Documentation forSolarWinds Platform Self-Hosted

Set up High Availability pools with multiple active and standby servers (HA multi-clustering)

This topic applies only to SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted.

HA multi-clustering gives you a more efficient way to balance resiliency and infrastructure cost. Unlike the traditional High Availability model that uses a 1:1 ratio of active to standby servers, multi-clustering allows you to combine multiple polling engines into a single pool with many active and standby servers. This helps you reduce your overall SolarWinds server footprint while still maintaining the level of redundancy that fits your environment. If you do not require full 1:1 failover coverage, multi-clustering gives you a more flexible approach, allowing you to choose an active-to-standby ratio based on your own risk assessment and comfort level.

SolarWinds recommends at least 70% of the servers in a pool are active.

Related Support Articles

Requirements

  • An activated SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted Enterprise Scale license

  • All polling engines must have the same version.

  • At least three engines available to be added to an HA Pool (two active and one standby)

Create a HA pool

Use the Pools tab in My Deployments to create a HA pool with multiple members.

  1. Go to Settings > My Deployment, or go to Main Settings & Administration and click My Deployment in the Details section.

  2. In the Pools tab, click Add.

  3. Enter a name for your pool.

    1. Before selecting pool members, Allow SolarWinds to manage the VIP/Virtual Hostname is selected by default, and the fields are enabled.

    2. When the HA pool has more than two members, the VIP and Virtual Hostname fields are disabled. Instead, you have the option to use an external load balancer if you plan to send inbound data to SolarWinds servers. For more information, see Recommendations for using a network load balancer for the SolarWinds Platform

  4. Click Add, and select three or more servers to add to your pool.

    • To move a server from an Active to Standby role, all entities on that engine must first be reassigned to another active engine.

  5. Once added, you can specify which server(s) will be assigned an active or standby role.

  6. Click Next, and review your selections.

  7. Click Finish to complete the pool setup.

As a result, a new HA pool is created.