Introduction
The Orion Platform team is happy to announce the availability of 2020.2.1 which includes the much anticipated Orion Remote Collector. The Orion Platform 2020.2.1 release notes contains all of the detail on individual bug fixes and improvements https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/Success_Center/orionplatform/Content/Release_Notes/Orion_Platform_2020-2-1_release_notes.htm
What is the Orion Remote Collector?
The Orion Remote Collector (ORC) functions as a lightweight distributed polling option providing additional deployment flexibility. ORCs are a lightweight localized polling option that includes automatic data storage and forwarding for easy monitoring even in low-bandwidth/high-latency environments. ORCs have the ability to monitor endpoints using agentless protocols such as SNMP and WMI. ORCs are not a replacement for additional polling engines / remote office pollers and are fundamentally different in their architecture and capabilities.
The ORC provides a limited set of polling capabilities for NPM and SAM only.
Use Cases
ORCs are beneficial in environments where users want to provide device monitoring but do not want to do it across the WAN or install expensive infrastructure to run a full polling engine. ORC provides an option for customers to do this.
Orion deployed On-Prem with Remote Collector monitoring remote locations.
In this example, the Orion server is deployed on-prem. An additional polling engine in the DMZ has bi-directional communication with the primary polling engine and Orion database server. The Remote collector is deployed to an additional network segment and is providing localized monitoring of endpoints. The agent initiated communication back to the additional polling engine uses a single port.
Orion deployed in Cloud with remote collector monitoring On-Prem.
In this example, Orion is deployed within cloud infrastructures such as Amazon EC2 or Azure. The Orion remote collector is deployed On-Prem providing localized polling of devices. The agent initiated communication back to the primary polling engine uses a single port.
Benefits of the ORC
- Utilizes Agent technology for communication with Orion.
- No direct connection to the database is needed.
- Simplified architecture which can be deployed in remote locations
- Ability to poll/cache over unreliable networks (stores up to 24 hours with no connection to poller)
Technical Detail
- Based on a Windows agent, running in a special mode to poll remote machines via JobEngine agent plugin.
- Deployment and updates will be driven by Agent Management service standard operations.
- Can perform the polling jobs without connection to its master poller and store the job results locally (in JE service memory, maximum 24hrs old results).
- ORCs serve as a remote JobEngine. Result transfer into the database is the responsibility of the master poller (Primary engine or Additional polling engine)
- ORCs can't talk directly to the database or to other ORCs. The only connection to the platform is through the Agent Management service BusinessLayer plugin on its master poller via a single opened port.
- Master pollers don't need to see the nodes in the networks that the ORCs are polling. The only thing the Master needs to see is the ORC.
Licensing
Who is eligible for using the ORC?
ORC is available free for those who have NAM and/or SAM Node-based licenses only.
ORC Scalability
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The total number of elements on all ORCs connected to one polling engine is limited by the license of that polling engine. For example, a polling engine which can scale to 12k elements which can be distributed across a maximum of:
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100 ORCs per polling engine
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1000 Elements per ORC
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ORC Requirements
Full details on requirements and supported polling technologies can be found here
