SolarWinds Platform requirements

Requirements depend on various variables, such as:

• SolarWinds Platform deployment in the cloud vs on premises.
• Size of the environment to be monitored. This topic provides requirements for small, medium, large and extra large deployments, based on the number of monitored elements, such as nodes, interfaces, or component monitors, based on your license. See Licensing model for SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted.

What requirements are you looking for?

• Requirements for supported cloud solutions:
  • Amazon Web Service
  • Microsoft Azure
• On-premises deployment requirements overview:
  • Server hardware details
  • Server software details
  • Database server details
  • Ports to open
• SolarWinds Platform Web Console browser requirements

Amazon Web Service

Requirements	Small (up to 500 elements)	Medium (501-2,000 elements)	Large (more than 2,000 elements)	XL (up to 1,000,000 elements)
SolarWinds Platform server	m4.xlarge	m4.2xlarge	m5.2xlarge	m5.4xlarge
SolarWinds Platform database using Amazon RDS for SQL Server	db.r5.xlarge	db.r5.2xlarge	db.r5.4xlarge	db.r5.16xlarge
SolarWinds Platform database deployed on an Amazon VM	r4.xlarge	r4.2xlarge	r5d.4xlarge	r5ad.24xlarge
Additional Polling Engines	Only relevant for environments that monitor over 12,000 elements.		m5.xlarge
Additional Web Servers	Less than 50 concurrent users: m4.xlarge More than 50 concurrent users: m4.2xlarge or larger

Microsoft Azure

To create a new database or a new database user in the Configuration Wizard, use an account with appropriate privileges.

Requirements	Small (up to 500 elements)	Medium (501-2,000 elements)	Large (more than 2,000 elements)	XL (up to 1,000,000 elements)
SolarWinds Platform server	D3_v2	D4_v2	DS4_v2	DS5_v2
SolarWinds Platform database using Azure SQL DB	All installed products must run on Orion Platform 2019.2 or later. Time zone setting of the SolarWinds Platform server must be in the same time zone as Azure SQL DB time zone (UTC).
	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 P15 vCore Hyper-Scale 40 vCPU
SolarWinds Platform database using Azure SQL Database managed instance	Gen5 4 vCores	Gen5 8 vCores	Gen5 16 vCores	Gen5 40 vCores
SolarWinds Platform database deployed in an Azure VM	A4_v2	DS4_v2 Standard	E8s_v3	E64as_v4 IOPS 30,000+
Additional Polling Engine	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

On premises

To deploy a single SolarWinds Platform product locally, on a server, review the following recommendations.

Requirements	Small (up to 500 elements)	Medium (501-2,000 elements)	Large (more than 2,000 elements)	XL (up to 1,000,000 elements)
	SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted
	Minimum / Recommended
SolarWinds Platform server hardware   More details	CPU: 4 Cores / 8 Cores RAM: 16 GB / 32 GB		CPU: 8 Cores / 12 Cores RAM: 32 GB / 64 GB
SolarWinds Platform server software More details	Windows Server 2025 Windows Server 2022 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2016 Desktop OS's only for evaluations; NOT recommended for production environments   FIPS-compliant OS's STIG- compliant OS's Device Guard-compliant OS's
SolarWinds Platform database server                     More details	Production environment requirements In production environments, the SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform database must use separate servers (physical or virtual machine). For details on SQL Express, see MS SQL Express limits. If you have your SQL Server deployed on a virtual machine, you must maintain SolarWinds Platform database on a separate physical drive. Recommended: For XL environments, use SQL Server Enterprise 2019 CU4 and later on Windows Server 2019 Supported: SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later More details
	Quad core processor or better 8 GB/16 GB RAM 20 GB/40 GB HD	Dual quad core processor or better 16 GB/64 GB RAM 50 GB/100 GB HD	Dual quad core processor or better 64 GB/128 GB RAM 100/400 GB HD	CPUs with a total combined PassMark score of 32,000 or higher 256 GB/512 GB RAM 2 TB HD Read/Write I/O: 30,000 IOPs / 190,000 IOPS or better recommended, SSD strongly recommended
Additional Polling Engines	CPU: 4 Cores / 8 Cores RAM: 16 GB / 32 GB		CPU: 8 Cores / 12 Cores RAM: 32 GB / 64 GB
	Windows Server 2025 Windows Server 2022 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2016
Additional Web Server	Relevant for environments where the number of concurrent users is close to 50.		8-core processor or better 16 GB RAM 60 GB HD Windows Server 2025 Windows Server 2022 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2016 Requirements depend on the number of concurrent users. The more users are logged in at the same time, the more RAM, HD space, and cores you need.
Ports to open   More details	Outbound: 22, 25, 465, 587, 1433, 1434, Inbound: 80, 162, 443, 514, 17778 Bi-directional: 53, 135, 161, 5671, 17777
Account privileges	SolarWinds recommends that SolarWinds Platform administrators have local administrator privileges on the SolarWinds Platform server to ensure full functionality of local SolarWinds tools. User accounts limited to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console do not require local administrator privileges. Users running the Configuration wizard must have DBO specified as the default database schema. All SolarWinds services run under the LocalSystem account in order to protect critical and sensitive information, such as primary SolarWinds Platform certificates, or database credentials, from being accessed by shared accounts with lower privileges.
Latency	The latency (RTT) between each SolarWinds Platform engine and the database server should be below 200 ms. Degradation may begin around 100 ms, depending on your utilization and the size of your deployment. In general, higher latency will impact larger deployments more than smaller deployments. Ping the SolarWinds Platform SQL Server to find the current latency and ensure a reliable static connection between the server and the regions.
Other	Localization constraints: German and Japanese only for SolarWinds Platform (self-hosted), NPM, NTA, LA, NCM, SAM, and VMAN Calendar constraints: Gregorian calendar only

