required: 4 cores

    Recommended: 8 cores

    Required: 8 GB

    Recommended: 16 GB

    2

    Required: 5 cores

    Recommended: 10 cores

    Required: 10 GB

    Recommended: 18 GB

    3

    Required: 6 cores

    Recommended: 12 cores

    Required: 12 GB

    Recommended: 20 GB

    4

    Required: 7 cores

    Recommended: 14 cores

    Required: 14 GB

    Recommended: 22 GB

    5

    Required: 8 cores

    Recommended: 16 cores

    Required: 16 GB

    Recommended: 24 GB

    6

    Required: 9 cores

    Recommended: 18 cores

    Required: 18 GB

    Recommended: 26 GB

    7

    Required: 10 cores

    Recommended: 20 cores

    Required: 20 GB

    Recommended: 28 GB

    8

    Required: 11 cores

    Recommended: 22 cores

    Required: 22 GB

    Recommended: 30 GB

    9

    Required: 12 cores

    Recommended: 24 cores

    Required: 24 GB

    Recommended: 32 GB

    10

    Required: 13 cores

    Recommended: 26 cores

    Required: 26 GB

    Recommended: 34 GB