Documentation forWeb Performance Monitor

WPM 2023.2 System Requirements

Release date: April 18, 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.

These recommended system requirements are for SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM) 2023.2, as a single product installed on SolarWinds Platform 2023.2.

Note the following details about system requirements:

Software requirements for the SolarWinds Platform server

The following table lists software requirements and recommendations for a WPM installation on both physical and virtual systems.

Software Requirements
Operating system
  • Microsoft Windows 10
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2*
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019

*Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 is included in WPM 2023.2 so WPM 2.2.3 customers can upgrade to the latest version of WPM. For the best experience, SolarWinds recommends using Windows Server 2016 or 2019 for the SolarWinds Platform server.

Desktop operating systems, such as Windows 10, 64-bit Pro or Enterprise are supported for evaluation environments only. For a smooth transition from your evaluation to production deployment, SolarWinds recommends that you avoid installing evaluations on desktop operating systems.

Do not install WPM on domain controllers, or on Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, or BlackBerry servers.

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, be sure to enable Anonymous Authentication for the SolarWinds NetPerfMon website. 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.
Microsoft .NET Framework

.NET 4.8 or later

Run the same version of .NET on your primary SolarWinds Platform server and any scalability engines in your environment.

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

The SolarWinds Platform supports the two latest versions of the following web browsers available on the release date:

  • Firefox
  • Chrome

The Microsoft Edge browser is also supported.
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 SolarWinds Platform Web Console do not require local administrator privileges.
SolarWinds Pingdom

To use WPM recordings for Transaction Monitoring in Pingdom, you'll need an active Pingdom account to generate Pingdom API tokens for Web Transaction Recorders. See the WPM Getting Started Guide for details.

Not using Pingdom yet? Click here to start your free trial.

Port requirements

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The following port requirements apply to the primary WPM installation on the SolarWinds Platform server. For remote machines, see Web Transaction Recorder and WPM Player requirements.

  • Ports 4369, 25672, and 5672 are open by default on the SolarWinds Platform server for RabbitMQ messaging, but may be blocked by the firewall. If running SolarWinds High Availability (HA), open ports 4369 and 25672.
  • RPC ports > 1024 (TCP, bidirectional) are used by the Job Engine v2 process to communicate with Windows nodes.

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 Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) devices through the Command-Line Interface (CLI).

 Device-based
25 TCP SolarWinds Alerting Service V2 Outbound

SMTP port for non-encrypted messages

  
53 UDP SolarWinds Job Engine V2 Bidirectional

Resolve DNS queries

  
80 TCP IIS Inbound

Default Additional Web Server (AWS) port. If you specify any port other than 80, include that port in the URL used to access the Web Console. For example, if you specify 192.168.0.3 and port 8080, the URL to access the SolarWinds Platform Web Console is http://192.168.0.3:8080the release constraints for 2020.2.3 are the same as for 2020.2.1

Open the port to enable communication from systems to the Web Console.

  
135 TCP Microsoft EPMAP (DCE/RPC Locator service) Bidirectional

Required for WMI polling, this port initiates communication with remotely managed hosts, then switches to a random port between 1024 and 65535.

  
161 UDP SolarWinds Job Engine v2, SolarWinds Cortex (communication) Bidirectional

Send and receive SNMP information.

SNMP v1 and v2 are unencrypted.

SNMP v3 uses AES and 3DES encryption.
162 UDP

SolarWinds Trap Service

SNMP Informs

 Bidirectional

Send and receive trap messages.

  
443 TCP IIS Inbound

Default port for HTTPS binding. Also used for bi-directional ESX/ESXi server polling.

 SSL
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.

 TLS
1433 TCP

SolarWinds Alerting Service V2

SolarWinds Administration Service

SolarWinds Information Service

SolarWinds Information Service V3

SolarWinds Platform Module Engine

 Outbound

Supports communication from the SolarWinds Platform server to the SolarWinds Platform database server.

  
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

Supports communication with the SQL Server Browser Service to determine how to handle certain non-standard SQL Server installations.

Required only if your SolarWinds Platform database server is configured to use dynamic ports.

  
5671 TCP RabbitMQ Bidirectional

For encrypted RabbitMQ messaging (AMQP/TLS) into the Main Polling Engine from scalability engines.

 TLS 1.2
17777 TCP

SolarWinds Platform Module Engine

SolarWinds Information Service

SolarWinds Information Service V3

SolarWinds Cortex (communication)

 Bidirectional

Supports communication between:

  • SolarWinds Platform services and SolarWinds Platform module traffic.
  • The SolarWinds Platform Web Console, the Main Polling Engine, and scalability engines.
  • The main SolarWinds Platform server and pool members.

RSA handshake, AES 256 communication using WCF

TLS 1.2 with Cortex
17778 HTTPS SolarWinds Agent Bidirectional

Supports access to the SWIS API and agent communication.

 SSL
17781 TCP WPM Playback Player Bidirectional

Used for communication between the SolarWinds Platform server and remote systems that host WPM Players.

 
17782 TCP WPM Playback Player Bidirectional

Used for WPM Player-initiated communications.

 
17783 TCP WPM Playback Player Bidirectional

Used for automatic WPM Player updates.

