Does Security Manager support hyperthreading? (NETIQKB52040)

  • 7752040
  • 02-Feb-2007
  • 13-Aug-2007

Resolution

goal
Does Security Manager support hyperthreading?

goal
Are there any known issues with running hyperthreading on Security Manager components?

fact
Security Manager 5.X

fix

While testing Security Manager in hyperthreading-enabled environments, NetIQ corporation found mixed results depending on the event load and throughput of the tested environment. 

Customers have experienced severely impeded performance on central computers and database servers that run with hyperthreading enabled. 

Agent computers that monitor heavy event loads, such as agents that monitor IIS servers, network firewalls, or domain controllers, might have impeded performance because of the increased amount of stress.  However, Agent computers with moderate event loads often have improved performance with hyperthreading enabled.



note

Why does NetIQ Technical Support ask you to turn off hyperthreading when calling in?

NetIQ Technical Support has seen many issues involving problems in stressed environments. As a means to eliminate hyperthreading as a cause of the problem, we ask you to disable hyperthreading to continue advanced troubleshooting.  Frequently, the problems have gone away after disabling hyperthreading.



note

What are some of the challenges to working with Hyperthreading?

Often in high-stress environments, hyperthreading can have different results than expected.  For example, a heavily-loaded server may in fact experience lower than expected performance with hyperthreading enabled as opposed to having it disabled. In addition, these environments often appear to have low load even though a large amount of throughput is being pushed to the server.

For more information about examples of real-world challenges faced when hyperthreading is enabled, see "Does hyperthreading hurt server performance" published on November 21, 2005 at http://news.news.comhttp://news.com.com/Does+hyperthreading+hurt+server+performance/2100-1006_3-5965435.html



note

What are some of the advantages to having hyperthreading enabled?

Intel says its hyperthreading technology will boost chip performance and allow a CPU to process nearly twice as much information as one without hyperthreading. For information about hyperthreading, see the following:

http://www.intel.com/business/bss/products/hyperthreading/overview.htm



Additional Information

Formerly known as NETIQKB52040