What if I use the wrong Database Collation setting for Solarwinds?

sparky164

Hi all,

We've just had a new Solarwinds install, which had its SQL database inadvertently set to use the default SQL Server database collation setting "Latin1_General_CI_AS" which we have been advised by Solarwinds is not a supported collation setting.

See supported database collation settings here:

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/Success_Center/orionplatform/Content/Core-Orion-Requirements-sw1916.htm#MoreOnDBreqs

The response from tech support is a little vague as in, this may or may not cause errors therefore you may or may not need to worry about it.

I'm pushing for a more solid response on whether we need to correct this, but thought i'd put this question to the wider community for comment or actual experience?

What issues is this likely to cause? Will it cause inaccuracy of reporting, or disrupt functionality? Should we fix this so we have a fully compliant database supported by Solarwinds?

JaroslawLadyga

I've installed Orion on many different SQL instances - some of them reported invalid collation. However I never met real problem with it. Very often MS SQL server you get for Orion installation is configured already and installed on different system language than English(US) and/or configured for different locales. From my experience collation parameter can influence on sorting in queries which may have impact on some results of queries. But as I never found any problems with that - I'm ignoring this message and my suggestion is mark it as 'Silence check' as well as message that your MS SQL server is running on virtual machine or your system time region is different on Orion server than on SQL server only because both servers use different system languages (and the difference is in different naming the same time zone in different languages).