More information on hardware recommendations for the SolarWinds Platform server

Use the recommended hardware configuration to avoid potential performance issues caused by a heavy load or custom configurations such as increased data retention or more frequent polling intervals.

RAID recommendations only apply to physical environments. If you have your SolarWinds Platform server installed on a virtual machine, these recommendations do not apply to your environment.

Processor speed

Use processors that work at 2.4 GHz or faster.

CPU

Do not enable Physical Address Extension (PAE).

HD

Two 146 GB 15K (RAID 1/Mirrored Settings) hard drives are recommended with a dedicated drive for the server operating system and SolarWinds installation.

Some common files may need to be installed on the same drive as your server operating system. You may want to move or expand the Windows temporary directories.

More information on software requirements for the SolarWinds Platform server

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

The following table lists software requirements and recommendations for a SolarWinds installation on both physical and virtual computers.

Software Requirements
Operating system	Windows Server 2025 Windows Server 2022 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2016 Desktop operating systems, such as Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit Pro or Enterprise, are supported for evaluation environments only. To make a smooth transition from your evaluation to production deployment, SolarWinds recommends that you avoid installing evaluations on desktop operating systems. Support differences between SolarWinds Platform Agents and SolarWinds Platform products You cannot install SolarWinds Platform products on domain controllers. Exception: You can install SolarWinds Platform Agents on domain controllers. You cannot install SolarWinds Platform products or any scalability engines on Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, or BlackBerry servers. Exception: You can install SolarWinds Platform Agents on the same server as a Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange or Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry server.
Operating system languages	English (UK or US) German Japanese Simplified Chinese
IP address version	IPv4 IPv6 Dual stack CIDR notation is not supported for IPv6 addresses.
Web server	If you are not using Windows Authentication, make sure the Anonymous Authentication is enabled for the SolarWinds NetPerfMon website. Anonymous Authentication is used with the default forms-based authentication. IIS is activated by the Configuration Wizard. You can install this software manually to reduce your installation time.
.NET Framework	.NET 4.8 Run the same version of .NET on your primary server and any Additional polling engines or Additional web servers in the environment. Make sure that the operating system of your SolarWinds Platform supports .NET 4.8. See .NET Framework system requirements (© 2019 Microsoft, available at https://dotnet.microsoft.com, obtained on October 3, 2019). If your SolarWinds product runs on an operating system that does not support .NET 4.8, consider upgrading your environment to be able to use new features. .NET 8 runtimes Microsoft ASP.NET Core Microsoft .NET Runtime The runtimes must be on the same version. Consider opting in to Microsoft Automatic Updates (allow all .NET updates in the registry) to keep runtimes on the same version. See .NET Automatic Updates… in Microsoft Documentation.

