Documentation forServer & Application Monitor
Monitoring your applications and environment is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Essentials edition. Server & Application Monitor (SAM) is also available in a standalone module.

SAM 2025.1 system requirements

SAM RC documentation - The following content is a draft for a release candidate. All content subject to change. Some links might not function yet.

RC release date: December 12, 2024

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) 2025.1 as a single product installed on SolarWinds Platform 2025.1.

This document includes the following sections:

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.

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

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

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.

SolarWinds strongly suggests using 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.

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.

  • If using component-based licensing, click here to compare component- and node-based license levels.
  • In production environments, the SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform database must use separate servers.
  • If you install on a VM, you must maintain your SolarWinds Platform database on a separate, physical drive.
  • See the SolarWinds Platform Products Installation and Upgrade Guide for supported deployment scenarios, such as using an Azure SQL Database Managed Instance as your database server.
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:

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+

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.  
dynamic, random, greater than 1024 TCP SolarWinds Job Engine v2 Bidirectional (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 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

*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:

Legal notices

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The SolarWinds, SolarWinds & Design, Orion, and THWACK trademarks are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC or its affiliates, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be registered or pending registration in other countries. All other SolarWinds trademarks, service marks, and logos may be common law marks or are registered or pending registration. All other trademarks mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and are trademarks of (and may be registered trademarks) of their respective companies.