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Cisco CPU spiking related to SW NPM?

FormerMember

Has anyone reading this experienced CPU spiking (90%+) on a Cisco device as a direct result of regular SNMP polling? Every 5 minutes (to the second), I'm getting a CPU utilization spike on the device to which our NPM server is connected... but not any of the other, virtually identical (as in models, configs, loads, connections, etc) devices.

Reading Cisco documentation, it sounds like it's nothing to be concerned about as process prioritization won't allow low-priority stuff to affect routing, etc. I also recognize that there's a difference between how things should work and what's actually going on.

If anyone has had experience with this and has found a workaround/fix, I would love to hear about it. Thanks all.

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Mithrilhall

You say virtually identical devices; what IOS are you running on the affected device and the identical devices?

FormerMember

quote:Originally posted by Mithrilhall

You say virtually identical devices; what IOS are you running on the affected device and the identical devices?

12.2(25)EWA8 on everything.

FormerMember

quote:Originally posted by nwood

Has anyone reading this experienced CPU spiking (90%+) on a Cisco device as a direct result of regular SNMP polling? Every 5 minutes (to the second), I'm getting a CPU utilization spike on the device to which our NPM server is connected... but not any of the other, virtually identical (as in models, configs, loads, connections, etc) devices.

Reading Cisco documentation, it sounds like it's nothing to be concerned about as process prioritization won't allow low-priority stuff to affect routing, etc. I also recognize that there's a difference between how things should work and what's actually going on.

If anyone has had experience with this and has found a workaround/fix, I would love to hear about it. Thanks all.

I had what sounds as something very simular. I Upgraded the Orion server to Server 2003. The problem still occurred. For the past week I've been exiting the Orion system managered when I've been finshed with it. I used to just minimize it. It's been better this week. I easiest way to clear the problem was to reboot the Orion server.

Brain Riess
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada

FormerMember

quote:I had what sounds as something very simular. I Upgraded the Orion server to Server 2003. The problem still occurred. For the past week I've been exiting the Orion system managered when I've been finshed with it. I used to just minimize it. It's been better this week. I easiest way to clear the problem was to reboot the Orion server.

Brain Riess
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada

So you saw the spiking go away with a reboot of the Orion server?

Mithrilhall

Try to do a manual walk. Does that spike the CPU as well?

Network_Guru

What model Cisco device ?

I only see this on our 4507R's when we enable L3 routing.
The CPU does not spike, but the ICMP echo reply latency goes way up.
It basically makes the latency graph useless for alerting or troubleshooting the switch.
Devices pinged through the switch are fine.

I got the same explanation from Cisco & have ended up having to live with this.

-=Cheers=-
NG

~seek & ye shall find---> [url="http://www4.solarwinds.net/SolarWindsForum/search.asp"]

<---no need to wait for answers~

FormerMember

quote:Originally posted by nwood

quote:I had what sounds as something very simular. I Upgraded the Orion server to Server 2003. The problem still occurred. For the past week I've been exiting the Orion system managered when I've been finshed with it. I used to just minimize it. It's been better this week. I easiest way to clear the problem was to reboot the Orion server.

Brain Riess
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada

So you saw the spiking go away with a reboot of the Orion server?

Yes - when ever the Orion server was rebooted the spike would disppear. Since this only started with v8 suspect it is something in the Orion server since this problem did not occurr in v7.

Brain Riess
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada

FormerMember

quote:Originally posted by Network_Guru

I only see this on our 4507R's when we enable L3 routing.
The CPU does not spike, but the ICMP echo reply latency goes way up.
It basically makes the latency graph useless for alerting or troubleshooting the switch.
Devices pinged through the switch are fine.

NG

Very interesting, NG... I happen to be seeing this on a 4507R, as well. But you're not seeing spikes, though? Hmm... We started watching the CPU graphs to troubleshoot a different issue, so this could've been occurring for a long time prior without our knowledge. The aforementioned problem has since been resolved, but the CPU spikes remain. Might be all bark and no bite and therefore nothing to worry about.

Thanks for your input!

Network_Guru

NWood, You are correct sir!

I just reviewed the CPU utilization on one of my 4507R's with L3 routing enabled & it is indeed spiking up to 80%...

-=Cheers=-
NG

~seek & ye shall find---> [url="http://www4.solarwinds.net/SolarWindsForum/search.asp"]

<---no need to wait for answers~

FormerMember

quote:Originally posted by Network_Guru

NWood, You are correct sir!

I just reviewed the CPU utilization on one of my 4507R's with L3 routing enabled & it is indeed spiking up to 80%...

-=Cheers=-
NG

I tried removing all of the SNMP-server commands off of the spiking 4507, and the CPU has calmed down quite a bit. It's highest utilization percentage has stayed around 50% ever since.

We still need the SNMP commands in there, so if I can find a way to have them loaded while not revving up the CPU, I'll post my methods.

Network_Guru

We opened a ticket with Cisco TAC, since one of my 4507Rs has been running at 60% for the past 8 months (thanks for bring this to my attention) & here is their reply:

quote:
I am wondering if you got my previous email on when I mentioned that you are hitting an IOS bug and that as fix you would need to upgrade to at least 12.2.31.SGA

Here is what we see on the switch right now:


Switch-sp1#show process CPU sort
CPU utilization for five seconds: 67%/0%; one minute: 60%; five minutes: 59%
 PID Runtime(ms)   Invoked      uSecs   5Sec   1Min   5Min TTY Process
  30   337225568 717375789        470 59.07% 50.83% 50.81%   0 Cat4k Mgmt LoPri
  29  3286933180 419403083       7837  7.27%  7.14%  6.83%   0 Cat4k Mgmt HiPri
  72    61954092 327477093        189  0.31%  0.23%  0.23%   0 IGMPSN
 115    30345304 178211734        170  0.15%  0.08%  0.09%   0 IGMP Input
  57    17071556 132235452        129  0.07%  0.17%  0.08%   0 IP Input
 133     9914264 163708621         60  0.07%  0.05%  0.05%   0 cpf_process_ipcQ
  24     3270180 305114372         10  0.07%  0.01%  0.00%   0 Net Background
   7           0         2          0  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%   0 Timers

Definitely an issue caused by SNMP polling.

-=Cheers=-
NG

~seek & ye shall find---> [url="http://www4.solarwinds.net/SolarWindsForum/search.asp"]

<---no need to wait for answers~