More details on requirements for the SolarWinds Platform database Server

During installation, SolarWinds Platform (self-hosted) creates the following three databases:

• SolarwindsOrion - Primary SolarWinds Platform (self-hosted) database.

• SolarwindsOrionLog - Database used for logging syslogs, traps, and other log data.

• SolarwindsFlowStorage - Database used for storing flow data.

The default names of the databases can be modified during installation.

SQL Server versions

Use Standard or Enterprise editions of the following SQL versions. Support for Microsoft SQL Server Service Packs and Cumulative Updates is assumed unless otherwise noted.

Supported versions

• SQL Server 2022 Cumulative Update 1 or later (including installations on Linux)
• SQL Server 2019 (including installations on Linux)
• SQL Server 2017 (including installations on Linux)
• SQL Server 2016 SP1, SP2, or SP3

Recommendations

• To achieve optimal performance, use SQL 2016 SP1 or later. Earlier SQL versions do not support the columnstore index and are thus not recommended for larger deployments.
• Use the Simple database recovery mode to ensure best performance.
• Use 64-bit version of SQL Server.
• You can set the database recovery model to Full Recovery if your SolarWinds Platform database is hosted on a SQL Cluster or if you use Always On Availability. However, you must back up your database regularly and ensure that volume you store your transaction log has free space that is at least equal to or greater than the size of your SolarWinds Platform database. Your transaction logs will continue to grow indefinitely until a database backup is performed and the transactions committed to the database. We recommend daily database backups when you use the Full Recovery model.

MS SQL Express Limits

MS SQL Express can be installed on the same server as the SolarWinds Platform server.

When using MS SQL Express, make sure you are aware of the following limits:

Feature	Limit
Maximum database size	10 GB
Maximum computing capacity used by a single instance - SQL Server Database Engine Maximum computing capacity used by a single instance - Analysis Services or Reporting Services	Limited to lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores
Maximum memory for buffer pool per instance of SQL Server Database Engine	1410 MB
Maximum memory for Columnstore segment cache per instance of SQL Server Database Engine	352 MB
Maximum memory-optimized data size per database in SQL Server Database Engine	352 MB
SolarWinds Platform groups	up to 100 groups
SolarWinds Platform concurrent users	up to 5 users logged in simultaneously
SolarWinds Platform performance	Complex groups, limitations, or alerts can affect performance of your deployment.

SQL Server Collation

• English with collation setting Latin1_General_CI_AS
• 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
• Simplified Chinese with collation setting Chinese_PRC_CI_AS

Server roles and permissions

Required server roles:

• dbcreator
• public
• securityadmin

Permissions:

• You need read permissions to the master database.
• You don't need dbcreator permissions if you are installing a SolarWinds Platform product with a pre-existing blank database.

Hard drive space

The following recommendations apply to physical environments only. If you have your SolarWinds Platform database installed on a virtual machine, these recommendations do not apply to your environment.

• Due to intense I/O requirements, a RAID 1+0 drive is strongly recommended for the SolarWinds database, data, and log files with a dedicated drive for the server operating system and tempdb files.
• Other RAID configurations can negatively affect your SQL Server's performance.
• Mirrored drives for the OS and RAID 1+0 for database data files are recommended.
• Solid state drives (SSD) are recommended for all components.

Some common files may need to be installed on the same drive as your server operating system. You may want to move or expand the Windows or SQL temporary directories. For more information, see Working with Temporary Directories.

Database hardware recommendations for large environments

For large environments with a physical SQL Server, SolarWinds recommends the following hard drive configuration.

These recommendations are not relevant for SQL Servers running in a virtual environment.

• A hardware RAID Controller with a battery backed-up write back cache
• Disk Subsystem 1 Array 1: 2x 146 GB 15K disks RAID 1 (mirroring) for the OS
• Disc Subsystem 2 Array 2: 2x 146 GB 15K disks RAID 1 (Pagefile + Extra Storage)
• Disk Subsystem 3 Array 3: with 6x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 array for your SQL MDF and FILEGROUPS.
• Disk Subsystem 4 Array 4: with 4x 15k 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 1+0 array 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

Authentication

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

Other software

SolarWinds recommends you install the SQL Server Management Studio component on your SolarWinds Platform database server.

