Initial checks when experiencing performance issues

10/23/2018 3:55 PM

10/23/2018 3:55 PM

This article provides quick information about your current environment and health check. It will help you address the most common reasons for performance issues on to your server without sending the diagnostics to SolarWinds support. 

In this article, you can also audit your own environment quickly if it has been setup as recommended by the SolarWinds minimum requirements or according to the settings eliminating bottlenecks creating performance issues within the set environment. 

This article also helps to save time to upload the diagnostics for support where you have air gap between the server and you can check the basic health check on the actual server itself . 

There are lots of other benefits when checking the environment health within the internal due to security procedures that do not allow the upload of diagnostics for SolarWinds support.

 

• I have a very large Orion database. What should I check?
• I have database performance issues. How can i improve my database performance?
• Why is my Orion database growing so quickly?
• Why does my Orion performance decrease each day?
• Why is my Orion Web Console loading data at a slow rate?

Orion Platform

Your check list

✔ Server hardware

✔ Total elements (Nodes/Interfaces/Volumes) polled per server

✔ Orion DB size/settings/options

✔ Check your website pages configuration/customization

 

1. Collect System diagnostics as below.
2. Navigate to Start > SolarWinds Orion > Documentation and Support.
3. Launch the gray icon for Orion Diagnostics > click Start.
4. This program will generate a .zip output file.
5. Unzip in a folder. Right click > select Extract here.

 

Server Hardware

Check your system hardware if it meets the SolarWinds minimum requirement.

1. Go to the SystemInformation folder and open the SystemInfo.txt file.
2. You will be able to find the system hardware specification. Below is an example where the system is only assigned with 2 Physical CPU Sockets. It also shows that it meets the minimum requirement:
   System Type                x64-based PC
Processor(s)               2 Processor(s) installed.
     [01]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 45 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~1600 Mhz
     [02]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 45 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~1400 Mhz
Total Physical Memory:     49.082 MB

   Available Physical Memory: 39.408 MB

   Virtual Memory: Max Size:  56.250 MB

   Virtual Memory: Available: 45.376 MB

   Virtual Memory: In Use:    10.874 MB

3. Open the SysInfo.csv file and check for the current CPU load on the system and CPU GHz level.
   Below is an example where the CPU load is around 70% on the current system due to two main reasons (in red).
    

   Parameter	Value
   OS Version	Windows Server 2012 R2 (Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0)
   CPU Information	Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2420 0 @ 1.90GHZ
   Current CPU Usage	70%
   Total Physical Memory	49152 MB
   Free Physical Memory	39802 MB
   Free Virtual Memory	45843 MB
   Free Space In Paging Files	7109 MB
   Current Time Zone	xxxx Standard Time (UTC+01:00:00)

   
   Low Physical Sockets assigned
   Low CPU power less then 3.0 GHz

 

In above case, the system hardware is not even near the recommended SolarWinds production deployment and as a result, the CPU load will remain high.

 

The following table lists the minimum hardware requirements and recommendations for your SolarWinds Orion server.

Installing multiple SolarWinds Orion Platform products on the same computer may change the requirements.

Hardware requirements are listed by SolarWinds NPM license level.

These minimum requirements are for the Orion Platform. Products that run on the Orion Platform may have different requirements, such as different OS or memory requirements.

Consult your product-specific documentation for the exact requirements.

HARDWARE	SL100, SL250, SL500	SL2000	SLX
CPU speed	Quad core processor, 2.5 GHz or better	Quad core processor, 2.5 GHz or better	Quad core processor, 3.0 GHz or better

 

For more details see below guide

SolarWinds Orion server hardware requirements

 

Total Elements (Nodes /Interfaces/ Volumes) been polled per server

1. Go to the database folder and open the AllEngines.csv file.
2. Check how many elements you are polling per server:

   EngineID	Elements	Nodes	Interfaces	Volumes
   1	15828	934	6823	1071
   2	16084	202	1035	77

    

With only SolarWinds SLX license, you can monitor up to 12000 elements. If you plan to monitor more elements, it is recommended that you install additional polling engines on separate servers to help distribute the workload.

It is also strongly recommended that you check the Help post for any other inquiries if you are polling beyond 12000 elements with a single SLX Server.

Boost your server polling capacity with Stackable Poller license

 

Orion DB Size and settings

1. Go to the DBInfo folder and open the DatabaseInfo.csv file.
2. Check the Database Recovery Mode.
3. Check the Total Database Size.
   The default DB Recovery should be simple (strongly recommended):

   Name	Database size	Status
   SolarWindsOrion	889274.25 MB	Recovery=FULL

For more details, please see the post below and follow all the steps to check your Orion Database Health and settings.

This guide will help you address the most common questions and issues related to the Orion database performance check and configuration without using the SolarWinds Database Administrator (DBA).

 

Quick Orion database health check guide

Tips for better Orion Web Console performance

 

Still have any questions/need assistance?

Please feel free to submit a new support ticket in relation to your question/error. Our support lines are available 24/7.

http://www.solarwinds.com/support/ticket

You can also contact the support by 24/7  phone support .

http://www.solarwinds.com/company/contact.aspx

This post is also available on the Thwack 

https://thwack.solarwinds.com/docs/DOC-190027