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Foglight 5.9.1 - Performance Tuning Field Guide

Overview Hardware and Operating System Tuning Management Server Tuning Java Virtual Machine Tuning Backend Database Tuning High Availability (HA) Tuning Agent Tuning Appendix: Performance Health Check Appendix: Analyzing a Support Bundle

Identifying Performance Problems

There are two main methods you can use to proactively check the performance of a Foglight™ installation:

1
You can carry out a performance health check to quickly verify whether or not Foglight is functioning properly. For more information, see Appendix: Performance Health Check.
2
You can analyze a support bundle to identify problems. For more information, see Appendix: Analyzing a Support Bundle.

 

Hardware and Operating System Tuning

Foglight™ processes and analyzes observations and presents them to users. This is resource intensive. Even if you perform the tuning exercises described in other sections of this guide, the overall resource use of the Management Server might still eventually exceed that which the underlying operating system and hardware can support. However, you can increase Foglight performance linearly by putting Foglight on faster hardware (that is, more CPU and increased I/O) or by increasing the physical memory available (see Java Virtual Machine Tuning ).

For the minimum Management Server hardware requirements, refer to the System Requirements and Platform Support Guide.

•
Running on Virtual Hardware
 
Table 1. Physical Memory
Motivation

When you run multiple processes (for example, the Management Server and embedded database) on the same machine, it is important that there is enough physical memory available to satisfy the Heap settings (+JVM/native thread stack overhead) and accommodate any other processes (for example, the MySQL memory cache).

Symptom

The browser interface performance is poor (that is, it responds slowly).

Diagnosis / Verification

The diagnostic snapshot for the Management Server shows that it is overloaded.

The OS page-hit percentage is low.

Tuning

Increase the available physical memory to accommodate the heap settings of the Management Server and overhead.

 
Table 2. CPU
Motivation

Foglight relies on highly efficient threading to achieve its throughput in handling data and serving content to the user. The system requirements state minimums for number of CPUs and cores that need to be guaranteed. Running other applications creates competition for CPU and therefore has a negative affect on Management Server performance.

Symptom

The browser interface performance is poor (that is, it responds slowly).

Diagnosis / Verification

CPU Utilization is high.

Tuning

Move the Management Server to a better performing machine or reduce overall load of host by shutting down other applications.

 
Table 3. I/O Throughput
Motivation

Foglight constantly receives, stores, and retrieves data. It is an I/O-intensive system. Therefore, I/O can be a limiting factor.

Symptom

The browser interface performance is poor (that is, it responds slowly).

Diagnosis / Verification

The diagnostic snapshot for the Management Server shows that it is overloaded.

The snapshot also shows that threads are waiting on I/O.

The operating system statistics show high I/O utilization rates.

Tuning

Deploy faster storage hardware (network, drives, and so on) or implement striping for multiple data destinations.

If the I/O throughput for the system seems to be below industry standards, check for I/O chain misconfiguration: ensure the firmware is up to date, validate the SAN (storage area network) routing configuration, and so on.

Reduce the latency between the database and the Management Server.

 
Table 4. File Handle Limits
Motivation

Foglight requires a minimum number of file handles. The native launcher checks for a minimum number of file handles, but problems can still occur.

Symptom

The JVM reports a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError.

Diagnosis / Verification

Determine if Foglight has run out of native file handles for a process because the operating system has a maximum number of file handles per process defined.

Tuning

Check the current values:

[root@stnuat]/# ulimit -Sa
...
nofiles(descriptors) 1024
...
and
[root@stnuat]/# ulimit -Ha
...
nofiles(descriptors) 65536
...

If the per-process file handle maximum is too low for the application, try raising it.

The values can be set before starting the server (to the maximum, for example) using:

ulimit -n 65536

Running on Virtual Hardware

The Foglight™ Management Server can be run on a virtual machine (VM), instead of physical hardware.

If you are going to run the Management Server on a VM, ensure that the Management Server is well-tuned.

Performance Challenges

The following subsections describe some of the performance challenges the Foglight™ Management Server might face in an environment that has interacting virtual components.

The information in the following subsections helps you optimize the performance of the VM in which the Management Server is running. However, as the performance demands of monitoring the virtual infrastructure increases, so do the underlying processing requirements.

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