Solarwinds VM Requirements for installation

hi,

I am new to solarwinds but earlier i have implemented EMC smarts but i have not designed but in my new opp i need to design the environment.

Expectation would be managing 27000+ nodes (routers, Switches, Firewalls, Access Controllers). Currently we have provided the BOM details below:

Solarwinds NPM SLX - Quantity 2

Solarwinds APE for Solarwinds unlimited Licence - Quantity 15

Solarwinds NCM DLX - Quantity 1

Solarwinds NTA Module for solarwinds NPM SLX - Quantity 1

Solarwinds Network Topology Mapper -1

Solarwinds Additinal Web Server - 1

Our Plan would be configuring in this way, NPM with NTA for the device we required for Network Traffic Monitoring and another one NPM and NCM

My question are as follows

1. How many VM Servers are needed to install all this module? If so what are the modules can be added in same Server?

2. If we are going for different VMs, how it will interconnected with the Network connecting with all the modules?

3. Need to know how SQL Database is configured and do we need to do clustering?

4. Do we need Separate VM for each APE?

5. Where do we need to configure NTM and Additional web server?

Requesting your help to proceed further.

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vinay.by

Hi Subash,

Why would you want to post this on thwack, rather you could send a mail to SolarWinds support and they would help you with all the details that you are looking for, but then I can help you with few pointers which would help you though.

A. I am afraid i dont quite understand how is your infrastructure placed -> 27,000+ nodes, can all these devices be monitored from a central location or do you have any DMZ/restricted zones ? In such cases you can have a APE installed in DMZ/restricted zone, you can use APE based on geographical regions (NA/EMEA/APAC/Restricted zones) or you can use APE to balance the load on monitoring(which is number of nodes). For example divide the nodes equally amongst Primary poller (Primary server) + APE (Additional pollers) - Monitor 5,000 to 8,000 devices from Primary Poller and divide the remaining on APE's like say 8,000 to 12,000 nodes.

B. "Our Plan would be configuring in this way, NPM with NTA for the device we required for Network Traffic Monitoring and another one NPM and NCM" - Again why so ? Is it because of restricted zones in your environment where few nodes can't be monitored from central location ? If that isn't the case, all 3 modules can run as one -> NPM,NCM and NTA can be installed on a single solarwinds server and its more effective and efficient, as well all metrics combine together which is a better way to monitor the infra. You can have an additional server/VM for AWS and NTA FSDB (you can install these 2 modules on a separate VM/Server) and lastly you can install the APE's as required to balance the monitoring load based on node count as mentioned in point A. (You will need one additional VM/Server for each APE that's a good way to do it, but if I am not wrong you could install multiple APE's on the same VM/Server as well (I have read it somewhere that this is possible, multiple APE's can be installed on the same server/VM), I would still suggest to go with an individual VM/Server for each APE)

C. "Solarwinds NPM SLX - Quantity 2" - As mentioned in the point B you would need only one license if there are no restricted zones in your infra.

D. "Solarwinds APE for Solarwinds unlimited Licence - Quantity 15" -> Again Why do you need so many APE's for your environment ? The only reason would be restricted zones or APE's based on Geographical location, but if the location doesn't really matter, then 3 APE's should be more than sufficent to manage a environment which has 27,000+ nodes (1 Primary Poller + 3 APE's can monitor 27,000+ devices)

E. "Solarwinds Network Topology Mapper -1" - Cant comment much about this though, NPM provides maps, read more on the maps available in NPM and if that would suffice your requirement there's no need for you to go with NTM, if NTM is really required then yes you could probably install this on AWS and NTA FSDB Server/VM mentioned in point B or spawn a new VM/Server as required. It totally depends on how you want to take this ahead.

F. And yes, if you still need 2 separate installations as you have mentioned (NPM,NTA & NPM,NCM) then check EOC module (this would help you in a consolidated view).

My question are as follows

1. How many VM Servers are needed to install all this module? If so what are the modules can be added in same Server?

I have answered this already in the above points, just collate the information as per your need

2. If we are going for different VMs, how it will interconnected with the Network connecting with all the modules?

Check point F if you are talking about combining details of 2 separate installations in your environment.

If its a single umbrella that you are talking about then APE,AWS,NTA FSDB talks to your Primary Poller (Primary Server) and Database used for it. Check the port requirements and obtain what ports need to be opened for them to talk to each other.

3. Need to know how SQL Database is configured and do we need to do clustering?

MS SQL DB clustering it totally left to you, if you need high availability on your DB yes you will need to have that in place. SolarWinds will not help you with it - talk to your SQL DBA for that, the only requirement for SolarWinds modules are that the DB should always be available for the application to function, as simple as that.

