topic Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI in Deployment Architecture

Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

daniel333 — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 19:12:50 GMT

All,

I have about 2658 devices checking into our deployment server (CentOS 6.6, x64, Splunk 6.41)
8vCPU/16gigs ram

Over all we sit around 10-20% CPU with plenty of memory free. But the over all UI performance is becoming basically un-usable. I am guessing there are some performance tweaks I need to make. Really havn't seen any guides to this.

Probably worth mentioning 99% of the clients have a 2 hour check-in time. But about 20 servers (other Splunk servers) are set to every 2 minutes.

top - 19:09:45 up 319 days,  1:44,  2 users,  load average: 0.72, 0.63, 0.40
Tasks: 235 total,   2 running, 233 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 20.9%us,  7.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 69.0%id,  1.7%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.4%si,  0.0%st
Mem:  16333660k total, 15423556k used,   910104k free,   191868k buffers
Swap:  8388604k total,   375048k used,  8013556k free,  8733040k cached

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

jungasdf — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:52:56 GMT

I have a deployment server with triple number of deployment clients. Same Symptoms, server is bored (heavily underutilized), GUI is unusable (huge delays after each click).

I observed that the browser (I used on my laptop for administering the deployment-server WEB-GUI) consumes all the RAM on my laptop.
I have never seen a browser process before consuming more than 2 GB of RAM. The effect is independent from the browser used.
--> Looks like there are some JavaScript functions used on the deployment-server WEB-GUI which update data in the background. The more deployment clients, the more JavaScript is running in parallel.

This JavaScript in the deployment-server WEB-GUI is scaling for hundreds of deployment clients, but not for thousands.

Is there a way to switch off that Javascript? If not, I have to switch from GUI to CLI level administration.
Maybe splunk helps us by improving the resource consumption in the browser (which implies a redesign of the GUI).

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

ddrillic — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 00:26:15 GMT

Maybe this one relates to what you see -

It's at Distributed deployment, forwarder, deployment server issues

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

esix_splunk — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 00:42:48 GMT

WHat browser are you using? Using Chrome, and 6.4+, i've been with in engagements with 4000+ clients and the GUI responsive and quite smooth. What particular area(s) are you seeing slowness, or "all" areas? Id say there could be some slowness in the forwarder listing, but this shouldnt cascade across the whole deployment...

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

jungasdf — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 11:41:15 GMT

I am using Firefox, my collegue uses Chrome. We also could reproduce the effect with IE11.
Today our deploymentserver has 9500+ UFs, Splunk Release 6.5.2 for all servers and most of the UFs.

The slowness is most happening while listing all the forwarders. To suffer from the slowness it is sufficient to have the deploymentserver in a browser tab open while working on a different tab. It slows down the complete browser.
As soon as you close the tab with the deploymentserver the browser returns to normal speed after a few seconds.

Splunk support did not believe it first, but we showed it on a webex session to them ... now they are thinking on it.
From my perspective I would switch to a DMC like GUI instead of keeping the javascript-like GUI of today.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

alemarzu — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 13:13:47 GMT

Hi there, Huge Transparent Pages are disabled and ulimits were tuned properly ?

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 05:24:46 GMT

Having exactly the same issue - I assume this is still occuring for you?
DS with around 20k UF's (issue was occuring when we had 10k).
Chrome, Firefox or IE all experience the issue.

As soon as the browser/tab is closed, browser is responsive again.
The DS is over specced and is barley hitting 20% resource usage during peaks.

Logged a job support.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:26:15 GMT

Have been progessing this issue with Support and received a glimmer of hope today:

They've located the relevant codes which contributed to the issue and currently
discussing on possible fix since some of the change will impact both front end and backend.

Heres hoping a fix is on the way!

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

sjcoluccio67 — Thu, 17 May 2018 14:54:43 GMT

Hey! I am suffering from the exact same symptoms you described. Was there ever a fix to this?

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 07:23:48 GMT

Just received confirmation from Splunk support that a partial fix for the Deployment Server UI performance will be made available in 7.1.2 or 7.0.5 (next release). From the testing performed this should decrease the loading time by about 50% on very large instances.

For an environment I work in however we are sitting on about a 6 minute load time... so if this drops to 3 minutes it's a massive improvement.. but 3 minutes is still unacceptable in my books.

I've followed this up to have an Enhanced Request (ER) logged as suggested by Support, as further fixes will apparently require a more indepth code review/change.

So hopefully in the near future things may be "better". I'll report our findings once it gets released.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

amallik — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 14:39:09 GMT

We are seeing same issue running Splunk 7.0.1 Baremetal server with "15 CPU and 15 GB RAM"
CPU Avg utilization is 1% Memory is 13GB used.
it is a dedicated server for Deployment only with 6000 clients dialing home every 1 hour.

