Infoblox CPU Test

Often excess traffic to an appliance can impose a prohibitive load, choking the CPU. To proactively avoid such bottlenecks, you have to constantly monitor the CPU utilization of the target Infoblox appliance. This is where the Infoblox CPU test helps.

This test tracks the CPU usage of the target Infoblox appliance over time, and alerts you to potential CPU contentions thus improving the performance of the appliance. The test also reports the current CPU utilization of the appliance, so that sudden spikes in CPU usage can be promptly captured.

Target of the test : An Infoblox appliance

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Infoblox appliance that is to be monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the Infoblox appliance for which this test is to be configured.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 60 seconds.
Is Debug Enabled	By default, this flag is set to No. If you wish to obtain troubleshooting logs for this test, then, set this flag to Yes. The troubleshooting log with the naming convention <Component Name_Internal name of the test>.log will be created in the <eG_INSTALL_DIR>\agant\logs folder once the test starts reporting metrics.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
User CPU usage	Indicates the percentage of CPU consumed by the user process of the appliance.	Percent	By comparing the value of this measure with that of the System CPU usage and Idle CPU usage measures, you can instantly determine whether system processes are CPU-hungry or user processes or the idle time the cause of CPU contention.
System CPU usage	Indicates the percentage of CPU consumed by the system process of the appliance.	Percent	By comparing the value of this measure with that of the User CPU usage and Idle CPU usage measures, you can instantly determine whether system processes are CPU-hungry or user processes or the idle time the cause of CPU contention.
Idle CPU usage	Indicates the percentage of CPU that is idle for the appliance.	Percent	Compare the value of this measure with the value of the System CPU usage and User CPU usage measures to understand where the component spent the maximum CPU time - in serving user requests? in system-level processing? or being idle? In the event of a slowdown, you can use the results of this comparative analysis to determine what caused the CPU contention.
I/O wait CPU usage	Indicates the percentage of CPU time spent in wait state.	Percent	If the value of this measure is abnormally high, then it may indicate a bottleneck.
Stolen CPU time	Indicates the percentage of CPU time spent in stolen state.	Percent	Infoblox appliances can run as physical hardware or as virtual appliances. In virtualized environments, stolen CPU time is when the virtual machine (VM) is ready to execute, but the hypervisor is not allocating physical CPU time to it because the physical CPU is busy running other VMs. High values may lead to sluggish performance of Infoblox services.
Total CPU usage	Indicates the percentage of CPU utilized during the last measurement period.	Percent	A consistently high value of this measure is an indication of CPU resources being used excessively. Administrators can initiate troubleshooting on why CPU usage is at its peak.