It's common to hear many inquire about recommended hardware specifications for server sizing of Orion products. Below is a list of hw specs that seem to satisfy medium to large deployments of Orion with multiple Orion products installed (i.e. utilizing a SLX license or multiple SLX licenses and modules). Keep in mind this list also recommends separating the Orion SQL database and the NTA FSDB with listed specs. At this point and time with Solarwinds products and their current state a features, these requirements seem to work well. Of course over time and as products evolve these could change. However, this should be helpful for those looking for a good starting point.
Server 1: Orion Application Server
Recommended Deployment specs: (Physical Server or Virtual Machine)
- Quad Core Processor 3GHz or better
- 16-32GB RAM
- 2 x 146GB 15k Hard Drives (RAID 1/Mirrored Settings)
- 1GBE NIC
- Windows 2012, or 2008 R2 Server (64-bit) with IIS installed, running in 32-bit mode.
- .Net 3.5 + 4.0
NTA Specific Information
- If the Server is running on 32-bit, NTA 4.0 stores flows data in the SQL Database. Use higher end requirements for this deployment (NTA Flow Storage Database is not installed at all).
- If NTA is used primarily for CBQoS monitoring, enhance the processor, RAM and disk size accordingly.
- For more details, see Orion Requirements for the Orion Database Server in the Orion Network Performance Monitor Administrator Guide.
Server 2: Primary Database Server
Software Installed:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2012, or 2008 R2 Standard Edition.
Recommended Deployment specs(Physical server recommended)
Can the SQL server being utilized by Solarwinds run in a virtual environment?
DB on a virtual infrastructure can be done, however, Solarwinds does ask that the database have dedicated storage. MSSQL is a highly transaction database, and therefore is heavily dependent on disk performance. Dedicated storage via a Raw device mapping is the preferred method to ensuring dedicated performance to the DB.
- Dual Quad Core Processor 3 GHz or better
- 32-64 GB RAM (Should be expandable)
- Hardware RAID Controller with a battery backed-up write back cache.
- Disk Subsystem 1 Array 1: 2 x 146GB 15K disks RAID 1 (mirroring) Operating system.
- Disc Subsystem 2 Array 2: 2 x 146GB 15K disks RAID 1 (Pagefile + Extra Storage).
- Disk Subsystem 3 Array 3: with 6x 15k 146GB or 300GB Disks configured in a RAID 1+0 arrays to allow for maximum write performance. This is for your SQL MDF AND FILEGROUPS.
- Disk Subsystem 4 Array 4: with 4x 15k 146GB or 300GB Disks configured in a RAID 1+0 arrays to allow for maximum write performance. This is for your SQL LDF Transaction LOG File.
- 1Gbit LAN port.
- Windows 2008 R2 Server (64-bit)
Server 3: NTA Flow Storage Database Server
Software Installed
- NTA Flow storage Service (Part of NTA)
Recommended Deployment specs (Physical or Virtual Machine)
- Quad core 3GHz processor or better.
- 32 - 64 GB of RAM. To ensure optimal performance, RAM should be increased as the database size increases.
- 500 GB of storage capacity on a 15k rpm SAS local NTFS disk.
- 8 GB for every sustained 1000 Flows/s with 30-days retention period.
- 64-bit Windows Server 2012, or 2008 Server.
Important NTA Notes:
- Itanium-based servers are not supported.
- You can install the NTA Flow Storage:
- on a Polling Engine Server (Primary or Additional)
- on a remote machine
- on a VM with in your environment.
- For optimal performance, we strongly recommend a dedicated machine for the NTA Flow Storage database.
- For further information on the Flow Storage Database Server, see this links.
Servers 4+: Additional Polling Engine Servers
The number of Polling Engine Servers required will depend on the total number of NPM elements, SAM component monitors, UDT Ports, NCM Devices and VNQM IP SLA Operations.
Recommended Deployment specs (Physical or Virtual Machine)
- Quad Core Processor 3 GHz or better
- 8-16GB RAM
- 2 x 146GB 15k Hard Drives (RAID 1/Mirrored Settings)
- 1GBE NIC
- Windows 2012, or 2008 Server (64-bit) with IIS installed, running in 32-bit mode.
- .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0
Virtualization Manager (Virtual Appliance)
- 4 CPUs
- 8-16 GB RAM
- 250 GB of Disk
- OS Self-contained
Scalability Guidelines
For information on additional polling engines and distributed deployments using EOC, see the Orion Scalability Engines Guidelines.
Orion Performance Guide:
http://www.solarwinds.com/documentation/Orion/docs/OrionPerformance.pdf
SQL Performance Guide:
http://www.solarwinds.com/documentation/Orion/docs/OriondbBestPractices.pdf