NinjaOne NMS: System Requirements

Topic

This article describes the minimum system requirements for using NinjaOne Network Management System (NMS) with your network.

Environment

NinjaOne Network Management System (NMS)

Description

To begin using a Microsoft Windows device as a network probe, ensure your computer meets the minimum system requirements described in this article.

Select a topic to learn more:

• NMS Agent Architecture
• Scalability
• Hardware and Software System Requirements
  • Make and Model Support
  • Operating System Requirements
    • Supported Windows Operating Systems
    • Unsupported Windows Versions
    • NMS Delegates on Unsupported Operating Systems
    • NetFlow and sFlow Monitoring Requirements
  • Hardware Requirements
  • System Requirements for Device Monitoring
• Firewall Exceptions and Allowed Programs
• System Requirements for Collecting Traffic and Log Data
• Using NinjaOne NMS on a Virtual Machine
• Additional Resources

NMS Agent Architecture

To use NinjaOne's network management suite, deploy the NinjaOne NMS agent separately for every customer whose SNMP-capable devices you want to monitor. The NMS agent performs network discovery manually and adds the associated devices.

Figure 1: NMS agent dataflow (click to enlarge)

Scalability

A basic NinjaOne NMS installation with the default monitor settings will perform well on a system with a quad-core processor and 8 GB of RAM.

Adjusting policies to monitor larger networks or using the NetFlow module to monitor SNMP traps or syslog may require higher system specifications. The minimum system requirements depend on the number of devices you are monitoring.

Scalability Considerations

• Number of monitored devices: If you monitor 100 or more devices, you may need to tune your system's performance.
• Amount of data collected for each device: If you increase the number of monitors on a device, the amount of data collected will increase significantly.
• Data collection interval configuration: If you set a time interval to collect data every five minutes, we recommend using a high-performance server to complete data collection efficiently.

Optimization for Traffic Analysis

To optimize performance when collecting traffic analysis data, we recommend you use a dedicated high-performance server when the following conditions exist:

• The application collects traffic flow data from multiple routers or switches.
• Your network handles many traffic conversations.
• The application monitors more than 100 devices.
• You monitor SNMP traps or syslog messages.
• You capture configuration backups.

Hardware and Software System Requirements

The following minimum requirements apply to deploy the NMS agent on the host server in its default configuration. Increasing the device monitoring intervals and network traffic collection may require increasing your RAM and CPU power.

Make and Model Support

NinjaOne NMS supports the most common Cisco, Dell, HP, and NETGEAR models and devices that support the standard MIB-2 protocol. Some makes and models may not display data because they deviate from the standard object identifiers (OIDs) for components such as CPU, memory, or network adapters. To monitor such devices, you must add custom OIDs. Refer to NinjaOne NMS: Custom SNMP to learn more.

Operating System Requirements

• NinjaOne NMS only supports 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.
• Because of the heavy system load that can occur during network discovery, log capture, and SNMP monitoring, we recommend using Windows Server.

Supported Windows Operating Systems

This table shows all operating systems that NinjaOne supports for NMS.

Unsupported Windows Versions

NinjaOne NMS does not support the following Windows operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows Server 2012 and earlier

NMS Delegates on Unsupported Operating Systems

If an NMS delegate remains installed on a now-unsupported operating system, NinjaOne allowed the device to stay during migration to a new version. If you remove the NMS delegate from that device, you will not be able to reinstall it unless you upgrade the device to a supported operating system.

Hardware Requirements

• CPU: A quad-core CPU running at 3.0 GHz or higher is required.
• Memory: 8 GB RAM is required. We recommend 16 GB RAM.
• Hard Drive Space: 50 GB is required.
• Network interface controller (NIC): A minimum 100BASE-T controller is required.
• Network Adapter: We recommend an advanced network adapter for network monitoring (required for larger networks).

System Requirements for Device Monitoring

Use this table to determine the minimum system requirements for your infrastructure needs:

NetFlow and sFlow Monitoring Requirements

To add NetFlow and sFlow monitoring, allocate the following additional capacity:

• Cores: System requirements for device monitoring plus an additonal 50%.
• Memory: A minimum16 GB RAM, regardless of the number of devices monitored
• Disk Space: Allocate disk capacity equal to 100% of the base disk requirement.

Firewall Exceptions and Allowed Programs

NinjaOne automatically configures the following ports during installation:

• 161 (UDP): SNMP trap collector
• 514 (UDP): Syslog collector
• 2055 (UDP): NetFlow collector
• 4739: NetFlow v10/IPFIX collector
• 6343 (UDP): sFlow collector
• 9995, 9996 (UDP): NetFlow alternative port number 3 collector

System Requirements for Collecting Traffic and Log Data

To collect traffic and log data, the NMS delegate requires the following:

• Memory: A minimum of 8 GB RAM.
• Additional RAM per NetFlow device: 1 GB

Important Considerations

• You may need to increase the memory allocation based on the volume of data collected from tools such as NetFlow and syslog.
• A minimum of 3 GB of free drive space is necessary to install the SNMP MIB Library.
• If you increase your retention settings, you may need to allocate more hard drive space to accommodate the additional data stored.
• We recommend a machine with 8 GB RAM or above.

Using NinjaOne NMS on a Virtual Machine

You can use a virtual machine (VM) as an NMS delegate. However, we do not recommend using a virtual machine due to the intense input and output requirements and high hardware demands. Note the following hardware and software system requirements for the NMS delegate on a virtual machine:

• Virtual machine system requirements: Refer to the Hardware and Software System Requirements section of this article for the minimum requirements for optimal performance.
• Operating system: Because of the heavy system load that can occur with network discovery, log capture, and SNMP monitoring, we recommend a Windows Server operating system.
• CPU: Do not use hyperthreading cores.
• Disk: Ensure that your VM uses a physical partition rather than a virtual hard disk.

Additional Resources

Refer to NinjaOne Endpoint Management: System Requirements and Compatibility to view system requirements and supported software for other NinjaOne products.