Community
- Command Central
- MVP Program
- Monthly Mission
- Blogs
- Groups
- Events
- Media Vault
Products
- Observability
- Network Management
- Application Management
- IT Security
- IT Service Management
- System Management
- Database Management
Content Exchange
- SolarWinds Platform
- Server & Application Monitor
- Database Performance Analyzer
- Server Configuration Monitor
- Network Performance Monitor
- Network Configuration Manager
- SQL Sentry
- Web Help Desk
Free Tools & Trials
Store

Polling Engine Utilizing Multiple CPUs on a Server

I currently run the SLX version of Orion (v7.8) on a two-way SMP server with Hyperthreading turned on...giving a total of 4 logical processors. As our monitoring has expanded, I've realized that the NetPerfMonService.exe process never substantially executes on more than one logical processor. Analyzing the NetPerfMonService process shows that the bulk of the work is done by a single thread and so it appears to me that the polling process is unable to effectively run across multiple processors. Overall the server runs continuously at about 25% utilization, almost all of this usage is due to this one polling process.

I'm trying to see if anyone else has seen a similar issue, and if so is there any workaround for it? Or is it possible to run additional polling engines on a single server (in order to better utilize the remaining processors on the server)? Is this something fixed in v8? Would turning off Hyper-threading help in any way? I would definitely prefer not to go to the expense and time of bringing up a second polling engine on a second server when my primary server is running at only 25% utilization.

Any information, or opinions, would be appreciated.

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

vhcato

BUMP...

I would like to know the answer to this as well. Is there any benefit to having multiple CPU's (physical or logical) for the polling process? My polling engines are currently on servers with single CPU's, but I'm curious if anyone has any insight into whether the process can multithread, and whether there's any significant benefit to having additional CPU's.

Specifically, I'm curious about 8.5. If multithreading is not available today, is it something that's being considered?

FormerMember

The SNMP poller is not multi-threaded, so multiple CPUs won't directly impact performance. To the extent that there are other processes sharing resources on the Orion server, however, there would be indirect benefits.

As to the future, if we were to re-write the poller, we would almost certainly make it multi-threaded. Do you want this so that you could get more polls out of given poller?

vhcato

As to the future, if we were to re-write the poller, we would almost certainly make it multi-threaded. Do you want this so that you could get more polls out of given poller?

If I say "yes", does that mean you'll be more hesitant to do it, since you won't sell as many polling engine licenses? Just kidding... Kinda...

As it is today, with SLX, the limiting factor is the ability of a single CPU to handle the number of devices that are assigned to that particular system. It's nice not having a device limit to worry about, but my fear is that if you go the route of rewriting the poller to take advantage of additional server resources, that you might decide to do away with SLX and license all Orion pollers based on the number of elements. I guess I can't blame you if you did, but I'll whine and pout about it for a while.

Actually, for our particular case, it probably costs us more money in internal costs to manage and maintain multiple servers than it would if you were to charge more for a single great big honkin' polling server (or at least fewer of them). Of course, it is nice to have the ability to reassign devices among the polling engines for maintenance purposes, and this might be hindered if the licensing model changed.

Whatever you decide... Be gentle...

FormerMember

I was really trying to probe to see if there's some other less obvious advantage to multi-threading. As for what it would mean for licensing, etc., if we did so, I wouldn't worry about it much. There's no certainty that making the poller multi-threaded would really change the reach of an SLX since we'd probably ask that poller to do more anyway.

cnorborg

I would have to say definitely yes. The biggest problem we have with Orion SLX version is how slow it appears to run even though the server still has plenty of resources. I would like to have better performance out of the hardware I have rather than have to go out and purchase more hardware, something I'm sure everyone would want.

justinh

Any new info on this? This is a limiting factor for me right now.

FormerMember

This isn't going to change in 2008. What's the limitation?