Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability

Participant’s Guide

Scaling Hybrid Cloud

Observability
Participant’s Guide

2023 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

Table of Contents
Hybrid Cloud Observability Architecture 3
The SolarWinds Self-Hosted Platform 3
Hybrid Cloud Observability System Requirements 5
Hybrid Cloud Observability Polling Methods 5
Hybrid Cloud Observability Licensing and Monitoring 6
How Much Am I Polling Right Now? 6
What Are the Default Polling Intervals? 7
How Much Can a Single Poller Handle? 7
SolarWinds Scalability Engines 7
Useful Links 8

2023 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

Hybrid Cloud Observability Architecture

The SolarWinds Self-Hosted Platform

The SolarWinds® Platform encompasses many disciplines and has the flexibility to help
customers with on-prem, hybrid, and cloud management.

Within the SolarWinds Platform, there are two broadly defined sub-components designed to
help customers whether they are fully on-prem, have a hybrid of on-prem and cloud, or are fully
cloud-based.

 The SolarWinds Self-Hosted Platform

o Updated, expanded next-generation evolution of the platform that supports
modules such as NPM and SAM
o Newer platform with many improvements and hosts not only the modules but
also Hybrid Cloud Observability
o Shares much of the same functionality from the Orion Platform such as
discovery, mapping, alerts, reports and centralized data and access control

 Hybrid Cloud Observability

o New solution built from a foundation of features found in the independent
modules
o Comprehensive solution that can monitor and manage entities across the
network and IT infrastructure.
o Unlocks functionality for a complete picture of your entire IT environment in a
single solution
o Designed to address many common requests heard from customers and has
features of its own
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Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

 Product Modules
o Product modules such as SAM, NTA and NPM to name a few, still are supported
on the self-hosted platform
o Upgrading from the Orion Platform (2020.2.6 and earlier) to the SolarWinds Self-
Hosted Platform is recommended and running the newer version of the platform
while still running product modules is supported
o The self-hosted platform offers security and performance enhancements, over
the Orion Platform, along with new features

 The SolarWinds SaaS Platform

o Supports SaaS offerings, most notably SolarWinds Observability
o Hosts a powerful AIOPs and Machine Learning engine

 SolarWinds Observability
o “As-a-service” offering for cloud-native environments
o Contains features such as application management for development and
troubleshooting digital and real user experience monitoring and website and
database monitoring

With Hybrid Cloud Observability, customers who are fully on prem, or have an on prem and self-
hosted hybrid environment can monitor their complete infrastructure. SolarWinds Observability
running on the SaaS Platform supports customers working in a hybrid environment with cloud
dev ops along with fully cloud native environments.

 Platform Connect
o Feature of Hybrid Cloud Observability that “connects” Hybrid Cloud Observability
to SolarWinds Observability for unified visibility and function
o Allows you to import network and self-hosted entity data from your Hybrid Cloud
Observability installation to SolarWinds Observability and monitor both
environments in a single web interface
o Utilize AIOPs and machine learning technologies found in the SaaS Platform, to
significantly improve the intelligence of your Hybrid Cloud Observability alert
triggers by using anomaly-based alerting logic
o Anomaly-based alerts follow the defined trigger conditions but also uses machine
learning to “learn” the entity behavior to determine whether the behavior is
anomalous for the entity
 Product Integrations
o Currently integrated products still supported and integrate with Hybrid Cloud
Observability and module installations on the self-hosted platform
o Hybrid Cloud Observability also enhances security integrations with the addition
of integration points for Security Event Manager (SEM) and Access Rights
Manager (ARM)

SolarWinds Self Hosted Platform Guide:

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Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/orionplatform/content/orion_platform_
administrator_guide.htm

Hybrid Cloud Observability System Requirements

Operating Systems:
Windows Server 2022
Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2016
STIG-compliant OSs
FIPS-compliant OSs
Device Guard-compliant OSs

MSSQL Databases:
SQL Server Standard or Enterprise
MSSQL 2019
MSSQL 2017
MSSQL 2016 SP1

For more information, visit:

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/orionplatform/content/system_require
ments/solarwinds_platform_2022-4_system_requirements.htm

Hybrid Cloud Observability Polling Methods

Standard Polling
• Status
• Polled via: ICMP, SNMP, WMI (low overhead)
• Node status (response time, and packet loss)
• Interface status
• Volumes status
• Statistics
• Polled via: SNMP, WMI (high overhead)
• Node:
• CPU and memory
• Interfaces:
• Interface traffic
• Interface errors and discards
• Volume:
• Volume usage and capacity

Non-Standard Polling
• Polled via: ICMP, SNMP, WMI, APIs
• VIM – Virtualization Integration Module
• UnDP – Universal device poller
• Hardware health
• Wireless
• Network Insight™
2023 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.
Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

• NetPath™
• Cloud – Amazon®, Azure®
• UCS\Routing\Topology\Multicast\SwitchStack\Energywise

Hybrid Cloud Observability Licensing and Monitoring

• Node-based, subscription licensing
• SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability tiers:
• Essentials
• Advanced
• Everything in Essentials, plus log analysis, flow analysis and configuration
file management
• Enterprise Scale
• Enterprise Scale—additional scaling and support features for enterprise
Essentials and Advanced environments
• Added to any Essentials or Advanced license of 1,000 nodes or greater
• Enterprise Scale includes the following:
• Additional polling engines
• Additional web servers
• High availability
• Enterprise Operations Console
• Lab license
• Premier support

How Much Am I Polling Right Now?