The SolarWinds Installer installs the following required x86 components if they are not found on your SolarWinds Platform database server:

• SQL Server System Common Language Runtime (CLR) Types. SolarWinds Platform uses secure SQL CLR stored procedures for selected, non-business data operations to improve overall performance.
• Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
• Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects

You cannot share the SolarWinds Platform database with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, and Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry servers.

Server port requirements

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	Encryption
user-defined, default: 22	SSH	SolarWinds Job Engine v2 IIS	Outbound from the SolarWinds Platform server to the device	Port for accessing ASA devices through CLI	Device-based
25	TCP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2	Outbound	SMTP port for non-encrypted messages	n/a
53	UDP	SolarWinds Job Engine v2	Bi- directional	Resolving DNS queries	n/a
80	TCP	IIS	Inbound	HTTP default for the SolarWinds Platform Web Console website. If you specify any port other than 80, you must include that port in the URL used to access the SolarWinds Platform Web Console. For example, if you specify an IP address of 192.168.0.3 and port 8080, the URL used to access the web console is http://192.168.0.3:8080. The port might also be used for Cisco UCS monitoring.	Non
135	TCP	Microsoft EPMAP (DCE/Microsoft RPC Locator service)	Bi- directional	Required for devices polled via WMI. Used to initiate communication with the remotely managed host.
161	UDP	SolarWinds Job Engine v2 SolarWinds Cortex	Bi- directional	Send and receive SNMP information	SNMP v1 and v2 are unencrypted. SNMP v3 uses AES and 3DES encryption.
162	UDP	SolarWinds Trap Service SNMP Informs	Inbound	Receive trap messages	n/a
443	TCP	IIS	Inbound	Default port for https binding.	SSL
465	TCP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2	Outbound	SMTP port used to send TLS-enabled email alert actions	SSL
514	UDP	SolarWinds Syslog Service	Inbound	Receive syslog messages	n/a
587	TCP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2	Outbound	SMTP port used to send TLS-enabled email alert actions	TLS
dynamic, random, greater than 1024	TCP	SolarWinds Job Engine v2	Bi- directional	(DCE/Microsoft RPC Locator service) Microsoft EPMAP, only if you monitor nodes via WMI. This port is used by the SolarWinds Job Engine v2 service to communicate with Windows nodes. See WMI portocalypse on THWACK.
1433	TCP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 SolarWinds Administration Service SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Orion Module Engine	Outbound	Communication between the SolarWinds Platform server and the SQL Server.	n/a
1434	UDP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 SolarWinds Administration Service SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Orion Module Engine SQL Server Browse Service	Outbound	Communication with the SQL Server Browser Service to determine how to communicate with certain non-standard SQL Server installations. Required only if your SQL Server is configured to use dynamic ports.	n/a
5671	TCP	RabbitMQ	Bi- directional	For encrypted RabbitMQ messaging (AMQP/TLS) into the main polling engine from all SolarWinds Platform servers (additional polling engines, HA servers, or additional web servers). Sending messages to RabbitMQ.	TLS 1.2
17732	HTTPS/TCP	SolarWinds Certificate Management Service	Bi- directional	The port used for secure communication between the certificate management clients and certificate management service.	SSL/TLS
17774	HTTPS/TCP	SolarWinds REST Endpoint	Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server	Required for access to the SWIS API.	SSL
17777	TCP	SolarWinds Orion Module Engine SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Cortex	Bi- directional	Communication between services and SolarWinds Orion module traffic. Communication between the SolarWinds Platform Web Console and the polling engines. Communication between the main server and pool members.	RSA handshake, AES 256 communication using WCF TLS 1.2 with Cortex
17778	HTTPS	SolarWinds Agent	Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server	Required for agent communication.	SSL

See SolarWinds Port requirements for a comprehensive list of port requirements for SolarWinds products.

Optional, individual components, such as SolarWinds Platform Agents and High Availability, have additional port requirements.

SolarWinds Platform Web Console browser requirements

Performance of the computer where you open the browser significantly influences the speed of the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

SolarWinds Platform supports two most recent versions of the following web browsers available at the release date:

• Firefox
• Chrome 

SolarWinds Platform also supports the following browsers:

• Microsoft Edge

Browser requirements:

• JavaScript enabled
• Cookies enabled