Architecture and Design

Format: 75 multiple-choice questions
Time allotment: 90 minutes

Study Resources
The intention of the resources provided is to supplement your experience with Architecture and Design of SolarWinds Orion^® platform products. The included resources are not all-inclusive and should only aid as a starting place for your studies.

Use the available documentation to learn more about typical architecture and design.

• Orion Platform Administrator Guide
• Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Orion Products
• For additional study resources, visit THWACK. 

The SolarWinds Orion Platform provides common services such as alerting, reporting, intuitive dashboards, and charts. An Orion Platform deployment includes at least two servers, the Primary server where you install your Orion Platform products, and consists of the Main Polling Engine and the Orion Web Console. A separate server to install the SolarWinds Orion database. Learn more about the Orion Platform architecture.

How Orion Platform Products Work
Orion platform products monitor your network through different protocols. A typical installation includes a database server and one or more polling engine servers.

Orion Platform Requirements
These are the minimum requirements for all products on the Orion Platform.

Orion Multi-Module System Guidelines
If you are installing more than one SolarWinds Orion Platform product, use these recommended guidelines for hardware and software deployment.

Port Requirements for all SolarWinds Products
Ports vary from product to product and on a per-use basis.

Agent Requirements for Orion Products
Requirements for deploying agents on Orion platform products.

1. The Orion Platform consists of?
1. Orion main polling engine
2. Orion website
3. Orion Database
4. Orion Ticketing System
2. According to the multi-module system guidelines, the small deployment guidelines support how many modules?
1. 5 Modules
2. 6 Modules
3. 2 Modules
4. 3 Modules

The Main Polling Engine polls a definite number of elements depending on the Orion Platform product. Too many elements on a single polling engine can have a negative impact on the SolarWinds server. Learn about SolarWinds scalability options.

SolarWinds Orion Platform Scalability
Learn about SolarWinds scalability engines and deployment options.

SolarWinds Enterprise-Class Scalability for the Orion Platform
Video: The following video complements the Orion Platform Scalability document.

Scalability Engine Guidelines for SolarWinds Orion Products
Each Orion platform product scales independently from one another. The following provides guidance for using scalability engines to expand the capacity of your SolarWinds installation.

Maximum Elements per Poller / Polling Completion Rates
When the maximum polling throughput on a single polling engine is reached, the polling intervals are automatically increased to handle the higher load. This article explains the maximum Elements per Poller capacity and Polling Completion Rates times.

Poller Status Warning: A poller is either approaching or in excess of its polling rate limit
This warning is displayed whenever your SolarWinds installation has determined that it may be experiencing an excessive polling load. SolarWinds optimizes monitoring performance by automatically balancing polling intervals in heavy polling environments.

SQL Server configuration best practices for NPM
A poor performing SQL database can affect scalability. SolarWinds recommends the following best practices for the SQL database.

Number of simultaneous users
The number of simultaneous users accessing SolarWinds Orion impacts system performance directly. We recommend limiting the number of concurrent users to between 10 to 20 sessions per web site. You can install additional websites to handle larger user loads.

Boost your server polling capacity with Stackable Poller license
If your NPM or SAM polling engines have enough resources available, you can stack the licenses. Stacking licenses enhances the polling capacity of your Main Polling Engine or Additional Polling Engine. A stack requires only one IP address, regardless of the number of additional polling engines.

High Availability in SolarWinds products
SolarWinds High Availability (HA) provides failover protection for your Orion server and additional polling engines to reduce data loss. If your primary server fails, the HA feature allows your secondary server to take over all services, such as polling and alerting, with minimal downtime.

SolarWinds High Availability requirements
Review High Availability requirements.

NetPath Scalability
The scalability of NetPath™ depends on the complexity of the paths you are monitoring, and the interval at which you are monitoring them.

1. Scalability and deployment configurations are influenced by?
1. Network size
2. Topology/WAN Bandwidth
3. Diversity of managed objects
4. Number of simultaneous users accessing the website
2. High Availability over multiple subnets is provided for SolarWinds products released on which Orion Platform version?
1. 2016.2
2. 2018.2
3. 2017.3
4. 2015.1

Most deployments are based on a single Orion Platform server that monitors the infrastructure and applications. As the IT environment grows, a single server may no longer be able to monitor everything. The Orion Platform architecture provides the flexibility for centralized or distributed monitoring through several deployment options. 

