Overview
This article provides information about FAQs asked by the customer based on the environments combined.
Environment
Orion Platform versions above NPM 10.6
Strongly recommended to have latest version of Orion
Detail
All of us know SolarWinds SLX license you can monitor up to 12000 Elements and beyond this you will need an Additional Polling Engine to monitor.
Use additional polling engines for 12000 or more monitored elements
if you plan to monitor 12000 or more elements, Solarwidns recommends that you install additional polling engine on separate server to help distribute the work load.
What is Stackable Additional Polling Engine idea is ?
Its another engine on the existing system hardware you have , using full capacity of your current hardware . This engine will be stacked with your existing engine seamlessly running on the same hardware boosting the existing polling capacity of current host without any additional cost to maintain another system host.
Idea is exactly adding another stackable switch within existing chassis to add more capacity . So if your existing chassis can take it you can add more stack into .
With the latest version of SolarWinds NPM, you can now install up to three unique polling engines on a single polling server, sharing a single IP address. Stackable polling engines enable you to effectively triple the polling capacity of a single server so you can get benefit of available server hardware within the existing installed environment
Further it will help you to monitor more Elements ( Nodes/Volumes/Interfaces/Services ) without having any dedicated servers to be confirmed and manage so its less overhead for the I.T staff to manage .
Benefits :
No overhead to manage or arrange another system hardware just using existing Server hardware capacity (Very cost effective )
No management approval process waiting time for system deployment
No infrastructure change required
No troubleshooting and I.T management resources to dedicate for another hardware
No extra IP address needed to be allowed for the devices for the polling / Downloading the configuration with NCM - Less overhead
No downtime required during installation
No configuration wizard need to run
No services need to restart during this process on production environment
No FOE licenses per server to cover more elements for HA (Very cost effective )
Freedom to extend any Poller (Primary Polling Engine OR Existing Additional Polling Engine ) (Very cost effective )
Finally within few minutes you will be ready to polling more elements within the existing infrastructure without making a single change and wasting the time / resources / money.
How can i check my Server current hardware meeting this requirments
For more informaiton MINIMUM Hardware Requirments see below.
SolarWinds Orion server hardware requirements
How many Stackable Poller license I can have on the Single Server?
Up to three total polling engines may be installed on a single server (i.e. one primary NPM
polling engine with one or two additional polling engines on Primary Server or three additional polling engines on
the Additional polling server ).
Note: A stack requires only 1 IP address, regardless of the number of APEs
Can I install Stackable Poller on my existing Additional Polling Engine?
Yes 'Stackable Poller' extending capability on the Poller you can have multiple Stackable poller up to 3 on your existing Additional Poller It can be update by Smart Bundler
How can I update my Poller for Stackable Poller?
On the Poller it can be updated by Smart Bundler.
It means that by additional poller package downloadable from customer portal (not the Individual Downloads, but the Main Additional Poller Installer also called Smart Bundler).
How to install Stackable Poller on my Primary Polling Engine?
In this example I am assuming we are implementing Stackable Poller on the Main Poller (that has enough resources to tackle additional load)
As you are aware a single poller can tackle upto 12k elements
Also there is no special installer for Stackable Poller
You will need a license to be purchased as for Additional Polling Engine
You will go into your Customer Portal & download the Additional Poller Smart Bundler (not the Individual Downloads, but the Main Additional Poller Installer also called Smart Bundler)
Basically when you will run Additional Poller Smart Bundler this installer will say on the main poller that everything is already installed and ask you if you want extend license.
Now simply key in the license of the Additional Poller in the wizard
It will never install anything on main poller it only just update the license and will deploy the stack Engine seamlessly
So the customer has got extra capability to fully utilize his server hardware
Also after the license has been applied you can open the License Manager and you will see another entry in the Lincense Manager as following
On Primary Polling Engine it will take up to 2 MAX Additional Polling Engine license keys
On Additional Polling Engine it will looks like this
You will have the message "The machine has reached to license limit" after that therefor it will only be able to take up to 3 licenses.
So if I have have mutiple modules installed on the Primary Poller (do I have to install all the other modules as well , because Smart bundler will download say APE SAM , APE UDT , APE NPM)
When I will run the Smart Bundler on the Primary poller (it will not say that Primary Poller is already installed on this machine)
Yes, it will say on main that everything is installed and ask you if you want extend license so it will never install anything on main (as the required services are already installed and doesn't required any extra service to be installed ) , Just update license and deploy the stack Engine seamlessly the main propose and stack functionality .So it does make necessary changes required without installing any service or software that's how its by design to work .
If I will install Stackable Poller on my primary server it will increase the capacity to 24K elements to tackle?
It will ask you on main to add license key for additional poller (means 24k elements). Once you run it again, you can add another AP license (means 36k elements) and if you run it third time,
it will say This machine has reached its license limit . The same functionality is for Additional Poller installation and yes, Stackable poller
For more details, please see the post below: