Need to re-install Netflow Traffic Analyzer (steps?)

I wanted to run this by the group to make sure I'm on the right track here. In the initial Solarwinds deployment, many moons and engineers ago, NPM was deployed on its' own server and NTA was also deployed on its' own server. For it to work, the server with NTA also had to have another instance of NPM installed on it. I understand this is a no-no and not a correct deployment. Especially since the "main" NPM instance/server is has the meat - all company nodes are in it.

Currently, the NTA deployment isn't doing anything. It has maybe 5 Netflow sources coming into it, and none of them are really valid. The instance of NPM on this server doesn't have all the company nodes, and it is way behind on software upgrades.

Currently, the NPM deployment is up to date on all the nodes in the network, and is running the latest software.

My Project Steps (rough draft):

- On the secondary NTA specific server, should I just un-install the NTA instance? As well as the NPM instance over there? It isn't really doing anything, other then double polling nodes.

- On the main NPM specific server, should I then download the latest version of NTA and install it fresh?

- Then, I would pick a random WAN router for a satellite location and add the configuration lines needed to enable flows to go to the main server.

- Check the new instance of Netflow on the main server, and see if I am getting the new flows from the satellite WAN router I configured.

- If the flows are indeed coming in correct, I then use configuration manager to push the config lines needed to enable flows to all my WAN devices in the network.

thoughts??

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jemertz

Have you looked over the upgrade guide?
SolarWinds Knowledge Base :: Compatibility of SolarWinds Orion Products for Installation and Upgrade

...although with what you've described, I would think it would be more comparable to an uninstall of your current node and install fresh on your NPM server rather than an actual upgrade, as you suggested in your questions. You can find the NTA install doc here:

SolarWinds Online Help

highstone351

Agreed that you should see the upgrade instructions.

It is no longer needed to have a second instance of Orion on a second server. But, don't go giving that server up just yet!

NTA is now supposed to be set up on a second server, all by its lonely self!

If you take down the second ORion, Assuming that you really are not using it anyway, take all of the software off of it. Unlicense it as well and save the information, (Suggest backing up the complete server first, jsut in case you need to go back.)

On the main server, you will be installing some base programs but NTA will really need to be installed on the SECOND server. All that this does is run the NTA software processes and construct a NEW SWQL database that is NOT SQL. you do NOT need a second SQL license. Please read the upgrade notes at this point. They are pretty good but run through them a couple of times before doing this step.

Now you need to make sure that the SQL server is reachable from the NTA server (to be). You will need to have the UID and PW for the SQL server so that NTA can reference it for Nodes and such. Also, the Orion server (number 1) will need to have rights on the NTA server to write the data to it.

You do NOT need to change any Netflow destinations in your equipment if the Orion server is the current destination. NPM will handle this.

You WILL have to let the NTA server cull all of the records out of the SQL database. It will ask during the installation on the NTA server. Say yes and let it do it right away. It will gather the data and format it for you and then be able to present it to you in a couple of hours, if you have a large installation.

Again, look at the install notes and make sure you are familiar with them. After all of this is done, make sure you can see most of the pages correctly.