Centralized Deployment with Additional Polling Engines
Centralized Deployment with Additional Polling Engines polls data locally in each region, and the polled data is stored centrally on the database server in the primary region.

Centralized Deployment with Remote Pollers
This is similar to the previous scalability scenario, with the difference being that the server the Orion Platform is installed on is deployed in the primary location, and scalability engines are deployed in the geographically distributed regions. This type of deployment helps to cover monitoring a distributed network with just a single SolarWinds Orion Platform instance.

Scalability to Support User Growth
The number of simultaneous users accessing the web console can have a direct impact on the performance of the system. If you have more than 20 users accessing the web console simultaneously, then SolarWinds recommends the installation of an additional web server that will load balance the number of concurrent users.

Distributed Deployment with Main and Additional Polling Engines in regions
In a Distributed Deployment, each region is licensed independently, and data is polled and stored locally in each region.

Introduction to SolarWinds EOC
In some situations, organizations might choose to deploy SolarWinds products on multiple Orion servers (referred to as a distributed deployment). The Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) offers a comprehensive view of the instances in a distributed deployment.

EOC 2.0 system requirements
The following sections list minimum software requirements and recommendations for a SolarWinds EOC installation.

High Availability and Fault Tolerant Monitoring Environments
Every network should have a fault tolerance and failover plan for its monitoring system deployment. To help ensure that the monitoring system is always available, it’s important to lay out a failover mechanism that will switch over the monitoring system operation to the secondary server if the primary server should fail. The SolarWinds Orion Platform can be switched over to another failover server using SolarWinds High Availability (HA).

1. What number of simultaneous users would warrant adding an additional Web Server?
1. 20
2. 10
3. 5
4. 2
2. Which port do you need to open on your network to ensure that secure, agent-initiated communication from Windows and Linux agents to get through? Select all that apply.
1. 17790
2. 17778
3. 17791
4. 17777

Integration with the Orion Platform is possible in several ways. Several integration options are included out of the box, while other integration can be accomplished through the Orion SDK.

Integrate an Orion Platform product with ServiceNow
Integrate the Orion Platform product with ServiceNow^® to automatically open new ServiceNow tickets based on critical events defined within the Orion Platform product.

How to Integrate ServiceNow^® with the Orion^® Platform
Video: learn how to enable the integration between the Orion Platform product and ServiceNow.

Dialing Paging or SMS Service using Notepager Pro
Orion Alerts include an action that forwards alerts to a paging or SMS service. You must download and install NotePager Pro to the Orion Server to use this action.

Orion Trouble Ticket System Integration
Sending email messages from the Orion Platform to the Trouble Ticket System (TTS) is the most common method used to integrate Orion Platform products with a TTS. This method offers easy integration with existing systems.

Orion SDK
Orion Platform products also offer an SDK through The SolarWinds Information Service (SWIS). SWIS is a data access layer for the Orion product family that provides a hybrid of object-oriented and relational features. It has its own SQL-like language called SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL).

1. Integration with ServiceNow requires you to download the integration application from where?
1. ServiceNow App Store
2. SolarWinds Customer Portal
3. Thwack Community
4. SolarWinds Success Center
2. The Orion SDK is supported through?
1. SolarWinds Support
2. Thwack Community
3. SolarWinds Success Center
4. SolarWinds Customer Portal

SolarWinds Orion Platform products are licensed independently from one another. Learn more about licensing for each product.

SolarWinds Orion Platform product licensing
Licensing levels vary across all the products to allow customers to choose the license level that fits their needs. Orion Platform product node and volume licensing are licensed additively.

• SolarWinds NPM licensing
• SolarWinds NTA licensing
• SolarWinds NCM Licensing
• SolarWinds IPAM licensing
• SolarWinds VNQM licensing
• SolarWinds UDT licensing
• SolarWinds SAM licensing
• SolarWinds VMAN licensing
• SolarWinds SRM licensing
• SolarWinds WPM licensing
• SolarWinds DPA licensing
• Activate High Availability pool licenses

1. SolarWinds UDT is licensed by the number of?
1. Nodes
2. Ports
3. Users
4. Rogue devices
2. When licensing an NPM 500 and SAM 150, the total node count that can be monitored is?
1. 500
2. 150
3. 650
4. As many as you want

Orion Platform Architecture

1. A, B, C
2. D

Orion Platform Scalability

1. A, B, C, D
2. C

Orion Platform Deployment options

1. A
2. B, C

Integrating with the Orion platform

1. A
2. B

Licensing

1. B
2. C