SAM 2023.3 System Requirements

Release date: July 25, 2023

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

Important: These recommended system requirements are for SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) 2023.3 as a single product installed on SolarWinds Platform 2023.3.

This document includes the following sections:

• SolarWinds Platform server software requirements
• SolarWinds Platform server hardware requirements
• SolarWinds Platform database server requirements
• Cloud deployment on Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure
• Port requirements
• Additional SAM technology requirements

System requirements may vary, depending on:

• If you deploy SAM in the cloud or on-premises.
• The size of your SAM environment.
• If your environment includes other SolarWinds Platform modules.

To determine requirements beyond those included here, review the SAM 2023.3 Release Notes.

If you deploy additional SolarWinds Platform modules, review related release notes and system requirements in the SolarWinds Success Center. See also Multi-module system guidelines for the SolarWinds Platform. For supported deployment scenarios, see the SolarWinds Platform and Orion Platform Products Installation and Upgrade Guide.

SolarWinds Platform server software requirements

To deploy SAM locally, on a server, review the following recommendations for the main SolarWinds Platform server. Alternatively, see Cloud deployment options.

Software Requirements
Operating system	Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2* Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Microsoft Windows Server 2022 *Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 is included in SAM 2020.2.6 so SAM 6.7 customers can upgrade to the latest version of SAM. For the best experience, SolarWinds recommends using Windows Server 2016 or 2019 for the SolarWinds Platform server. Desktop OS, such as Windows 10, 64-bit Pro or Enterprise, are supported for evaluation environments only. For a smooth transition from an evaluation to a production deployment, SolarWinds recommends that you avoid installing evaluations on systems with a desktop OS. 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 SharePoint, Exchange or 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're not using Windows Authentication, make sure Anonymous Authentication is enabled for the SolarWinds NetPerfMon website. Anonymous Authentication is used with the default forms-based authentication. The SolarWinds Platform Installer adds IIS by default, but you can install it manually to reduce installation time.
Microsoft .NET Framework	.NET 4.8 Run the same version of .NET on your primary server and any Additional Polling Engines (APEs) or Additional Web Servers in the environment. SolarWinds recommends installing .NET on your primary SolarWinds Platform server and all scalability engines before installing SAM. See this article for details.
Services	Starting in SolarWinds Platform 2020.2, the Log Viewer (LV) replaced the legacy Syslog and Trap Viewers. To continue using Syslogs and Traps, make sure the following services are running after installation is complete: SolarWinds Syslog Service SolarWinds Trap Service
Web Console browser	The SolarWinds Platform supports the two latest versions of the following web browsers available on the release date: Firefox Chrome The following browser is also supported: Microsoft Edge Browser requirements: JavaScript enabled Cookies enabled
Account privileges	SolarWinds recommends that SolarWinds Platform administrators have local administrator privileges on the SolarWinds Platform server to ensure full functionality of local SolarWinds Platform tools. SolarWinds Platform user accounts limited to the Web Console do not require local administrator privileges.
Other	PowerShell 5.1 is required on Windows Server 2012 R2 to use the offline installer. SolarWinds recommends using PowerShell 5.1 on target servers. Earlier versions of SAM used FullLanguage mode on target Exchange servers. Starting in SAM 2020.2.6, SolarWinds recommends using RestrictedLanguage as the minimum PSLanguageMode setting in PowerShell on target servers. For a script to configure existing servers, see this Success Center article.

SolarWinds Platform server hardware requirements

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The following table lists minimum and recommended hardware requirements for your SolarWinds Platform server that hosts the SolarWinds Platform and its modules. Installing multiple modules may change the requirements. Use the minimum requirements if you're evaluating the product or do not anticipate heavy usage.

Hardware requirements are listed by deployment size, based on SAM node-based license levels. Click here to compare component-based vs. node-based license levels. CPU recommendations for SAM1000 and larger deployments use the PassMark Score. For details, see CPU Benchmarks (© 2021 PassMark® Software, obtained at www.cpubenchmark.net on June 2, 2021).

Feature	SAM100*	SAM300	SAM400	SAM1000 and larger
CPU	Quad core processor or better	Quad core processor or better	Quad core processor or better	CPUs with a total combined PassMark score of 7,000 or higher
	Do not enable Physical Address Extension (PAE).
Hard drive space	10 GB minimum 20 GB recommended	15 GB minimum 40 GB recommended	30 GB minimum 40 GB recommended	40 GB minimum 60 GB recommended Read/Write I/O: 1,000 IOPS
	SolarWinds recommends two 146 GB 15K (RAID 1/Mirrored Settings) hard drives with a dedicated drive for the server OS and SolarWinds Platform installation. Some common files may need to be installed on the same drive as the server OS. You may want to move or expand Windows temp directories.
Memory	6 GB minimum 8 GB recommended	8 GB minimum 16 GB recommended	16 GB minimum 32 GB recommended	32 GB recommended

*Recommendations use SAM node-based license levels. If using component-based licensing, click here to compare levels.

