Tolerable amount of local console operators?

Usage and Config Platform
1

Is there any official source of information that would say something about tolerable amounts of local console operator accounts? Or does someone have empirical information regarding this topic? I guess it depends on many things but in general, are we talking about hundreds or thousands of local console operators?

2

Sorry for the rambling response … it’s a simple question that doesn’t have a simple answer.

I don’t think there is any documented “hard number” and depending on who you ask, and how you ask the question, you may get an answer of “there is no limit”.

That doesn’t mean there’s no penalty to having a large number of Console Operators.

I currently manage a BigFix environment with 152 Console Operators and ~40k endpoints. I’m sure there are larger installations than mine with more Operators. These are simply my observations.

Initially, there was internal pressure to increase that number by quite a bit, but I’ve been able to resist it so far by giving people access to Web Reports. The Web Console may help reduce some of the Open Console induced load, but I’m not ready to try that quite yet.

In my experience, a large number of Console Operators can have a variety of impacts on a BigFix deployment

  • The more Console Operators in the system, the more “validation” every endpoint needs to do.
  • The more Console Operators you have, the slower the initial check-in process will be for newly installed clients since they have to validate each Console Operator during that first pass.
  • The more Console Operators in the system, the more Open Console sessions you will likely have. This will result in more direct load on your BigFix Server as the Consoles refresh. The Web Console may help here. I don’t have any experience with it yet.
  • The more Console Operators in the system, the greater the number of Open Actions the BES Clients will likely need to evaluate.
  • If you have a large number of Console Operators, you will need to keep an eye on the number of “Open Ended” actions they submit. It can drag down client performance as they repeatedly need to evaluate their Relevance to the Actions. Operator education is important here.
  • If you have a large number of Console Operators, you will want to keep an eye on the Analyses that they create in their Operator Sites. Operator education and use of Custom Sites can be important here.
  • If you have a large number of Console Operators, you will want to keep an eye on the Baselines that they create in their Operator Sites. Operator education and use of Custom Sites can be important here.

I use Custom Sites to allow Console Operators that support groups of computers to share content like Analyses and Baselines. It keeps them from all creating multiple instances of the same content.

3

Thanks @TimRice for sharing your thoughts.

I’m basically looking for answers to this statement. I believe there is no hard-coded limit for the operator amounts and the answer really depends on many things like deployment size etc. But I’m looking for answers in theory and real-life cases would be beneficial too.

Could someone answer simply yes or no can I for example create and maintain tens of thousands of local users? If not, where does the limit go in reality in order to have fully working environment?

4

The only thing in the documentation regarding the number of console operator’s is:

http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSQL82_9.5.0/com.ibm.bigfix.doc/Platform/Installation/c_network_configuration.html

The number of console operators
Multiple console operators can connect to the servers at the same time to manage subsets of the networked computers. Some deployments can have hundreds of operators. If you plan to have more than 30 operators, you might want to have a more powerful Server to support the additional load.

We also recommend that the maximum number of endpoints that the server handle whether concurrently either from client or from relay be 1000 or less (Legacy Communities - IBM TechXchange Community). This is based on traditional concurrent network limitations inferred by a systems MaxFreeTCB TCP/IP settings (in Windows) which would also include the need for a lot of RAM.

So theoretically, the number of consoles supported would be something approximately around: 1000 - {# of endpoints directly connected to console} = # of consoles supported.

Based on experience in supporting the product I would recommend keeping the number of total consoles connecting to the server concurrently to under 200.

5

Thanks @BigFixNinja for your answer. This information helps me.