MS SQL 2014 and MS SQL 2016 comes with Always On Availability Groups (read more on it if you need a SQL cluster kind of setup in place), this would incur additional VM's

Note: You never spoke about High Availability for Solarwinds modules that you are talking about, if you need High Availability for Solarwinds application and its modules you will need to purchase a separate High Availability License for your Primary Poller + APE's and if you need High Availability then you will as well need additional servers/vm , you will need a secondary server/vm for each VM/Server that you have built for your primary setup.

4. Do we need Separate VM for each APE?

I have already answered that in point B

5. Where do we need to configure NTM and Additional web server?

I have already answered that in point B and E

Hope it helps for now, wait for a couple of more posts, you would see lot many cool posts and people suggesting whats best for you

subash14

Hi Vinay,

Thank you so much for your response.

As per your suggestion we go with NPM,NCM and NTA in a single VM Server, however Can we go with the below BOM?

Solarwinds NPM SLX - Quantity 2 - Reduced to 1

Solarwinds APE for Solarwinds unlimited Licence - Quantity 15 Reduced to 5

Solarwinds NCM DLX - Quantity 1

Solarwinds NTA Module for solarwinds NPM SLX - Quantity 1

Solarwinds Network Topology Mapper -1

Solarwinds Additinal Web Server - 1

1. Whether one HA license will support all the above modules?

2. Whether all this modules support Application Clustering for HA with Single license?

3. Whether all the 5 APE need to be hosted in separate VM Servers individually?

4. Additional Web Server can be hosted in Separate VM Server, Can i know how many users can connect simultaneously via orion Web console and via Web Server?

Requesting your support

vinay.by

Hi Subash,

1. Whether one HA license will support all the above modules?

Yes, thats correct, but there is a catch here. HA is a generic license which can be used for Primary Poller or for an APE.

For Primary Poller say you purchase a HA license, HA will only be available on your Primary server, if you need HA for APE you will need to purchase additional HA licenses accordingly.

Each of these will need a separate VM, say Primary Server Node A VM, Primary Server HA Node B VM, similarly APE Server Node A VM, APE Server HA Node B VM ..... (you will have to double the VM count where HA is required)

2. Whether all this modules support Application Clustering for HA with Single license?

Yes, HA supports these modules -> NPM,NCM and NTA. (yes its a single license for Primary Server which includes all 3 modules, if HA is required for APE you will have to purchase HA APE license separately).

But you will have to keep one thing in mind when it comes to NTA, NTA uses 2 DB's, the first one is your Solarwinds DB and the second one is NTA FSDB (Flow Storage Data Base), you will need to think about NTA FSDB(as mentioned in my previous post you can place this on AWS VM), if NTA FSDB VM is not reachable then even though your NTA module is working(up and running) it will not collect any data from the devices (NTA FSDB VM should always be up and running, HA doesn't cover this part).

3. Whether all the 5 APE need to be hosted in separate VM Servers individually?

Its always good to have a separate VM for APE due to performance issues (Its one is to one ration 1 VM for 1 APE or 1 VM per APE), as mentioned in my previous post I did read it on one of the thwack posts sometime back, that multiple APE's can sit on the same VM, I mean you can have 3 or more APE's running on same VM, but I am not sure if someone is using this kind of a model and I am not sure if it exists because I haven't tried something of this sort - consult solarwinds support)

4. Additional Web Server can be hosted in Separate VM Server, Can i know how many users can connect simultaneously via orion Web console and via Web Server?

I don't think we have a limit as such, but recommendation is 10-20 concurrent users at any given point of time, read the below post

https://thwack.solarwinds.com/message/363518#363518

Just trying to give you a high level view, get the details cross verified with solarwinds support , Hope it helps .......

m_roberts

This is definitely something you need to run through very thoroughly.

As vinay.by has already highlighted, there are a number of options available; central polling, remote APE's, multi-instance with Enterprise Operations Console. APE's can be stacked whereby up to 3 polling engines are installed on a single server, but this is not always advised, but obviously reduces server counts. It is always our advice to have all functionality in Orion within the same instance, ie. do not install NPM and NCM as one instance and one as NPM and NTA etc. There is very rarely a need or benefit to do so. This also translates to Orion instances covering network and server/application installations - 1 instance for ALL the IT systems!

Key considerations you need to detemine:

1. How does your network and geographic topology affect your architecture design for the Orion platform

2. What functionality do you need

3. How much HA configuration do you truly need (you do not need to HA license every server role)

4. How many users will be accessing the platform

5. What server resources can you provide - your SQL Server will need to be pretty powerful to support such scaling

Hope this helps.

Mark