1. Effective Methods for Analyzing Altiris Performance Sam Saffron | Development Manager | Altiris John Epeneter | Product Manager | Altiris Monitoring

2. © Altiris Inc. Agenda  Overview  Scenario 1 – Adjusting Collection Update Schedules  Scenario 2 –Adjusting basic inventory interval  Scenario 3 – Finding the slowest reports  Scenario 4 – Identifying CPU and memory hogs on the NS server  Scenario 5 – Finding the slowest collection

3. © Altiris Inc. Overview  Issue:  What are problem are you trying to identify?  Process to diagnose:  How will you find out if this is happening?  Action:  What actions will you take to rectify the problem?  Effect:  What effect will your changes have?

4. © Altiris Inc. Scenario 1 – Adjusting Collection Update Schedules  Issue: Collection update schedules can impact console and NS performance  Process to Diagnose:  \Reports\Notification Server Infrastructure\Server\Events – Scheduled ― Last N scheduled events ― Scheduled events requiring > 5 seconds to process  Action:  \Configuration\Server Settings\Notification Server Settings ― Automatic Collection Updating  Adjust “Collection Delta Update Schedule” to run every hour during work hours and 10 minutes during the night time  Effect:  Collections will not be updated as often  Can impact time required for policies to become effective and recognize changes.

5. © Altiris Inc. Scenario 2 –Adjusting basic inventory interval  Issue: processing basic inventory can effect console and ns performance  Process to diagnose:  \Reports\Notification Server Infrastructure\Server\Policy Reports ― Policy Event History (you can drill down with this report)  Action:  \Configuration\Altiris Agent\Altiris Agent Configuration ― All Windows Servers (excluding 'Package Servers') ― All Desktop computers (excluding 'Package Servers') ― Adjust “Send basic inventory” option to run weekly  Effect:  Many out of the box collections are based on basic inventory, they will be slower to recognize change  Performance will improve on the NS

6. © Altiris Inc. Scenario 3 – Finding the slowest reports  Issue: Certain reports are taking a very long time to execute  Process to diagnose:  Import “ Longest running reports in the last seven days.xml ” into your reports area  Action:  Consider optimizing any reports you have written that seem to be taking a very long time  Reports that are based on events will perform much better if you consider implementing event purging  Consider scheduling the report to run during a non-busy time  Effect:  Some very slow reports can heavily impact NS performance, optimizing them can improve overall performance

7. © Altiris Inc. Scenario 4 – Identifying CPU and memory hogs on the NS server  Issue: Identifying CPU and memory hogs on the NS  Process to diagnose:  Install Monitor Solution for Altiris Infrastructure  Run monitor solution reports to isolate times of high CPU and memory usage  Isolate the activity that is occurring on the box during the high activity period  Action:  Depending on you findings attempt to reduce load on the server during the times the NS is experiencing irregular high CPU usage.  Effect:  Better NS Performance

8. © Altiris Inc. Scenario 5 – Finding the slowest collection (advanced - DBA)  Issue : Certain collection may take disproportionate time to update, for custom collections, a poorly written join condition can blow up collection update time.  Process to diagnose :  Run Sql Profiler ― New Trace & Login ― Use Template “Slowest Collections” and Run  Refresh collections ― \Configuration\Server Settings\Notification Server Settings\Automatic Collection Updating  Save the Profiler results to a table [File > Save As > Trace Table] named ColTrace on the Altiris database (type the server name as ATRSNS6, not ‘dot’ or blank)  Open c:\master\performance\SlowestCollection.sql in Query Analyzer (double-click) and run the query  Action :  Fix any user created collections that are taking very long times to update  Effect :  Collection update schedules will run faster