NTA Flow Storage Database query

Hi Thwackers,

I am planning to implement a setup which contains NPM,NCM,NTA+HA

I have 4 VM's with me out of which 2 VM's are being used for Netperfmon/Solarwinds DB (2 node cluster) - for DB Failover.

I am left out with 2 VM's - one of them would be a primary poller another would be a seconder server (HA).

Now the question is - Where should i install NTA Flow Storage DB ? Solarwinds suggests it should be done on a separate server altogether and it shouldn't sit on Solarwinds Primary Poller or on the DB, since I dont have an additional machine, whats the best approach for the same.

1. Can it sit on the Solarwinds DB Server if so how would it work when a failover happens ?

2. Can it sit on Solarwinds primary poller if so how would it work when a failover happens ?

Thanks in advance.

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nta 4.2.2

npm 12.1

Accepted answers

aLTeReGo

FSDB does support a high availability configuration as outlined in the NTA Administrator's Guide. It does not use Orion's HA solution though.

https://www.jtc-i.co.jp/support/documents/guide-e/OrionNTAAdministratorGuide.pdf (Page 116)

All comments

sum_giais

The NTA database isn't HA aware in any way. I don't think it would stop you from putting it on your SQL cluster node but... It's more a question of best practice. You'd have one SQL node that always, consistently would have higher disk I/O, net traffic etc. You could eventually see very adverse results of that decision down the line.

Even if it may be a pain I'd provision another VM, solely for the NTA database. Hopefully that's somewhat of an option, that's a tough pickle your in.

Good luck!

aLTeReGo

Failing sum_giais's suggestion above of adding an additional server, I would recommend installing the FSDB on the SQL server. You cannot install FSDB on the primary Orion server if it will be protected by HA.

vinay.by

Hi aLTeReGo,

I haven't used NTA in the past, I have another question say suppose i install the FSDB on DB Server - I do understand Solarwinds doesn't support a failover DB concept, but in my case the DB is on a 2 node cluster.

1. When it comes to Orion DB I don't have to worry about it as I would provide the DB cluster IP for connectivity.

2. But when it comes to FSDB do I have to install it on both the nodes (A&B)? My question is with respect to NTFS filesystem . What happens when A is down and when B is active ? How would NTA Work ?

aLTeReGo

FSDB does support a high availability configuration as outlined in the NTA Administrator's Guide. It does not use Orion's HA solution though.

https://www.jtc-i.co.jp/support/documents/guide-e/OrionNTAAdministratorGuide.pdf (Page 116)

orionshark

Hi,

My input here: Get the extra server for NTA flow storage - the improvements in performance is HUGE compared to placing this on another server shared with other stuff.

The time and money spend on spinning up an extra VM for this is VERY well spend on the long run :-)

vinay.by

Thank you, but I am trying to understand what is stored on Netperfmon DB and what data is stored on FSDB. If FSDB is down would NTA stop completely or would it still show the details of last flow data on Solarwinds Web Page ? (When FSDB goes down would it only affect the historic data that's being moved from NTA to FSDB ?)

sum_giais

If the FSDB database is down, SolarWinds can't access the NTA data. The page would probably hit an error of some sort once refreshed. If you did add FSDB as a role in the FCI to make it HA, I would think you can make an affinity or anti-affinity rules just like in ESXi. That makes me curious...

aLTeReGo

sum_giais is correct. If the Flow Storage Database is down, flow collection will cease and within the Orion web interface you will be unable to view NetFlow related information until the FSDB is brought back online.