Network Management

Increase in license consumption after upgrading to SolarWinds Platform 2025.1 and above

After upgrading to SolarWinds Platform 2025.1 and above, there is an increase in license consumption compared to the previous releases.

First published date

5/15/2025 12:34 AM

Last published date

7/22/2025 9:28 PM

Overview

The article provides information about the license model changes causing an increase in licensing consumption for SolarWinds Platform 2025.1 and above.

In some scenarios, the license increase prevents adding more nodes or elements to monitor in their system.

To review and clarify license consumption, run the OOTB report "HCO License Summary Report"

  1. Log in to SolarWinds Platform Web Console
  2. From the top menu, navigate to Reports > All Reports
  3. In the search bar, type in "HCO License". This will bring up the report.
  4. Click HCO License Summary Report

Sample Screenshot of the report:

This report will provide further explanation on how the licenses are being consumed.

You can also refer to this THWACK post, which contains a detailed report on Cloud Entities.

Product section

Orion Platform

Cause

This issue occurred due to the licensing model for monitored cloud instances, which was enabled by default. These changes affect SolarWinds Platform 2025.1 and above and how the platform retrieves data from supported cloud service providers to monitor availability, performance, applications, resources, and other metrics for instances and VMs.

Information on this can be found here : Monitor cloud instances and VMs.

This issue applies to the following software releases:

  • SolarWinds Platform 2025.1
  • SolarWinds Platform 2025.1.1 (Warning message was added prior to upgrading to this release)
  • SolarWinds Platform 2025.2 (Warning message was added prior to upgrading to this release)

It is important to note that if Cloud Monitoring warning was added prior to upgrading, but this does not prevent or stop the upgrade process.

Resolution

Starting in 2025.1.1 and above, a warning message was added when enabling Cloud Monitoring to advise that more licenses may be consumed.

One or more of your cloud subscriptions are configured to add newly supported cloud entities automatically after upgrade. This will also automatically consume more licenses too. If you want to change this before upgrading, see this document.

If Cloud monitoring was already enabled, apply the workaround to reduce the license count.

Workaround:

To remove cloud entities and free up licenses, perform the following steps below:

  • Cloud Account
    • Go to the Managed Cloud Accounts page (/ui/clm/accounts)
    • Remove the Cloud Account
  • Resources
    • Go to the Manage Cloud Accounts page 
    • Click Edit properties
    • Under Monitored Resource, select resources to be removed
  • Instances/VM
    • Go to the Manage Cloud Accounts page
    • Choose Instances/VM to be removed