SolarWinds Technical Reference

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products ................................................................... 1 Network Performance Monitor (NPM) ................. 1 Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) ............... 1 Server & Application Monitor (SAM) ................... 2 NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) .......................... 2 Network Configuration Manager (NCM) ............. 2 User Device Tracker (UDT) ................................ 3 VoIP & Network Quality Manager ....................... 3 Web Performance Monitor (WPM) ...................... 3 Installing Additional Polling Engines ................... 3 Activating Stackable Poller Licenses .................. 4 Deployment Options ................................................. 5 Centralized Deployment ...................................... 5 Distributed Deployment ....................................... 7 Centralized Deployment with Remote Polling Engines ............................................................... 9 Frequently Asked Questions .................................. 11 The following technical reference provides guidance for SolarWinds installations that use scalability engines to expand monitoring capacity. Note: Requirements and recommendations will vary from product to product. Refer to the Administrator Guide for your specific product for more information.

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About SolarWinds
SolarWinds, Inc develops and markets an array of network management, monitoring, and discovery tools to meet the diverse requirements of todays network management and consulting professionals. SolarWinds products continue to set benchmarks for quality and performance and have positioned the company as the leader in network management and discovery technology. The SolarWinds customer base includes over 45 percent of the Fortune 500 and customers from over 90 countries. Our global business partner distributor network exceeds 100 distributors and resellers.

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Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products 1

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

The following technical reference provides guidance for SolarWinds installations that use scalability engines to expand monitoring capacity. Note: Requirements and recommendations will vary from product to product. Refer to the Administrator Guide for your specific product for more information.

Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

Network Performance Monitor (NPM) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Yes. Up to three total polling engines may be installed on a single server (i.e. one primary NPM polling engine with one or two additional polling engines or three additional polling engines on the same server). Note: A stack requires only 1 IP address, regardless of the number of APEs Yes, for NPM versions 10.4 and higher Note: Poller remotability is a feature that enables the local storage, using MSMQ, of up to ~1 GB of polled data per poller in the event that the connection between the polling engine and the database is temporarily lost. ~12k elements at standard polling frequencies: Node and interface up/down: 2 minutes/poll Node statistics: 10 minutes/poll Interface statistics: 9 minutes/poll 25-50 concurrent Orion Web Console users SNMP Traps: ~500 messages per second (~1.8 million messages/hr) Syslog: 700-1k messages/second (2.5 - 3.6 million messages/hr) Note: If you are monitoring more than ~100,000 elements, consider using SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console. One polling engine for every ~12k elements Maximum of 100k elements per primary SolarWinds NPM server (i.e. 1 NPM server + 9 APEs). For more information about licensing, see "How is SolarWinds NPM licensed?" Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary NPM server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds database. How much bandwidth does SolarWinds require for monitoring? For hardware requirements, see "Hardware Requirements" in the SolarWinds Orion NPM Administrator Guide.

Poller Remotability Available?

Primary Poller Limits

Scalability Options

WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations

Other Considerations

Enterprise Operations Console (EOC)

Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? Primary Poller Limits No No See Network Performance Monitor (NPM) on page 1. One polling engine for every ~12k elements. Maximum of 25k elements per combination of one primary polling engine with one Additional Polling Engine. Maximum of 600k elements on 30 primary SolarWinds NPM servers (i.e. 1 NPM server + 1 APE). For more information, See Network Performance Monitor (NPM) on page 1. Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary NPM server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds database. See "Section 4 Deployment Strategies" of NetFlow Basics and Deployment Strategies

Scalability Options

WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations Other Considerations

2 Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

Server & Application Monitor (SAM)