Deployment server is very responsive right after restart, but after about two hours GUI becomes painfully slow in forwarder management section.
During this slowness CPU is only spiking to 20% and no change in memory utilization.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 06:44:07 GMT

I ended up creating a "read only" replacement of the Fowarder Management interface using REST calls as this responds in a reasonable time (around 30 seconds). To speed it up further I created a scheduled search running every 5 minutes that creates a lookup, then it used for the queries.

Have a read of http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.1.1/RESTREF/RESTdeploy

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 02:12:34 GMT

Latest version (7.1.2) apparently has the partial fix:
2018-06-07 SPL-155009, SPL-153261 Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI and sometime crash the browser

I'm yet to test this.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

amallik — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 12:21:22 GMT

I have ran into same issue. Started with Splunk 6.5 as deployment server on a VM with 6 CPU and 16GB ram. After restarting splunk service Splunk Universal forwarder management is very responsive. As it builds client list and number of clients climb over 1000 you can notice considerable degradation of response from splunk web. (Only under Forwarder Management section all other are fine). I have 6200 Clients and by the time Splunk Deployment builds complete list, the Web UI response time goes into minutes (3 minutes typically).

So I upgrade from VM to a physical box with 16 CPU and 48GB ram. Turned THP off and set my ulimits as follows to remove any bottle necks.

core file size (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority (-e) 0
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals (-i) 63621
max locked memory (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files (-n) 65536
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority (-r) 0
stack size (kbytes, -s) 10240
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 16284
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks (-x) unlimited

Installed Splunk 7.1.1
My Cpu utilization hovers between .05% to .15%. Except when I try to reload the Universal management page at which I see one Cpu getting to 100% while others are less than a percent. The performance gains I have seen after moving to Physical server
are VM Page load time just over 3 minutes, Physical Server page load time Just over 1 Minute. It seems Every 1000 Machines add 10 Seconds delay.

I Verified the poor response in Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge, Safari. Which proved that is is not Browser related. Then I used firefox debug to different sections of page and their load time. See the image. It is clearly a bug in Splunk which needs immediate attention.

For some reason people could not open the image. Please use the following link.

http://tinypic.com/r/o9lu84/9

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

amallik — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 12:23:36 GMT

I have ran into same issue. Started with Splunk 6.5 as deployment server on a VM with 6 CPU and 16GB ram. After restarting splunk service Splunk Universal forwarder management is very responsive. As it builds client list and number of clients climb over 1000 you can notice considerable degradation of response from splunk web. (Only under UF Management section all other are fine). I have 6200 Clients and by the time Splunk Deployment builds complete list, the Web UI response time goes into minutes (3 minutes typically).

So I upgrade from VM to a physical box with 16 CPU and 48GB ram. Turned THP off and set my ulimits as follows to remove any bottle necks.

My Cpu utilization hovers between .05% to .15%. Except when I try to reload the Universal management page at which I see one Cpu getting to 100% while others are less than a percent. The performance gains I have seen after moving to Physical server
are VM Page load time just over 3 minutes, Physical Server page load time Just over 1 Minute. It seems Every 1000 Machines add 10 Seconds delay.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 23:27:44 GMT

Image isn't loading for me, would be curious to see it. Can you try and reupload / imgur etc.

I installed 7.1.2 with the partial fix that I mentioned previously, and it has improved.. but it is still incredibly slow. One environment I am working on has over 20k UF's now.

Support have logged an ER (Enhancement Request), however it was indicated this can take months.. if it is even looked into at all.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

woodcock — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 14:27:55 GMT

It is a best practice NOT to use the Deployment Server UI at all. Why? Because admins never enter into it from the same app and the result is that the physical serverclass.conf files are spread all over the app space creating an upgrade and management nightmare. We always disable the UI (with a deliberate configuration in serverclass.conf) and then manage it from the CLI. That is the only sane way to do it long-term. Disabling the UI also means that you are safer to use a configuration management tool to version-control the serverclass.conf file and the deployment-apps directory, which you should be doing.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

amallik — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 17:53:11 GMT

Do you have a document that you can point to where it states Not to use GUI as this is not the best practice.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

dd_msearles — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 23:30:09 GMT

Not sure I agree that the UI should create files outside of 'system/local' ... seems silly.
Just checked and the bulk of the definitions are in 'search/local' for some reason.

The environment has some extensive whitelists/blacklists and when making changes via the UI (after waiting minutes for it to respond) the filtering/preview feature is very handy.

I ended up creating a read only dashboard of the Forwarder Management using REST so we can at least easily view the state... making changes is the painful part now.

Re: Slow Performance in the Deployment Server UI

woodcock — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 01:29:55 GMT

Because search is an app, like I said. It is Search and Reporting and built-in, but it is an app.