Documentation forServer Configuration Monitor
Monitoring server configurations is a key capability of Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced and is also available in a standalone module, Server Configuration Monitor (SCM). Hybrid Cloud Observability Advanced and SCM are built on the self-hosted SolarWinds Platform.

SCM 2022.4 System Requirements

Release date: November 22, 2022

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.

The following sections list recommended software requirements for a SolarWinds SCM installation. For information about installing SCM, see the SCM installation guide.

For additional information on requirements and configurations, see the SolarWinds Platform 2022.4 system requirements.

Monitoring with SCM

  • SCM 2022.4 supports monitoring on nodes running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and newer and Linux kernel 2.6.23 or newer.
  • SCM requires read permission to the monitored path for all file, parsed file, and registry profile elements. It requires execute permission for scripts.

SCM uses the SHA1 algorithm to compute a hash code while detecting whether a configuration item has changed on Windows and Linux machines. Although SHA1 is not an approved algorithm in FIPS mode, it is not used as a security function in SCM. Therefore, its use in SCM does not violate Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 or the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP).

Software requirements for the SolarWinds Platform server

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

Type

Requirements

Operating system

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2012 R2 is not supported in SCM 2022.4. SolarWinds recommends that you upgrade the operating system of your server to Windows Server 2016 or later. See SolarWinds Platform 2022.4 system requirements.

Desktop operating systems, such as Windows 10, 64-bit (not Standard Edition), 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 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 Anonymous Authentication is enabled for the default Sola website, NetPerfMon. Anonymous Authentication is used with the default, forms-based authentication.

IIS is installed by the SolarWinds Platform Installer. You can install this software manually to reduce installation time or network bandwidth.

Installing Windows Account

Requires administrator permission on the target server.

File System Access Permissions

Ensure the NetworkService account has access to the system temp directory: %systemroot%\temp.

Microsoft IIS

Version 10.0 or later. DNS specifications require hostnames to be composed of alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), the minus sign (-), and periods (.). Underscore characters (_) are not allowed.

SolarWinds does not support installing SCM on the same server or using the same database server as a Blackberry server.

Microsoft ASP .NET 2.0 Ajax Extension

Version 1 or later

If this is not found on the target computer, the SolarWinds Platform Installer downloads and installs the component.

Microsoft .NET Framework

Version 4.8

Run the same version of .NET on your primary server and any Additional Polling Engines (APEs) or Additional Web Servers (AWS) in the environment.

SolarWinds recommends installing .NET on your primary SolarWinds Platform server and all scalability engines before installing SCM. See this article for details.

SolarWinds Platform Web Console browser

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

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

  • Firefox
  • Chrome

The following browsers are also supported:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 with Active Scripting

Some pages are not compatible with IE 11. Classic Dashboards continue to support Internet Explorer 11.

Do not enable Enterprise Mode on Internet Explorer. This setting forces Internet Explorer to emulate version 7, which is not 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 tools. SolarWinds Platform user accounts limited to the SolarWinds Platform Web Console do not require local administrator privileges.

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
22 SSH SolarWinds Job Engine v2 IIS Bidirectional Access ASA devices through CLI
25 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound Default port for SMTP email notifications. If SSL/TLS encryption is enabled on the SMTP server, use port 465.
53 UDP SolarWinds Job Engine V2 Bidirectional Resolving DNS queries
80 TCP IIS Inbound HTTP default for the SolarWinds Platform Web Console
161 UDP SolarWinds Job Engine V2 Outbound SNMP statistics collection, the default for polling
443 TCP IIS Inbound Default port for HTTPS binding
445 TCP File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In) Bidirectional Used to store firmware updates and configuration files remotely
465 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound Default port for SSL-enabled email alert actions
587 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound Default port for TLS-enabled email alert actions
1434 UDP

SolarWinds Alerting Service V2

SolarWinds Administration Service

SolarWinds Information Service

SolarWinds Information Service V3

SolarWinds Platform 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.
5671 TCP RabbitMQ Bidirectional For RabbitMQ messaging (AMQP/TLS) between the main polling engine and all Additional Polling Engines, High Availability servers, or Additional Web Servers.
17777 TCP

SolarWinds Platform Module Engine

SolarWinds Information Service

SolarWinds Information Service V3

Bidirectional SolarWinds Platform module traffic. The port used for communication between the SolarWinds Platform Web Console and the poller.
17778 HTTPS SolarWinds Platform Agent Inbound to the SolarWinds Platform server Required for access to the SWIS API and agent communication

Ports 4369, 5672, and 25672 are opened by default. These ports can be blocked by the firewall.

Hardware requirements for the SolarWinds Platform server

The following table lists minimum hardware requirements and recommendations for your SolarWinds Platform server on physical computers, virtual computers, and cloud instances. Use the minimum hardware configuration if you are evaluating the product or do not anticipate heavy usage.

