Installation guide

Figure 1: Communications Between primary and secondary Servers
SolarWinds Channel
The first component is the SolarWinds Channel which provides communications
between the active and passive servers. The SolarWinds Channel is used for
control and data transfer from the active server to the passive server and for
monitoring of the active server's status by the passive server.
The NICs on the active and passive servers used for the SolarWinds Channel
are normally configured with IP addresses outside of the Principal (Public)
network subnet range and are referred to as the SolarWinds Channel addresses.
During installation, setup will disable NetBIOS for the SolarWinds Channel(s)
on the active and passive servers to prevent server name conflicts.
The NICs that support connectivity across the SolarWinds Channel can be
standard 100BaseT Ethernet cards providing a throughput of 100 Mbits per
second across standard Cat-5 cabling. When using multiple NICs providing a
separate dedicated SolarWinds Channel, this channel requires no hubs or
routers, but the direct connection does require crossover cabling.
When configured for a WAN deployment, configure the SolarWinds Channel
to use static routes over switches and routers to maintain continuous
communications independent from corporate or public traffic.
Principal (Public) Network
The second component is the Principal (Public) network used by clients to
connect to the active server. The Principal (Public) network provides access to
the Principal (Public) IP address used by clients to connect to the active server.
The Principal (Public) IP address is a static IP address that is only available on
the currently active server and is the IP address a client uses to connect to the
Introduction - 9
SolarWinds Failover Engine - Installation Guide