Server & Application Monitor (SAM) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? No Yes, for SAM versions 5.5 and higher Note: Poller remotability is a feature that enables the local storage, using MSMQ, of up to ~1 GB of polled data per poller in the event that the connection between the polling engine and the database is temporarily lost. ~8-10k component monitors per polling engine 25-50 concurrent Orion Web Console users One APE for every 8-10k component monitors Maximum of 50k component monitors per primary SolarWinds SAM installation (i.e. 1 SAM server + 4 APEs). For more information about licensing, see "Why are you licensing by monitors instead of by servers?" Minimal monitoring traffic is sent between the primary SAM server and any APEs that are connected over a WAN. Most traffic related to monitoring is between an APE and the SolarWinds database. Bandwidth requirements depend on the size of the relevant component monitor. Based on 67.5 kB / WMI poll and a 5 minute polling frequency, the estimate is 1.2 Mbps for 700 component monitors. For more information, see "How do SNMP and WMI polling compare?" Note: WMI is best suited for environments where latency is < 100ms. WMI Security Blog

Primary Poller Limits

Scalability Options

WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations

Other Considerations

NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? Primary Poller Limits Scalability Options WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations Other Considerations No No See Network Performance Monitor (NPM) on page 1. See Network Performance Monitor (NPM) on page 1. 1.5 - 3% of total traffic seen by exporter See "Section 4 Deployment Strategies" of NetFlow Basics and Deployment Strategies

Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? Primary Poller Limits No No ~10k devices One APE for every 10k devices, for NCM versions 7.1 and higher Maximum of 30k devices per primary SolarWinds NCM instance (i.e. NCM server + 2 NCM APEs) Integrated standalone mode None None

Scalability Options

WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations Other Considerations

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products 3

User Device Tracker (UDT)

User Device Tracker (UDT) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? Primary Poller Limits Scalability Options WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations Other Considerations No No 150k ports One APE per 150k additional ports None None

VoIP & Network Quality Manager

VoIP & Network Quality Manager Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? Primary Poller Limits No No ~5k IP SLA operations ~200k calls/day with 20k calls/hour spike capacity One APE per 5k IP SLA operations Maximum of 15k IP SLA operations per SolarWinds VNQM instance (i.e. SolarWinds VNQM + 2 VNQM APEs) Between Call Manager and VNQM: 34 Kbps per call, based on estimates of ~256 bytes per CDR and CMR and based on 20k calls per hour None

Scalability Options

WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations Other Considerations

Web Performance Monitor (WPM)

Web Performance Monitor (WPM) Scalability Engine Guidelines Stackable Pollers Available? Poller Remotability Available? Primary Poller Limits Scalability Options WAN and/or Bandwidth Considerations Other Considerations No No, but recordings may be made from multiple locations 5k recordings One APE per 5k additional recordings None None

Installing Additional Polling Engines

The installation of a new Additional Polling Engine, including initial configuration, follows the same steps required to complete the installation and configuration of a primary SolarWinds polling engine, with the following additional considerations: The most recent installer is available in your SolarWinds Customer Portal within the Orion_Additional_Polling_Engine_version.zip archive. If you want to use any Orion modules for monitoring or managing any devices polled with an Additional Polling Engine, you must install the Additional Polling Engine version of the module you want to use on the server hosting your Additional Polling Engine. For more information, see the SolarWinds documentation for your Orion module.

4 Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

Individual licenses must be activated for each polling engine in a stackable poller installation. If you have configured an alert with a Send Email action to trigger on a node monitored by an additional polling engine, confirm that the additional polling engine has access to your SMTP server.

To install an Orion Additional Polling Engine: 1. If you downloaded the Orion Additional Polling Engine executable from the SolarWinds website, navigate to your download location, and then launch the executable. 2. If you received the Orion Additional Polling Engine executable on physical media, browse to the executable file, and then launch it. Note: The executable extracts to a folder containing an HTML readme, an Installer Guide, and Additional Polling Engine installers for all Orion products that support Additional Polling Engines. 3. Launch the installer that corresponds to the SolarWinds product installed on your primary server. Note: If you have multiple Orion products installed on your main SolarWinds server, to ensure full functionality, install the Additional Web Server for each product. 4. On the Welcome window of the Compatibility Check, provide the folowing information: The Hostname or IP Address of your main Orion server. The User name and Password of a user with administrative privileges to the Orion Web Console on your main SolarWinds server.

5. Click Next. 6. Complete the installation as you would on a main SolarWinds server.

Activating Stackable Poller Licenses

When installing additional polling engines in a stacked poller installation, each polling engine requires its own active license. Currently, licenses must be activated manually, as indicated in the following procedure. Note: SolarWinds NPM version 10.4 and License Manager version 2.0.0.836 are required. To license stackable pollers: 1. Install all required polling engines on the SolarWinds server hosting your stackable pollers. Note: See guidelines for your installed SolarWinds product, as provided in previous sections of this technical reference. 2. On your SolarWinds server, click Start > All Programs > SolarWinds > SolarWinds License Manager. 3. Click Activate next to each listed primary and additional polling engine. 4. Complete the License Activation tool, providing all appropriate license information for each polling engine.

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products 5

Deployment Options
The following sections discuss some common deployment options for SolarWinds installations that use scalability engines.

Centralized Deployment
Primary Region
Orion Web Console Regional Operators

Polling

SQL Data (Port 1433)

Monitored Nodes

Primary Orion Server

Orion Database Server

Region 2

Polling

Polling

Region 3

Regional Operators

Regional Operators

Monitored Nodes
Overview:

Monitored Nodes

This is the simplest deployment option, as there is only one SolarWinds Orion instance, and software is only installed in the Primary region. This option is well suited to environments where most of the monitored nodes are located in a single primary region and where other regional offices are much smaller. This deployment is optimal when the following conditions apply: 1. The remote offices is not large to require a local Orion instance or polling engine. 2. There aren't enough monitored nodes to require a local Orion instance or polling engine. 3. It is preferred to have a central point of administration for the Orion system.

6 Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

Deployment Notes: All nodes are polled from a single Orion instance in the Primary Region, and all data is stored centrally on the Orion Database Server in the primary region. Each installed module will need to have enough available licenses to cover all regions. A reliable static connection must be available between each region. This reliable static connection will be continually transmitting monitoring data. The quantity of bandwidth consumed will depend on many factors, including the Orion modules that are installed as well as the quantities and types of monitored elements. For this reason, it is difficult to estimate the bandwidth requirements. It is recommended to monitor the actual bandwidth usage using Orion NPM since each environment is unique. Regional Operators in each region will log into the Orion Web Console in the Primary Region where Orion is installed to view data. An optional Additional Web Server is available, and it can be installed in secondary regions. Regional operators can then log into their local web consoles. All KPIs, such as Node Response Times, will be calculated from the perspective of the Primary Orion Server. For example, the response time for a monitored node in Region 2 will be equal to the round trip time from the Primary Orion Server to that node.

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products 7

Distributed Deployment
Global NOC Operators

Enterprise Operations Console

Region 1
Regional Operators

Region 2
Regional Operators

Region 3
Regional Operators

Primary Poller Additional Pollers

EOC

Primary Poller Additional Pollers

Primary Poller Additional Pollers

Orion Database Server

Orion Database Server

Orion Database Server

Overview: This is the traditional SolarWinds Orion distributed deployment option, comprising separate instances of SolarWinds Orion installed locally in each region with the Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) available as a top level dashboard to access data across all related instances. This option is well suited to organizations with multiple regions or sites where the quantity of nodes to be monitored in each region would warrant both localized data collection and storage. It works well when there are regional teams responsible for their own environments, and when regional teams need autonomy over their monitoring platform, preferring not to share a single Orion instance. This option gives regional operators this autonomy as well as the ability to have different modules and license sizes installed in each region to match individual requirements. While the systems are segregated between regions, all data can still be accessed from the centrally located Enterprise Operations Console (EOC). Deployment Notes: Data is polled and stored locally in each region. Each region is licensed independently; modules and license sizes can be mixed and matched accordingly. For example, o o o Region 1 has NPM SLX, SAM AL1500 and UDT 50,000 and 2 Additional Polling Engines Region 2 has NPM SL500, NTA for SL500 and UDT 2500 Region 3 has NPM SL100 only

8 Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

The Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) can optionally be used as a centralized dashboard to access data stored regionally: o o o A reliable static connection must be available between each region. EOC will perform incremental polling of each Orion server for current status and statistics only, it does not store historical data. For this reason, the bandwidth used by EOC is not considered to be significant.