SolarWinds Platform database server (SQL Server) requirements

The following table lists recommended requirements for a local, on premise SolarWinds Platform database server. Click here to learn about cloud deployment. See the SolarWinds Platform Products Installation and Upgrade Guide for additional details.

Requirement	SAM100	SAM300	SAM400	SAM1000 and larger
Microsoft SQL Server	Express, Standard, or Enterprise versions of: SQL Server 2016, including SP1 and SP2 SQL Server 2017 SQL Server 2019 SQL Server 2022 Recommendations: Use SQL Server Express only for evaluations and small environments, such as SAM10. Note that Hardware health and AppInsight for Active Directory are database-intensive features that can impact database capacity and performance. To achieve optimal performance, use SQL Server 2016 SP1 or later. Earlier versions do not support the columnstore index and are thus not recommended for larger deployments. Use the 64-bit version of SQL Server. Use the Simple database recovery model for best performance. Set the database recovery model to Full Recovery if the SolarWinds Platform database is hosted on a SQL cluster or uses Always On Availability. Back up your database regularly and ensure that the volume where you store transactions logs has free space equal to or greater than the size of the SolarWinds Platform database. Transaction logs grow indefinitely until a database backup occurs and transactions are committed to the database. SolarWinds recommends daily database backups if using Full Recovery model. See also Optimize the database used by SolarWinds Platform products.			Enterprise versions of: SQL Server 2016 SQL Server 2016 SP1 SQL Server 2016 SP2 SQL Server 2017 SQL Server 2019
SQL Server collation	English with collation setting SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_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 The SolarWinds Platform supports a case-insensitive (CI) database on a CS SQL Server. The SolarWinds Platform does not support case-sensitive databases.
CPU	Quad core processor or better	Dual quad core processor or better	Dual quad core processor or better	CPUs with a total combined PassMark score of 32,000 or higher
Hard drive space	20 GB minimum 40 GB recommended	50 GB minimum 100 GB recommended	100 GB minimum 400 GB recommended*	2 TB recommended Read/Write I/O: 30,000 IOPs minimum 190,000 IOPS or better recommended
	Due to intense I/O requirements, a RAID 1+0 drive is strongly recommended for the SolarWinds Platform database, data, and log files with a dedicated drive for server OS and tempdb files. Mirrored drives for the OS and RAID 1+0 for database data files are recommended. Solid-State Drives (SSD) are strongly recommended. Common files may need to be installed on the same drive as your server OS, so you may want to move or redefine Windows or SQL Server temporary directories. See Working with Temporary Directories.
Memory	16 GB minimum 32 GB recommended	16 GB minimum 64 GB recommended	64 GB minimum 128 GB recommended	256 GB minimum 512 GB recommended
Authentication	Use either mixed-mode or Windows authentication. If you require SQL authentication, enable mixed mode on your SQL server.
Other software	SolarWinds recommends installing Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio on your SolarWinds Platform database server. The SolarWinds Platform Installer adds the following x86 components if they're not already installed: SQL Server System Common Language Runtime (CLR) Types. SolarWinds Platform products use secure SQL CLR stored procedures for selected, non-business data operations to improve performance. Microsoft SQL Server Native Client Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects For remote execution of PowerShell scripts, install PowerShell 5.1 on the SolarWinds Platform server, Additional Polling Engines, and target servers. You cannot host the SolarWinds Platform database on SharePoint, Exchange, or BlackBerry servers.

*SolarWinds recommends the following hard drive configuration for large deployments in physical environments:

• 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.

Cloud deployment

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As described in the SolarWinds Platform and Orion Platform Products Installation and Upgrade Guide, SolarWinds Platform products support deployment scenarios for several cloud solutions, including:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS), as described next
• Microsoft Azure

AWS

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To deploy a single SolarWinds Platform product using AWS, consider using the following templates, listed according to SAM node-based license levels. Click here to compare component- and node-based license levels.

Requirements	Small SAM100*	Medium SAM300	Large SAM400	XL SAM1000 and larger
SolarWinds Platform server	m4.large	m4.xlarge	m5d.2xlarge	m5.2xlarge
SolarWinds Platform database using Amazon RDS for SQL Server	db.r5.xlarge	db.r5.xlarge	db.r5.2xlarge	db.r5.16xlarge
SolarWinds Platform database deployed on an Amazon VM	m4.large	r5.xlarge	r5.2xlarge Recommended: r5d.4xlarge	r5ad.24xlarge IOPS: 30,000
Additional Polling Engines	Only relevant for large environments that monitor over 12,000 components.		m5.xlarge

Microsoft Azure

To deploy a single SolarWinds Platform product on Microsoft Azure, consider using the following instance types, based on your deployment size.

