Reducing performance monitor records
This option examines the number of records in the performance monitor data tables. A large number of records in these tables can potentially cause performance problems in WhatsUp when writing performance monitor polling data and when viewing polling data in the web interface. You can decrease the quantity of records in these tables in several ways:
- Enable monitoring only for the important devices in your network.
You should collect performance monitor information from only those devices that are a concern. You can do this from the Device Properties - Performance Monitors dialog. - Increase the polling interval for performance monitors on non-critical devices.
By changing how often WhatsUp Gold collects data from devices, you can decrease the amount of storage needed in the database for the monitor's records. This can be done on a per-device basis from within the Device Properties - Performance Monitors dialog or for all devices using the Bulk Field Change feature. We recommend setting each device manually as this allows for separate intervals and will not change the collection type for the monitor on the device. For more information, see Configuring the Interface Utilization Monitor collection settings and the Bulk Field Change - Performance Monitor dialog help.: By setting a longer polling interval, you are decreasing the granularity of the performance monitor data on a device. For example, a device is set to collect utilization data every ten minutes for an hour. If there is a sustained period of 100% utilization for 10 minutes, while the rest of the hour shows 0% utilization, the period of 100% utilization is visible in the device's reports, followed by 0% utilization for the rest of the hour. But, if that same device is only collecting data once every 20 minutes, you only see 50% utilization of the interface during that 20-minute sample period.
- Change the data retention settings for all performance monitors configured in WhatsUp Gold.
By default, WhatsUp Gold keeps raw performance monitor records for 1 day, hourly records for 30 days, and daily data for 1 year. Raw data is records in the database that contain actual values retrieved from a device during the poll of a performance monitor. This is the most granular data this table contains about performance monitor information on a device. Hourly records are an aggregate of an hour's worth of raw records, summarized and averaged into a single record. Instead of seeing each poll as a separate data point, the individual data points are reduced to a single, hourly summary. Daily records are a summarization of the 24 hourly records for that day. As time progresses, information in the database about a particular performance monitor gets less and less granular, or specific, until reaching the daily record expiration limit at which point the data is lost and replaced by new, incoming data. By adjusting the retention settings for performance monitor data, you can affect how much space is occupied by a table's data. As you decrease the time period that records are kept, you decrease the amount of space needed to store those records.
For information on changing data retention settings, see Changing how long report data is stored and the Program Options - Report Data dialog help.: Changing these settings affects all the performance monitor data collected by WhatsUp Gold. This includes CPU, Disk, Memory, Ping Latency & Availability, Interface Utilization (collecting data for All Interfaces, Active Interfaces, Specific Interfaces, Custom Active Interfaces, and Interface Errors and Discards), Printer, VoIP, and any data collected by custom performance monitors you have created.
: You can use the Alert Center to set database threshold alerts for WhatsUp Gold and Flow Monitor. For more information, see Configuring a WhatsUp Health threshold.