  • Do not install SolarWinds Platform products on the same server as SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM).
  • 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.
  • Installing multiple SolarWinds Platform products on the same computer may change the requirements.
Feature SCM 10 - 100 SCM 250 - 500 SCM 1000 - 2000*
CPU Quad-core processor or better
Hard drive space

10 GB minimum

20 GB 
recommended

20 GB minimum

40 GB 
recommended

40 GB minimum

100 GB 
recommended

Memory

6 GB minimum

8 GB recommended

8 GB minimum

16 GB 
recommended

16 GB minimum

32 GB recommended

*For SCM 2000, see the Scalability section for more information.

SolarWinds Platform database server requirements

The following table lists software and hardware requirements for your SolarWinds Platform database server using SCM license levels. You must create the SolarWinds Platform database with the SolarWinds Configuration Wizard. Creating the database another way is not supported.

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

  • The SolarWinds Platform server and the SolarWinds Platform database must use separate servers.
  • If you install on a virtual machine, you must maintain your SQL Server database on a separate, physical drive.
  • SolarWinds Platform 2022.4 products, including SCM 2022.4, support using the Azure SQL Database to host your SolarWinds Platform database. For more information, see Azure SQL Database requirements.
Type Requirements
Language

SolarWinds supports using SCM with database servers set up in the following languages:

  • English
  • German
  • Japanese
  • Chinese
Microsoft SQL Server

SolarWinds supports Express*, Standard, or Enterprise versions of the following:

  • Microsoft© SQL Server© 2022 (evaluation - not for production)
  • SQL Server 2019
  • SQL Server 2017
  • SQL Server 2016
  • SQL Server 2016 SP2
  • SQL Server 2016 SP1

*Microsoft SQL Server Express is suitable for up to SCM100 license tier. To reduce disk utilization when using SQL Server Express, shorten the Detailed Statistic Retention period on the Polling Settings page. The default value is 7 days. See Optimize the database used by SolarWinds Platform products, and see Additional database space requirements for more information on how much data can be consumed over time.

SCM local SQL database uses SQL 2017 EE Advanced by default.

SolarWinds recommends that you use Express versions only for evaluations and very small environments.

Recommendations

  • Use the 64-bit version of SQL Server.
  • Use the Simple database recovery mode to ensure best performance.
  • 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 the volume where you store your transactions log has free space equal to or greater than the size of the SolarWinds Platform database. Transaction logs will continue to grow indefinitely until a database backup is performed and transactions are committed to the database. SolarWinds recommends daily database backups if using the Full Recovery model.

You can use the following database select statement to check your SQL Server version, service pack, or release level, and edition:

select SERVERPROPERTY ('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')
SQL Server collations

The following SQL server collations are supported:

  • 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

SolarWinds supports a case-insensitive (CI) database on a CS SQL Server.

SolarWinds products do not support case-sensitive databases.

x86 components

The following x86 components must be installed:

  • SQL Server System Common Language Runtime (CLR) Types
  • Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
  • Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects

If the components are not found on the target computer, the SolarWinds Platform Installer downloads and installs the components.

  SCM 10 -
SCM 100
SCM 250 -
SCM 500
SCM 1000 -
SCM 2000*
CPU Quad-core processor or better 2 x quad-core processor or better
Memory

8 GB minimum

16 GB recommended

16 GB minimum

64 GB recommended

64 GB minimum

128 GB recommended

Hard drive space

The amount of space needed by SCM depends on several variables in your environment. See Additional database space requirements for details.

20 GB minimum

50 GB recommended

100 GB minimum

250 GB recommended

200 GB minimum

500 GB recommended

  • 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 OS and tempdb files.
  • Other RAID configurations can negatively affect SQL Server performance.
  • Mirrored drives for the OS and RAID 1+0 for database data files are recommended.
  • Solid state drives (SSDs) 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 Windows or SQL temporary directories.

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 installing the SQL Server Management Studio component on your SolarWinds Platform database server.

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

  • 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 overall performance.
  • Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
  • Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects

For remote execution of PowerShell scripts, PowerShell 2.0 or later is required on the SolarWinds Platform server, Additional Polling Engines, and target servers.

You cannot share the SolarWinds Platform database with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, or BlackBerry servers.

*For SCM 2000, see the Scalability section for more information.

**SolarWinds recommends the following hard drive configuration:

  • 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 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 a 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 a tempdb data file

  • Disk Subsystem 6 Array 6: with 4x 15K 146 GB or 300 GB disks configured in a RAID 0 array for a tempdb log file

Microsoft Azure deployments

To deploy your SolarWinds Platform product on Microsoft Azure, consider using the following instance types detailed in the table below, listed according to SCM license levels. For Microsoft Azure Managed Instance deployments, which SCM also supports, see the SolarWinds Platform system requirements.