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

Requirements	Small SAM100	Medium SAM300	Large SAM400	XL SAM1000 and larger
SolarWinds Platform server	A4_v2	DS12_v2	DS4_v2	DS4_v2
SolarWinds Platform database using Azure SQL Database	All installed products must run on SolarWinds Platform 2019.2 or later. The time zone setting of the SolarWinds Platform server must match the 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 in an Azure VM	A4_v2	DS4_v2 Standard	E8s_v3	E64as_v4 IOPS 30,000+

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Port requirements

Review and open ports on the SolarWinds Platform server to support communication between the Main Polling Engine, Additional Polling Engines (APEs), and Additional Web 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	Encryption
User-defined, default: 22	SSH	SolarWinds Job Engine v2 IIS	Outbound from the SolarWinds Platform server to devices	Access Cisco ASA devices through the CLI. Used by Nutanix hardware health monitoring.	Device-based
25	TCP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2	Outbound	SMTP port for non-encrypted messages.
53	UDP	SolarWinds Job Engine v2	Bidirectional	Used to resolve DNS queries.
80	TCP	IIS	Inbound	The default Additional Web Server port for the Web Console. To specify a different port, append it to the Web Console URL (for example, http://192.168.0.3:8080). Collect Cisco UCS data.
135	TCP	Microsoft EPMAP (DCE/RPC Locator service)	Bidirectional	Required to poll devices via WMI. Used to initiate communication with the remotely managed host. Collect Asset Inventory data.
161	UDP	SolarWinds Job Engine v2 service	Bidirectional	Send and receive SNMP information. Collect Asset Inventory data.	SNMPv1 and v2c are unencrypted. SNMPv3 uses AES and 3DES encryption.
162	UDP	SolarWinds Trap service SNMP Informs	Bidirectional	Send and receive trap messages.
443	TCP	IIS	Bidirectional	Default port for HTTPS binding. Also used for bidirectional ESX/ESXi server polling and Cisco UCS monitoring.	SSL
445	TCP	File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In)	Bidirectional	Used by Asset Inventory to poll machines with VBScript if Windows updates cannot be processed remotely.
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.
587	TCP	SolarWinds Alerting Service V2	Outbound	SMTP port used to send TLS-enabled email alert actions.
1433	TCP	SolarWinds Administration Service SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Platform Module Engine	Outbound	Communication between the SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform SQL database server.
1434	UDP	SolarWinds Administration Service SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Platform Module Engine SQL Server Browse Service	Bidirectional	Communication with SQL Server Browser Service to determine how to communicate with non-standard SQL Server installations. Required only if the SolarWinds Platform database server is configured to use dynamic ports. Also used to during SQL Instance detection.
5671	TCP	RabbitMQ	Bidirectional	For encrypted RabbitMQ messaging (AMQP/TLS) between the Main Polling Engine and Additional Polling Engines, High Availability servers, or Additional Web Servers.	TLS 1.2
5986	TCP	WinRM (HTTPS)	Inbound	WS-Management implementation, used by default for WMI and PowerShell remoting with TLS used for negotiation and encryption.	TLS
5985	TCP	WinRM (HTTP)	Inbound	WS-Management implementation, used by default for WMI and PowerShell remoting	OS-dependent
17777	TCP	SolarWinds Information Service SolarWinds Information Service V3 SolarWinds Platform Module Engine SolarWinds Cortex	Bidirectional	Communication between services and SolarWinds Platform module traffic. Communication between the Web Console, the Main Polling Engine, and all scalability engines. Communication between the main server and pool members.	RSA handshake, AES 256 communication using WCF TLS 1.2 with SolarWinds Cortex
17778	HTTPS and TCP	SolarWinds Agent	Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server	Communication between the SolarWinds Platform server, the SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS) API, and agents.	SSL
38008	TCP/IP	SolarWinds Credentials service (SolarWinds.Credentials)	Inbound	Supports the Manage Credentials page, and features that use those credentials, such as API pollers.	HTTPS
38010	TCP/IP	SolarWinds API Poller service (Orion.ApiPoller)	Inbound	Supports the API Poller feature.	HTTPS
38012	TCP/IP	Container Monitoring	Bidirectional	Communication between the SolarWinds Platform Business Layer and container environments

Additional SAM technology requirements

• AppInsight application requirements
  • AppInsight for Active Directory requirements and permissions
  • AppInsight for Exchange
  • AppInsight for IIS
  • AppInsight for SQL requirements and permissions
• Asset Inventory requirements^*
• Cloud monitoring requirements
• Component monitor port requirements
• Container monitoring requirements
• Hardware health monitoring requirements
  • Cisco UCS devices
  • Dell, HPE, HPE ProLiant, and IBM devices^*
  • Nutanix devices
• SNMP requirements for monitored devices

^*See also Third-party software required to monitor Asset Inventory and hardware health.

SAM licensing levels

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If using component-based licensing, this table provides equivalent node-based license tiers for SAM system requirements.

Node-based license tier	Component-based license tier
SAM10	AL150
SAM25	AL300
SAM50	AL700
SAM75	AL1100
SAM100	AL1500
SAM200	AL2500
SAM300*	ALX

*Additional tiers are available. Contact SolarWinds Sales for details.

More learning resources

To learn more about SolarWinds Platform requirements and configurations, see:

• Multi-module system guidelines
• SolarWinds Platform Agent requirements
• Scalability engine guidelines
• High Availability requirements
• Cloud monitoring requirements
• Port requirements for all SolarWinds products

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Legal notices

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