Opinion--NPM 9.5 pollers; does x64 make a difference given 32 bit NPM code and IIS, SQL client, etc.

Question

Hi folks,

I'm relatively new to SW, but plenty of time with the NetView's and VitalNet's of the world.

Our existing environment has been upgraded a number of times and we struggle with having to cycle the SW services weekly. We are in a position to rebuild our NPM environment; was hoping folks would be willing to share opinions on whether or not there is a noticeable improvement between x86 and x64 for pollers with:

Single/dual proc VM with 4 GB RAM

*  physical servers are possible, but perf reports using MSFT's PAL are not conclusive that our current VM poller is overtaxed

We have two pollers--at least one would have Engineer Toolset and run IIS for web consoles. We max out the supported number of managed elements per poller, and really need a third.

Normally I lean towards x64, especially with it being a requirement for Win2K8 R2 (which we are moving to quickly). The searches I've done seem to indicate problems exist if one forgets to install 32 bit versions of SQL client, etc--but nothing clearly indicating that NPM 9.5 is a good or poor fit for x64.

Appreciate opinions!--Drew

dvanorder · Answer

Yes--I think we are all in agreement using x64 on the DB side is wise. Nothing needs to translate to 32 bit through WOW. My gut is telling me there is no benefit to running x64 pollers considering the supporting code must also be x86. Maybe using x86 with /3GB to let the SW processes have more memory is the way to go.

It would be great if the Orion folks had a position on this. Solarwinds is about the only piece of x86 code left in our shop, outside a SAP connector for the Operations Manager 2007 platform. We are moving to 2008 R2 quickly, so what then--we will have to be on x64.

Thanks for chiming in folks!

mr.e · Answer

But what about Drew's original question?

Is there any benefit of using x64 instead of using x32, given that Orion NPM is an x32 app and IIS must be configured to run in x32 mode?

bshopp · Answer

We typically recommend if you are going to invest, it is on the SQL side.  So do x64 there for sure.