  
17784 TCP WPM Playback Player Bidirectional

Used for inter-process communication between the WPM Playback Player service running on the SolarWinds Platform server, an APE, or a remote machine, and the following local apps running on systems that host WPM Players:

 

Hardware requirements for the SolarWinds Platform server

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The following table lists hardware requirements for your SolarWinds Platform server on both physical and virtual computers. Note the following details:

  • With the exception of SolarWinds Platform agents, do not install SolarWinds Platform products on the same server as Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, BlackBerry, or 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.
Feature

Small

SL100, SL250, SL500

Medium

SL2000

Large

SLX

XL

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

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 operating system 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 the Windows temporary directories.
Memory

6 GB minimum

8 GB recommended

8 GB minimum

16 GB recommended

16 GB minimum

32 GB recommended

32 GB minimum

32 GB recommended

SolarWinds Platform database server requirements

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The following table lists software and hardware requirements for your SolarWinds Platform database server using NPM license levels.

With the exception of SolarWinds Platform agents, do not install SolarWinds Platform products on the same server as Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, BlackBerry, or SolarWinds 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 SolarWinds Platform database on a separate, physical drive.
  • To use Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Azure for your SolarWinds Platform database, see the 2023.2 system requirements.
Feature

Small

SL100, SL250, SL500

Medium

SL2000

Large

SLX

XL

Microsoft SQL Server

Express, Standard, or Enterprise versions of:

  • SQL Server 2016 SP1
  • SQL Server 2016 SP2
  • SQL Server 2017
  • SQL Server 2019

Enterprise versions of SQL Server:

  • 2016 SP1
  • 2016 SP2
  • 2017
  • 2019

Recommendations

  • Use the 64-bit version of SQL Server.
  • Use Express versions only for evaluations and small environments.
  • 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.
  • To gauge database size, consider that if using the default 7-day retention settings, 5 WPM transactions with 5—10 steps each and 25 actions typically consume 300 MB.
  • Use the Simple database recovery model to ensure 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.
SQL Server collation
  • 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 products support a case-insensitive (CI) database on a CS SQL Server.

SolarWinds products do 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
  • SSD strongly 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 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 (SSD) are recommended for all components.

Some common files may need to be installed on the same drive as your server OS. You may want to move or expand the Windows or SQL temporary directories. See Work with Temporary Directories.

Memory

6 GB minimum

16 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 are 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

Do not host the SolarWinds Platform database on SharePoint, Exchange, or BlackBerry servers.

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

  • 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

Web Transaction Recorder requirements

When you install the primary WPM application, two different WPM recorders are added to the SolarWinds Platform server automatically. You can also deploy recorders to remote systems.

Here are minimum requirements for remote systems that host a Web Transaction Recorder, which is based on Chromium 87:

Resource Requirement
CPU 1 GHz or more
Memory 2 GB
OS
  • x64 systems only
  • Windows 8, 10
  • Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019

    Keep Windows scale and layout settings set to 100% to support image validation.

The following macOS versions are supported:

  • Catalina
  • Big Sur
TCP ports
  • 80, for HTTP traffic
  • 443, for HTTPS traffic
  • 445, for automated remote deployment to target systems by the Agent installer via Microsoft-DS SMB file sharing.
  • 17777, for SolarWinds traffic
  • 17778, for outgoing traffic port for SWIS
  • Two random ports between 1024—65535 for inter-process communication between recorders, probes, and drivers

    Configure firewalls to support binding for random ports 127.0.0.1:1024—127.0.0.1:65535.

Here are minimum requirements for remote systems that host a Deprecated WPM Recorder:

Resource Requirement
CPU 1 GHz or more
Memory 2 GB
OS
  • x64 systems only
  • Windows 8, 10*
  • Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2016*, and 2019*

*SSL certificate authentication is not supported on some OS.

TCP ports
  • 80, for HTTP traffic
  • 443, for HTTPS traffic
  • 17777, for SolarWinds traffic
Web browser

Internet Explorer 11

If your organization requires an earlier IE version, use IE 11 Document Mode to emulate earlier versions.

WPM Player requirements

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Note the following details about remote systems that host the WPM Player Playback service and play recorded transactions at scheduled intervals:

  • If a system hosts a hypervisor or Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that runs other servers (such as print or file servers), consider hosting the WPM Player elsewhere.
  • To manage loads on systems that host WPM Players, see Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Platform Products. You can also check the Player Load Percentage widget.
  • The WPM Player Playback service is based on Chromium 87.
  • If not already installed, you may be prompted to verify the installation of:
    • Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 x86 Redistributable
    • Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 x64 Redistributable

The following requirements apply to remote systems that host WPM Players:

Resource Requirement
CPU Quad core processor or better
Memory 3 GB
.NET Framework .NET 4.8 or later
Operating system
  • Windows 8, 10*
  • Windows Server 2012, 2016*, and 2019*

*Steps with certificate validation may interrupt playback, as described here.
Accounts and security
TCP ports
  • 80, for outbound HTTP traffic
  • 135, for executing remote code during WPM Player deployment
  • 443, for outbound HTTPS traffic
  • 445, for automated remote deployment to target systems by the Agent installer via Microsoft-DS SMB file sharing.
  • 17777, for outbound SolarWinds traffic
  • 17781, for bidirectional, server-initiated (passive) communication mode
  • 17782, for bidirectional, player-initiated (active) communication mode
  • 17783, for bidirectional, automatic WPM Player updates
  • 17784, for bidirectional, inter-process communication between:

In addition, allow a random port between 1024 and 65535 for inter-process communication between WPM players, probes, and drivers.

Configure firewalls to support the binding of a random port, between 127.0.0.1:1024 and 127.0.0.1:65535.
Windows settings

The following settings are updated during WPM Player deployment:

  • Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service: The Startup Type is set to Manual on the SolarWinds Platform server and any Additional Polling Engines (APEs). On remote systems, the Startup Type is set to Automatic.
  • SolarWinds WPM Playback Player service: A dependency with the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service is added.
Web browser

Internet Explorer 11

If your organization requires an earlier IE version, use IE 11 Document Mode to emulate earlier versions.