Sun Management Center 3.5 Installation and Configuration Guide

Agent Layer Resources

Sun Management Center 3.5 agents should be installed on every managed node in your network to enable advanced management and monitoring functions. Sun Management Center agents are supported on any SPARC platform workstations and servers running Solaris version 2.6, Solaris version 7, Solaris version 8, or Solaris version 9. Sun Management Center agents are not available for Solaris operating environment (x86 Platform Edition) systems or for Microsoft Windows systems.

CPU Resources

Sun Management Center agents add a minimal computational load on the host system. The computational load is caused by normal management operations, including periodic data acquisition, alarm rule processing, alarm annunciation, alarm action execution, and the processing of client requests.

The amount of load introduced is proportional to the rate at which data is gathered, the amount of data gathered, the number of alarms detected, and the number of user requests. The percentage of CPU resources consumed therefore depends on the number and type of modules loaded on the system, the configuration of these modules, and the computational capacity of the host system.

Even on low-end machines with a comprehensive suite of modules loaded and high management activity, the agent should never consume more than a fraction of the CPU resources.

The following table provides estimates of CPU and RAM usage.

Table C–1 Agent CPU and RAM Use Estimates by System Type


Server Type	Configuration	CPU Usage			RAM Usage (average)
Server Type	Heavy or Light	Maximum	Minimum	Average	Size	Resident Size
Netra X1	Light	16.3%	0.0%	0.09%	12 Mbytes	10 Mbytes
Sun Enterprise 420R	Light	14.3%	0.0%	0.13%	15 Mbytes	14 Mbytes
Sun Blade 1000	Light	0.3%	0.0%	0.03%	17 Mbytes	16 Mbytes
Sun Blade 100	Heavy	14.0%	0.2%	8.9%	29 Mbytes	29 Mbytes

Light configurations are based on an agent with the following modules loaded:

Kernel-Reader Simple
Agent Statistics
MIB-II Simple

The heavy configuration is based on an agent with the following modules loaded:

Config Reader
Health Monitor
Full Kernel Reader
MIB-II Instrumentation
Directory Size Monitoring
File Scanning

Hardware Diagnostics Suite
Script Launcher
HP JetDirect
Agent Statistics
MIB-II Proxy Monitoring
Various other modules, including custom modules

The heavy configuration is likely to be greater than needed. Larger machines typically have larger hardware configurations with more processors and disks. These configurations result in greater memory consumption by agents running on larger machines.

Virtual Memory Requirements

The virtual memory used by an agent depends on multiple factors. The primary considerations are the number of management modules loaded and the amount of information being monitored by these modules. Loading many modules on an agent increases its memory requirement. Similarly, agents managing hosts with large disk arrays or other highly scalable assets will probably require more virtual memory because the volume of management information passing through the agents will increase.

In general, a base agent with the default set of management modules loaded is under 10 Mbytes in size. The base agent requires only 50% to 60% of the 10 Mbytes to be resident in physical memory.

Hardware-Specific Module Availability

The majority of Sun Management Center management modules are portable across all SPARC platform systems running Sun Management Center agents. Some advanced hardware-specific Sun Management Center modules, however, are not supported on all Sun hardware. Specifically, the platform Config-Reader and Dynamic Reconfiguration modules provide advanced management of the underlying hardware platform. The functions these modules provide are not necessarily applicable to all hardware systems in the Sun product family.

The following table summarizes the availability of the Sun Management Center management modules on the various hardware platforms.

Table C–2 Hardware-Specific Module Availability


Hardware	Config-Reader Module	Dynamic Reconfiguration Module	All Other Sun Management Center Modules
SPARCStation 1, 2, 5, 10, 20	No	No	Yes
Sun Ultra 1, 2, 5, 10, 30, 60, 80	Yes	No	Yes
Sun Enterprise 5, 10, 150, 250, 450, 220R, 420R, Sun Fire 280R, Sun Fire V480	Yes	No	Yes
SPARCserver 1000, 1000E	Yes	No	Yes
SPARCcenter 2000, 2000E	Yes	No	Yes
Sun Enterprise 3x00, 4x00, 5x00, 6x000	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sun Enterprise 10000	Yes	No	Yes
Sun StorEdge A5x00, T3	Yes	No	Yes
Netra T1, T1120-1125, T1400-T1405	Yes	No	Yes
Sun Blade 100, 1000	Yes	No	Yes
Sun Fire, 3800, 4800, 4810, 6800, V880	Yes	Yes	Yes

Management Module Resources

The resource requirements of management modules depend on the following factors:

The number of managed properties in the module.
The volume of managed property data processed in the module. Tables with many rows of data incur increased resource usage.
The refresh intervals of managed properties.
The complexity of data collection and rule processing.

The following table summarizes the resource impact of the Sun Management Center management modules.

Table C–3 Sun Management Center Management Module System Impact Summary


Module	Impact
Agent Statistics	Incurs low footprint increase and low CPU load increase.
Config-Reader	Uses CPU and memory relative to the complexity of the hardware configuration of the managed node.
Data Logging Registry	Incurs low footprint and CPU load increase that is proportional to the amount of data values being logged.
Directory Size Monitoring	Incurs a low footprint increase that is proportional to the number of directories monitored. Incurs low to moderate CPU load that depends on both the number of directories monitored and the activity within those directories.
Dynamic Reconfiguration	Has minimal footprint impact and utilizes CPU only when performing reconfiguration operations.
File Monitoring	Incurs low footprint increase proportional to the number of files that are monitored. Incurs low to moderate CPU load, depending on both the number of files that are monitored and the activity within those files.
File Scanning (System Log)	Incurs low footprint and CPU load increase.
Health Monitoring	Has relatively low impact on resources.
HP JetDirect	Incurs low footprint increase and low CPU load.
IPV6 Instrumentation Module	Incurs low CPU load increase and low to medium footprint increase dependent on the number of network interfaces.
Kernel Reader, Full	Affects CPU and memory based on the number of file systems, CPUs, and other system resources under management, as well as the rate of refresh of this information. Consumes more resources than the Simple Kernel Reader.
Kernel Reader, Simple	Has minimal impact on CPU and memory.
MIB-II Instrumentation	Incurs minimal CPU load and low to moderate footprint increase depending on the number of network interfaces, and the size of the routing tables, ARP tables, and related system tables.
MIB-II Proxy Monitoring	Incurs moderate footprint increase proportional to the size of the MIB of the proxy-monitored SNMP agent. Incurs low to moderate CPU load proportional to the number of managed objects in the proxy-monitored SNMP agent.
MIB-II Simple	Incurs virtually no CPU load and very little footprint increase, proportional to the size of the system interfaces, IP forwarding, and IP address table.
NFS File System	Incurs low footprint increase that is proportional to the number of network file systems mounted on the host machine, and low CPU load.
NFS Statistics	Incurs low footprint increase and low to moderate CPU load.
Print Spooler	Incurs low footprint and CPU load increase.
Solaris Process Monitoring	Incurs low footprint increase that is proportional to the number of processes monitored. Incurs low to moderate CPU load, depending both on the number of processes monitored and how often the processes are started and stopped.
Sun StorEdge A5x00 Array, Sun StorEdge T3 Array	Incurs moderate footprint and load increase that is proportional to the size of the storage device.