Requirements

SCM 10 -
SCM 100

SCM 250 - 500

SCM 1000 -
SCM 2000*

SolarWinds Platform server

DS12_v2

DS12_v2

DS12_v2

4 CPU 4 CPU 4 CPU
16 GB RAM 16 GB RAM 16 GB RAM
150 GB disk 150 GB disk 150 GB disk

SolarWinds Platform database server in an Azure VM

DS4_V2 Standard

r4.D12_v2

D4_v2

Azure Storage Disk with Provisioned IOPS recommended

8 CPU 4 CPU 8 CPU
28 GB RAM 30.5 GB RAM 61 GB RAM
System SSD 126 GB (included in Azure VM instance) + 1 TB for SQL database (included in Azure SQL Server Computer) System SSD 80 GB (included in D12_v2) + Data Azure Storage Disk Volume 500 GB** System SSD 160 GB (included in D4_v2) + 1x Data EBS Volume 150 GB + 2x Data Azure Storage Disk Volume 500 GB**

SolarWinds Platform database using Azure SQL database

DTU Standard Tier***

 

S3 (100 DTU)

 

S3 (100 DTU)

 

S4 (200 DTU)

  DTU Premium Tier P1 (125 DTU) P1 (125 DTU) P2 (250 DTU)
  vCore General Purpose Tier 1 2 2
  vCore Business Critical Tier 1 2 2

Important: SCM 2022.4 must run on SolarWinds Platform 2022.4. The time zone setting of the SolarWinds Platform server must be in the same time zone as the Azure SQL DB time zone (UTC).

When deploying Azure SQL and creating a new user in the Configuration wizard, SA account credentials are required.

When using Azure SQL for your database server, required tiers depend on whether you're using memory-optimized tables (In-Memory OLTP) supported in SQL Server 2016 and 2019 to improve the performance of transaction processing, data ingestion, data load, and transient data scenarios.

Azure SQL tiers if using In-Memory OLTP

DTU Tier P1

DTU Tier P2

DTU Tier P4

vCore Business Critical Gen4 Tier 1 vCore Business Critical Gen4 Tier 2 vCore Business Critical Gen4 Tier 4
vCore Business Critical Gen5 Tier 2 vCore Business Critical Gen5 Tier 2 vCore Business Critical Gen5 Tier 4
Azure SQL tiers without In-Memory OLTP

DTU Tier S3

DTU Tier S3

DTU Tier S4

DTU Premium Tier P1 DTU Premium Tier P1 DTU Premium Tier P2
vCore General Purpose Tier 2 vCore General Purpose Tier 2 vCore General Purpose Tier 2
vCore Business Critical Tier 2 vCore Business Critical Tier 2 vCore Business Critical Tier 2

*For SCM 2000, see the Scalability section for more information.

**Azure Storage Disk volumes are not your dedicated hardware. Consider using Azure Reserved Instances of storage disk volumes for SQL servers.

***SolarWinds recommends that customers with large environments or environments with frequent changes use DTU Premium Tier, vCore General Purpose Tier, or vCore Business Critical Tier (rather than DTU Standard Tier), as these tiers allow more IOPS.

Additional database space requirements

The amount of space required by SCM depends on the number of nodes being monitored, the frequency of changes, the number of configuration items being monitored, and the average size of a configuration item. Use the following examples to help determine your needs.

Number of nodes monitored by SCM Number of configuration items per node Average size of configuration item Frequency of changes Additional database space recommendation
1000 100 10.00 kB Once per week, every item changes 52 GB

Once per day, every item changes

365 GB
50 10.00 kB Once per week, every item changes 26 GB
5.00 kB 13 GB

SCM database monitoring requirements

Starting with SCM 2020.2, an ODBC driver is required. Drivers are automatically installed along with SCM. The following database versions can be monitored via out-of-the-box profiles using SCM:

  • SQL Server 2019
  • SQL Server 2017
  • SQL Server 2016 SP1 or SP2
  • MySQL versions:
    • 5.7
    • 8.0
  • PostgreSQL versions:
    • 9.4.25
    • 9.5.20
    • 9.6.16
    • 10.11
    • 11.6
    • 12.1

There are no specific permissions needed by SCM for polling out-of-the-box database profiles. What is polled depends on what the user enters into the connection string field. SolarWinds recommends that you enter macros in the connection string to make use of credentials stored in the SolarWinds Platform. If credentials are entered directly into the connection string, they are stored in plaintext.

Scalability

A SolarWinds Platform instance with SCM installed can process up to 280 changes/second combined. If you expect to have more than 1,000 agents per polling engine, you will need an Additional Polling Engine (APE).

See also Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds products.

Adding an APE enables you to collect data at a rate or volume beyond the capacity of a single SCM server. You can also use APEs for organizational purposes, so server configurations at each specific site are monitored by site-specific APEs.

As of SolarWinds Platform 2022.3, additional polling engines are updated to a new, licensing-controlled version.

For SCM, the additional polling engine is included in the product license.

Install an additional polling engine. During the evaluation period, you will be able to see an APE evaluation license in the License Manager. After the evaluation period, no extra license will be displayed in the License Manager because it is included in your product license.

You cannot stack these licenses.

By selecting Additional Polling Engine for Server Configuration Monitor during the installation of an APE, that included APE can poll only servers that are monitored with SCM or other products specifically mentioned as compatible with the APE during the installation.

More learning resources

To learn more about SolarWinds Platform requirements and configurations, refer to: