SolarWinds Federal User Group 2016 - SolarWinds Enterprise Scalability, Integration and IT Consolidation

SOLARWINDS ENTERPRISE
SCALABILITY, INTEGRATION AND
IT CONSOLIDATION
2016 FEDERAL USER GROUP
JEFF STEWART
PRODUCT STRATEGIST
SOLARWINDS
ED BENDER
HEAD FEDERAL SYSTEMS ENGINEER
SOLARWINDS
© 2016 SOLARWINDS WORLDWIDE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

• SolarWinds® Orion® platform architecture
• Recommended practices for SolarWinds infrastructure
• How SolarWinds software scales
• Managing network and user growth
• Managing distributed environments
• Keeping your administration costs under control as you scale with automation
• Integration options
• Multi-domain deployments with CrossWatch
• IT consolidation
• Questions?
TODAY’S DISCUSSION

SOLARWINDS ORION PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE
PRIMARY WEB SERVER
ORION PLATFORM
Primary Polling Engine and Common Services:
Nodes, Volumes, Alerts, Events, Reports, Discovery, Syslogs, Traps, Maps, API
NTA
IP flows
NPM
interfaces, wireless,
virtualization, UCS…
NCM
configuration
management
network
security
IPAM
IP address
management
UDT
port
monitoring
network
security
VNQM
VoIP
monitoring
SAM
server &
application
monitoring
WPM
web
application
performance
monitoring
SRM
storage
monitoring
& capacity
planning
Toolset
real-time
trouble
shooting
VMAN
virtual
infrastructure
monitoring
PM
patch update
management
network
security
DPA
database
performance
monitoring
Orion
DB
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE +
Flow
Storage
DB
Network, Servers,
Applications,
Storage
More
Network, Servers,
Applications,
Storage
ADDITIONAL WEB SERVER

Recommended Practices for
SolarWinds Infrastructure

HARDWARE RECOMMENDATIONS
• Separate the database and primary poller
• Recommend deploying database be to physical server; typical mid-high
range would have 12 CPUs and 128Gb RAM
• Pollers can be deployed to virtual servers
• Disk I/O is critical; RAID10 preferred

PRODUCT SCALE GUIDELINES
Scalability Impacted By Limit Notes
NPM Throughput=Elements (interface,
volume, nodes) x polling frequency
• 12K elements1 per poller
• 100K elements1 per instance
Pollers can stack 3x
SAM Throughput=Component Monitors x
polling frequency
• 10K monitors1 per poller
• 1K agents per poller
• 150K monitors1 per instance
Pollers can stack 2x
IPAM Number of managed IP’s • 3M IP’s per instance Does not support polling engines
NTA Flow per sec received • 50K flows/sec per poller
• 300K flows/sec per instance
With “top talker” optimization
NCM Throughput =Nodes x frequency of
Inventory and Config downloads
• 10K nodes per poller
• 30K nodes maximum
NCM performing two NCM
operations (inventory update,
configuration download) per day
on all 30K nodes
(1) At default polling frequency

PRODUCT SCALE GUIDELINES
Scalability Impacted By Limit Notes
UDT Number of managed ports • 90K ports per poller
• 300K port or more, maximum
VNQM IP SLA operations and CDR volume • 5K IP SLA operations and 200K
calls per day per poller
• 15K IP SLA operations and
200K calls per day per instance
20K calls per hour as maximum in
peak/rush hours
WPM Throughput=Number of
transactions played back x
frequency
• Dozens of recordings per
player
Complexity of transactions
determines limits per player and
requires specific testing
SRM Number of disks and arrays • 10K disks/20k LUNs per poller
• 100K disks/160k LUNs max

THE VITAL SIGNS
• Orion Database (DB)
• Available space (! NetFlow)
• Disk I/O latency
• Main Orion server
• CPU bound
• WAN links
• To sites polled remotely (ICMP / SNMP / WMI traffic)
• To sites equipped with remote Poller
• ICMP (Kbits/sec) = (0.0823*y + 0.6774) * 8
• SNMP (Kbits/sec) = (0.3949*y + 2.7756) * 8
• y= # nodes, with 12 Interfaces and 2 volumes per node

POLLING HEALTH
• Polling Completion
should be near 100%
• Polling Rate should be
less 100%
Orion Console  Settings  Polling Engines

IMPORTANT OPERATIONAL PROCESSES
• Role-based access controls
• Device lifecycle
• Who, how, where, when devices are added
• Ditto for elements
• Ditto for SAM items
• Devices (and volumes, and interfaces) missing key custom property information
• Decommissioned devices
• Down devices
• Devices not SNMP polling
• Applications in “unknown” status
• Duplicate nodes
• Bad application report

Scaling for the Enterprise

LARGE SCALE NETWORKS
PRIMARY WEB SERVER
ORION PLATFORM
NTA
NPM
NCM
VNQM
IPAM
UDT
SAM
WPM
Orion DB
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE
Network, Servers,
Applications,
Storage
More Network, Servers,
Applications,
Storage
Applications,
Storage
• Scalability and deployment
architecture is determined by:
• Network size
• Network topology (e.g. monitoring
across WAN/low bandwidth)
• Sampling frequency (1 hr to ≤ 1 min)
• Variety of managed objects (products
installed, custom pollers – UnDP)
• Designed to scale to hundreds of
thousands of elements using
Additional Polling Engines
Flow
Storage DB

DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENTS
PRIMARY WEB SERVER
ORION PLATFORM
NTA
NPM
NCM
VNQM
IPAM
UDT
SAM
WPM
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE
Network, Servers,
Applications,
Storage
Applications,
Storage
Applications,
Storage
WAN
Orion DB
Flow
Storage DB
• The Additional Polling Engine
handles intermittent
connectivity to the Orion DB
to better support remote
deployments
• Orion platform, NPM, SAM, SRM
• NCM, VNQM, UDT to follow

MULTI-LEVEL, CONSOLIDATED MANAGEMENT
PRIMARY WEB SERVER
ORION PLATFORM
NTA
NPM
NCM
VNQM
IPAM
UDT
SAM
WPM
PRIMARY WEB SERVER
ORION PLATFORM
NTA
NPM
NCM
VNQM
IPAM
UDT
SAM
WPM
Orion DB Orion DB
ENTERPRISE OPERATIONS
CONSOLE
• Orion instances in regions
• Enterprise Operations Console (EOC)
at the top level for roll-ups
• Up to 600K elements
• EOC consolidates real-time statuses
at the top level (no centralization of
platform admin):
• Alerts, events, syslog, traps (last 24
hours worth of data)
• Orion node, volume, interface and
wireless data
• Limited historical data
EOC DB

ORION PLATFORM USER GROWTH
PRIMARY WEB SERVER
NTA
NPM
NCM
VNQM
IPAM
UDT
SAM
WPM
Core DB
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE
ADDITIONAL
POLLING ENGINE
Network, Servers,
Applications,
Storage
Applications,
Storage
Applications,
Storage
Flow
Storage DB
ADDITIONAL WEB SERVER
• Additional Web Server is
recommended above 20-30
concurrent web users
• Load balancer friendly
ORION CORE

SCALING THROUGH AUTOMATION
• Automation will assist you with controlling admin costs
• Scalability is often limited by the ability to automate routine tasks like manual
configuration tasks; raw performance or hardware infrastructure costs may be
a lesser challenge
• Automate and integrate with the Orion platform API
• Query alert, configuration, and performance data
• Set custom properties and other configurations
• Acknowledge alerts and un-manage nodes
• And so on…

Integration Options

INTEGRATION OPTIONS
• User level integration
• Active Directory®
• Hard coded credentials
• Event level integration
• Syslog, traps, email, event logs and customer applications.
• API level integration
• Data retrieval
• Invoke CRUD operations

EVENT LEVEL INTEGRATION
®

• REST/JSON web service – call from any environment
• https://github.com/solarwinds/OrionSDK
• Documentation
• Samples
• Tools
ORION PLATFORM API(S)
POST https://orion:17778/SolarWinds/InformationService/v3/Json/Query
Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46
Content-Type: application/json
{"query":"SELECT AlertObjectID, TriggeredDateTime, TriggeredMessage FROM Orion.AlertActive"}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...headers...
{"results":[
{"AlertObjectID":68,"TriggeredDateTime":"2015-06-08T02:39:38.517","TriggeredMessage":"cur-2851.lab.cur is down."},
{"AlertObjectID":69,"TriggeredDateTime":"2015-06-08T02:42:21.658","TriggeredMessage":"wpm-lrt-addp is down."}
]}

• Orion SDK lets users leverage the Orion API to retrieve data from an Orion server
and to populate data in an Orion server
• It helps advanced users accomplish tasks such as auto-provisioning the management
of new devices in their environments
• The SDK offers direct access to portions of the SolarWinds Information Service
(SWIS) using SQL-like queries in SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL)
• SolarWinds supports the SDK and API through the SolarWinds community forum
• Users download the SDK and get feedback and advice from SolarWinds architects
and other developers (customers) using the SDK on the SolarWinds community site,
thwack® at http://thwack.solarwinds.com/community/labs_tht/orion-sdk/
• Currently in version 2.0, the SDK is included in our standard release cycle
ORION SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT (SDK)
LEVERAGE THE ORION API TO INTEGRATE WITH OTHER TOOLS

• SWQL Studio, an application for browsing the Information Service schema and
running queries
• Orion SDK.pdf, documentation for the SDK
• Sample apps/scripts written in Visual Basic.NET, Java®, Perl®, and PowerShell™
• SwisInvoke.exe, a tool for invoking SWIS verbs (commands) from the Windows®
command line
• Reference documentation for the SWIS schema, in HTML format
• SWIS Snapin for Windows PowerShell, a component that provides cmdlets you can
use to access SWIS from PowerShell, including querying data and invoking verbs
ORION SDK INCLUDES …
TOOLS, DOCUMENTATION, SAMPLE APPS

Multi-domain Deployments
and IT Consolidation

• Sterling Computer’s
CrossWatch technology
allows for the federation
of multiple SolarWinds
instances across
boundaries of multi-
domain networks
(enclaves such as
NIPRNet and SIPRNet)
MULTI-DOMAIN DEPLOYMENTS
MULTI-DOMAIN NETWORKS

• Isolating mission critical networks is fundamental to maximize cyber security,
however, this reduces the ability to monitor and manage across environments
• SolarWinds partners with Sterling to provide a COTS solution to meet the IC/DOD
requirements for multi-network cyber awareness, IT monitoring and management
• Uses Sterling’s certified data guards to transfer highly constrained XML low-to-high
• The solution integrates Orion instances from multiple domains into a single view
• NIPR to SIPR
• SIPR to JWICS / NIPR to JWICS
CROSS DOMAIN SOLUTION
SUPPORT FOR MULTI-NETWORK ENVIRONMENTS

CROSSWATCH IN ACTION

• Data center consolidation projects have been underway for years and it is time for
agencies to modernize their monitoring and management tools
• Network devices and systems have standardized, eliminating the need for proprietary
or customized monitoring solutions
• “Enterprise” solutions can be very expensive
• Having a broad set of tools from different vendors wastes money and is sub-optimal
• The Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) is promoting consolidation to reduce
expensive and fragmented software purchases
• Consolidating your IT management tools can help to lower IT costs, simplify
infrastructure operations, and boost IT staff effectiveness
WHAT’S DRIVING FEDERAL IT CONSOLIDATION?
THE FEDS ARE MODERNIZING THEIR IT MANAGEMENT TOOLS

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Topics Details
Familiar User
Interface
It’s all about usability; a common and intuitive UI reduces
complexity while reducing the need and time for training
Consolidated
Dashboard
Consolidated monitoring tools provide the single-pane-of-glass
management desires with minimum configuration efforts
Faster Time to
Resolution
Helps to improve visibility and instant access to status and
configuration data across more of your IT infrastructure enables
IT staff to do faster troubleshooting of complex problems
Out-of-the-box
Integrations
Fully integrated tools eliminate the cost of developing and
supporting custom integrations
Simplified Alerting Centrally managed alerting helps to reduce the complexity and
cost of managing and configuring alerts from disparate tools

29
SOLARWINDS ORION

QUESTIONS?
POST THEM TO OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THWACK® GROUP AT:
HTTP://THWACK.COM/GOVERNMENT
OR EMAIL
FEDERALSALES@SOLARWINDS.COM

• Stay Connected:
• Join the Federal and Government Group on thwack:
http://thwack.com/government
• Follow us on LinkedIn®: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solarwinds-
government
• Call: 877-946-3751
• Email: federalsales@solarwinds.com
• Learn More:
• Visit our Federal website: http://www.solarwinds.com/federal
• Watch a short demo video: http://www.solarwinds.com/sedemo
• Download a free trial: http://www.solarwinds.com/downloads/
STAY CONNECTED & LEARN MORE

The SOLARWINDS and SOLARWINDS & Design marks are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide,
LLC, and its affiliates, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be registered or
pending registration in other countries. All other SolarWinds trademarks, service marks, and logos may be
common law marks, registered or pending registration in the United States or in other countries. All other
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registered trademarks of their respective companies.

SolarWinds Federal User Group 2016 - SolarWinds Enterprise Scalability, Integration and IT Consolidation

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