Each region is managed, administered, and upgraded independently. For example, node, user, alert, and report creation, deletion and modification are performed separately in each region. Certain objects, such as alert definitions, Universal Device Pollers, and Server and Application Monitor templates may be exported and imported between instances. Each region can scale independently by adding additional polling engines as required.

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products 9

Centralized Deployment with Remote Polling Engines

Primary Region
Orion Web Console Regional Operators

Primary Orion Server

SQL Data (Port 1433)

SWIS (Port 17777)

SWIS (Port 17777)

Orion Database Server

Region 2
SQL Data (Port 1433) SQL Data (Port 1433)

Region 3
Regional Operators

Regional Operators

Additional Polling Engine

Overview:

Additional Polling Engine

This option combines the benefits of a centralized Orion instance with the flexibility of localized data collection. Management and administration is done centrally on the primary server. This option is well suited to organizations that require centralized IT Management and localized collection of monitoring data. Deployment Notes: Data is polled locally in each region and stored centrally in the primary region.

10 Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products

The combination of the Primary Orion Server, database server and all remotely deployed polling engines is considered to be a single SolarWinds Orion instance This single instance is be managed and administered centrally. For example, node, user, alert, and report creation, deletion and modification is performed centrally on the Primary Orion Server only. When nodes are added, the user selects the polling engine to which the node is assigned. All data collection for that node is then performed by that polling engine, and nodes can be reassigned between polling engines, as required. A reliable static connection must be available between each region: o o This connection will be continually transmitting MS SQL Data to the Orion Database Server; it will also communicate with the Primary Orion Server. The latency (RTT) between each additional polling engine and the database server should be below 300ms.

Each polling engine uses Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ). o o This allows data to be cached locally on the additional polling engine servers in the event of a connection outage to the Orion Database Server. The amount of data that can be cached will depend on the amount of disk space available on the polling engine server. A general guideline is that up to one hour of data can be cached. Once the connection to the database is restored the Orion Database Server will be updated with the locally cached data

Regional Operators in each region will log into the Orion Web Console in the Primary Region where SolarWinds Orion is installed to view data. An optional Additional Web Server is available, and it can be installed in secondary regions. Regional operators can then log into their local web consoles. All KPIs, such as Node Response Times, will be calculated from the perspective of each regional Additional Polling Engine. For example, the response time for a monitored node in Region 2 will be equal to the round trip time from the Additional Polling Engine in Region 2 to that node.

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Products 11

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does each module have its own polling engine? Specifically, would I need to install both a SolarWinds NPM polling engine and a separate SolarWinds SAM polling engine? A: No, any Additional Polling Engine can have all relevant modules installed on it and perform polling for all of these modules. It works in the same way as your primary polling engine on your main server.

Q: Are the polling limits cumulative or independent? For example, can a single polling engine poll 12k NPM elements AND 10k SAM Monitors, together? A: Yes, a single polling engine can poll up to the limits of each module installed, providing sufficient hardware resources are available.

Q: Are there different size license available for the Additional Polling Engine? A: No, the Additional Polling Engine is available in an unlimited license size only.

Q: Can you add an Additional Polling Engine to any size module license? A: Yes, you can add an Additional Polling Engine to any size license, however, it will not increase your license size. In other words, if you add an additional polling engine to an SL100, you will still have a limit of 100 nodes/interfaces/volumes, but their monitoring load will be spread across two polling engines instead of one.

Q: Will an Additional Polling Engine allow me to monitor overlapping IP addresses? A: Yes, you will be able to add nodes with the same IP address to separate polling engines, allowing you to monitor overlapping IP Addresses.