Number of Properties in an Analysis

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by MattBoyd)

Is there any recommendation on the maximum number of properties that should be added to a single analysis? We’re considering creating a global analysis with 50+ properties. I would like to make sure that this does not significantly affect the performance of BES (servers, relays, and clients).

Many of these properties already exist in other analyses. Our thinking that it may be easier to access the information from Web Reports report templates…

2

(imported comment written by JasonO91)

boyd,

I have created large numbers of properties in analyses, and you just want to make sure that the report time is something longer than every report. I would suggest something like once per day or every 6 hours. I would also be hesitant to put a large number of properties that force a query of the disk.

Jason

3

(imported comment written by BenKus)

50 properties in an analysis is not necessarily a big problem, but it is good to be worried… There are many things to consider including database size, insertion performance, console load times, agent performance, etc.

Some notes:

  • Properties that change a lot are much more expensive than properties that don’t change often.
  • It is best to keep the results from a property less than a couple KB… (the smaller the better)…
  • Properties that are fast (reg lookups, fast API calls, etc.) have a much smaller impact that slow properties (some wmi calls, lines of files, etc.)

If you have a decent server at a small-mid size deployment (less than 10k-20k agents), then you probably will be fine as long as you don’t have particularly slow or big properties… but if you have large deployments (greater than 100k agents), you need to start worrying more about this stuff…

Ben

4

(imported comment written by MattBoyd)

Thanks for the advice Ben, I’ve definitely found WMI calls to be the most expensive. Can I significantly minimize the performance impact on the server and clients by adjusting the reporting interval? For many of the properties, I probably only need to clients to report results once a day.

5

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey Boyd,

Yes… reporting once a day will decrease agent load, network load, and database load… Although it will still have some console load if you look at the data often in the console… but that shouldn’t be a big issue…

Ben