The recommended node count to consider additional polling engines is approximately 1000
nodes. This is not a hard limit. It is possible to poll more than 1000 nodes with no effect on
performance, but also possible a polling engine will be required at less than 1000 nodes.

 Adding more resources to the polling engine WON’T raise this upper limit
 When you exceed the limitations of the poller, the polling engine will automatically adjust
or extend your polling interval to compensate
 The upper limit can be increased by extending polling intervals
You can see your current polling rate threshold in the web console. Go to Settings > All
Settings > Polling Engines.

Polling rate thresholds

 85% and higher
o You get a warning on the Polling Engines page and in Notifications
 100% and higher
o You get a warning on the Polling Engines page and in Notifications
o You receive an alert
o The polling engine will automatically start adjusting your polling intervals

For more information, visit:

https://support.solarwinds.com/SuccessCenter/s/article/Poller-Status-Warning-A-poller-is-either-
approaching-or-in-excess-of-its-polling-rate-limit?language=en_US
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Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

What Are the Default Polling Intervals?

POLLING INTERVALS
DEFAULT NODE POLL INTERVAL 120 seconds
DEFAULT INTERFACE POLL INTERVAL 120 seconds
DEFAULT VOLUME POLL INTERVAL 120 seconds
DEFAULT REDISCOVERY INTERVAL 30 minutes

POLLING STATISTICS INTERVALS

DEFAULT NODE TOPOLOGY POLL 120 minutes
INTERVAL
DEFAULT NODE STATISTICS POLL 10 minutes
INTERVAL
DEFAULT INTERFACE STATISTICS POLL 9 minutes
INTERVAL
DEFAULT VOLUME STATISTICS POLL 15 minutes
INTERVAL

How Much Can a Single Poller Handle?

Assuming you’re at default polling intervals, on a fully spec’d polling engine, and your database
can handle the I/O:

 The SolarWinds self-hosted Platform server running Hybrid Cloud Observability, or an

additional polling engine can poll approximately 48,000 elements

The SolarWinds Self-Hosted Platform running Hybrid Cloud Observability Enterprise Scale will
support up to 100 polling engines with the following entity count limits:

• NPM - Maximum of one million elements per instance

• Server component monitoring—Maximum of 550K component monitors per instance
• Network flows—Maximum of 300K flows per second per instance
• Network configuration file management—Maximum of 30K devices per instance
• Port usage tracking and monitoring—Maximum of 500K ports per instance
• VoIP phone and IPSLA operations monitoring—Maximum of 15K IP SLA operations and
200K calls/day per instance
• IP address management—Maximum of three million IP addresses per instance
• Virtualization monitoring—*See documentation*
• Server configuration file monitoring—280 changes per second
• Log analysis—1,000 events per second
• Web performance monitoring—Maximum of 12 recordings per player per location
(recording complexity drives this number)
• Storage monitoring—Maximum of 160K LUNs per instance

SolarWinds Scalability Engines

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Scaling Hybrid Cloud Observability
Participant’s Guide

SolarWinds Scalability Engines extend the monitoring capacity of your SolarWinds installation.

 SolarWinds Platform Collector

• Included with every Hybrid Cloud Observability deployment
 Additional Polling Engine
 Additional Web Server
 Enterprise Operations Console
 High Availability

For more information, visit:

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/orionplatform/content/orion_platform_
scalability_engine_guidelines.htm

Useful Links
 Hybrid Cloud Observability Guided Curriculum
https://support.solarwinds.com/guided-curriculum-hybrid-cloud-observability

 Hybrid Cloud Observability Additional Resources

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/hco/content/hco_gsg-
additional-resources.htm

 Connect Hybrid Cloud Observability With SolarWinds Observability Through Platform

Connect
https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/hco/content/hco_platform-
connect.htm

 Secure Configuration for the SolarWinds Platform

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/orionplatform/content/core-
secure-configuration.htm

 THWACK® Community
https://thwack.solarwinds.com/welcome

 Success Center Knowledgebase

https://support.solarwinds.com/Success_Center
 Customer Portal
https://customerportal.solarwinds.com/

2023 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.