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Net Flow Server System Requirements

inwsld over 14 years ago

Dear all,

I'd like to ask if anyone has run into issues with server resources while using Net Flow. I ask because we're thinking about implementing Net Flow (we currently just use NPM), but are unsure if it would cause too much of burden on the server. We understand that, according to the data sheet, Net Flow requires 2.0 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM and 2 GB Disk Space. However, musn't it be installed into the primary polling engine? We currently have four SW servers (primary, secondary, hot-standby and additional Web), including a separate box running SQL. We monitor a total of about 5,000 objects, divided about 60% - 40% between the primary and secondary. Would it be prudent to move most, if not all, of the objects monitored off of the server that would be running Net Flow? We're also thinking about adding the APM module too sometime down the road.

Thanks very much in advance,

Steve

0 FormerMember over 14 years ago

However, musn't it be installed into the primary polling engine?
Yes, it must be on the primary Orion server

but are unsure if it would cause too much of burden on the server
NetFlow has some impact on the server, but it has more impact on the database because of the amount of data being written. Be sure to optimize DB config for data writing.
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0 chris.lapoint over 14 years ago in reply to FormerMember
As Denny noted, NetFlow will have impact on the database, which is primarily influenced by following factors:
Number of NetFlow source interfaces and their capacity
Average amount of traffic traversing through the network
If you know this data, we can come up with some ballpark estimates of DB requirements.
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0 Donald_Francis over 14 years ago in reply to chris.lapoint

Something that the SolarWinds guys are not emphazing enough is the hurt it will put on your DB box. As they mention it totally depends on the number of interfaces sending netflow and how much data those interfaces handle but if its more than say 50 you are goign to see a serious increase in SQL server activity mostly in the drive area. Your read and write drive queues are going to take a beating.
So assuming you have a good SQL box; dual quad core, 10+ GB RAM etc I would make sure you have the DB files running on a large RAID 10 array. No RAID 5 and make sure the log files are on a seperate drive and oddly enough those are not hit to hard.
Again the drives on your SQL box are going to be what gets hit the hardest.
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