Documentation forVirtualization Manager
Monitoring virtual environments is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Advanced edition. Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is also available in a standalone module.

Virtualization Manager 2020.2.6 System Requirements

Release date: July 15, 2021

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

These system requirements define the minimum requirements for VMAN 2020.2.6 and its integration with the Orion Platform as a single installed product. For further deployment and scaling information, see the SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Deployment Guide.

If you are adding VMAN to an existing Orion Platform with multiple Orion Platform products, see the Multi-module system guidelines.

VMAN and the Orion Platform system requirements

Review the following requirements for Virtualization Manager in the Orion Platform. Install Virtualization Manager with the Orion Installer.

Before you install or upgrade VMAN with the Orion Installer, make sure the Orion Platform server meets the following requirements.

See Orion Platform requirements for a more detailed look at the basic requirements needed for Orion Platform products, including detailed database server requirements.

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

Software or Hardware Requirement
Operating System

Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2012 R2

If you need to update your Orion server's version of Windows Server or SQL Server, see the migration guide for Orion Platform products.

For evaluation only:

Windows 10

Windows 8.1 Update 1 (except Standard edition)

Windows 8.1 (except Standard edition)

CPU 3.0 GHz
Memory

8 GB

Recommendations also requires an additional 8 GB.

HDD

20 GB (up to 3000 virtual machines)

30 GB (up to 6000 virtual machines)

40 GB (up to 10 000 virtual machines)

If you have more than 10000 virtual machines, SolarWinds recommends adding an APE with the same specifications as the Main Polling Engine for each 10000 VMs.

.NET Framework

.NET 4.8

VMAN downloads and installs the latest required version of the .NET Framework, if it is missing. Save time during the VMAN installation by installing .NET Framework beforehand.

SQL Server

SQL Server 2019

SQL Server 2017

SQL Server 2016 SP1

SQL Server 2016

SQL Server 2014 SP1

SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2012

SQL Server Express

SolarWinds recommends using SQL Server Express only in evaluations. However, if used in a production environment, consider the following:

  • Recommended VMAN license tier: VMS192 or smaller. For more information about VMAN license tiers, see Virtualization Manager Licensing Model.
  • Turn off VMAN Recommendations on larger environments. VMAN Recommendations requires extensive database querying.
  • SQL Server Express databases are limited to 10 GB in size. For reference, a fully licensed instance of VMAN, 100 VMs with 1 year worth of data consumes approximately 250MB worth of data.
  • VMware Events monitoring is limited with SQL Server Express depending on the amount of data collected. For example, for collecting 1000 Events Per Second (EPS), only 2-3 hours of data can be saved. Or for 7 days of retention, only 15 EPS on average can be collected.

Azure SQL Database - see here for detailed Azure SQL Database requirements.

If you're also installing the Orion Log Viewer to enable VMware Events Monitoring functionality, your database must be upgraded to SQL Server 2016 SP1 or newer with full text search configured.

If you need to update your Orion server's version of Windows Server or SQL Server, see the migration guide for Orion Platform products.

See Orion Platform database requirements for more detailed database requirements.

Browser

Microsoft Edge

Mozilla Firefox two latest versions

Google Chrome two latest versions

In VMAN 2020.2 and later, some pages are not compatible with IE11. If you are using IE11, you will see a warning message on incompatible pages. SolarWinds recommends using a different browser (such as Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge) for the best user experience with VMAN.

VMAN Orion 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.

VMAN requires the basic server port requirements needed for the Orion server. See Orion Platform server port requirements for more details.

In addition, VMAN requires port 17799 (Inbound and outbound) to support Container service monitoring in order to communicate with container orchestrators.

Plan for an evaluation installation

The evaluation version of VMAN is a full version of the product, functional for 30 days. After the evaluation period, you can easily convert your evaluation license to a production license by obtaining and applying a license key. The VMAN license supports the integration with the Orion Platform.

Installing the evaluation version requires the same requirements, installation steps, and configurations as the full licensed version:

  • The VMAN evaluation can be integrated with an existing Orion Platform environment
  • The existing environment must have a full or evaluation version of Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Server & Application Monitor (SAM), or Network Configuration Manager (NCM) installed
  • Create or modify accounts and permissions as required for VMAN
  • For evaluations only, you can install on systems with the following OS versions:
Evaluation and production environments Evaluation environments only

Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows 8.1 (except Standard edition)

Windows 8.1 Update 1 (except Standard edition)

Windows 10