Polling Types And Frequencies - Extreme Networks EPICenter Guide Manual

Tuning and Debugging EPICenter
For devices that simply take a long time to sync or to poll on a Detail poll cycle, you can reduce the
impact by reducing the Detail Poll frequency (lengthening the time between polls) for those devices.
The default Detail polling frequency is 30 minutes for core devices and 90 minutes for edge devices.

Polling Types and Frequencies

Upon client startup, before you can log in, EPICenter by default attempts to sync all the devices it is
managing, to bring its database up to date. For devices that are down (and not marked offline in
EPICenter) EPICenter will attempt to sync the device and will have to wait until the device times out.
Further, a sync does a Detail Poll, so a large network with many devices with very complex
configurations (for example, a large number of VLANs) the sync operation can take a fair amount of
time. However, once this sync has completed, EPICenter does
EPICenter does several types of polling, using SNMP or Telnet, for the information it needs.
SNMP Polling
EPICenter does two types of polls for device information using SNMP.
A global "heartbeat" poll that gets basic information about device reachability. The poll frequency
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for this is 5 minutes, for all devices regardless of type.
A device-specific Detail poll, that polls for more detailed information about the device configuration,
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such as software version, bootROM version, VLANs configured on the device, and so on. This poll
can take much longer to complete, so this type of polling is done less frequently, and is configurable
on each device individually in the Inventory Manager. The defaults poll interval for this type of
polling is every 30 minutes for core (chassis) devices and every 90 minutes for edge devices.
The global poll frequency can be changed through the Admin applet, under the SNMP Server
Properties. Any changes will affect all devices in the EPICenter database. You can also change the
timeout and number of retries.
Increasing the global SNMP polling interval can reduce the load on your server and your network, at
the expense of the timeliness of device state information.
The Detail Device Poll interval can be changed in the Inventory Manager, in the Basic tab of the Modify
Devices dialog (or in the Add Devices dialog). Changes here will affect only the devices selected for
modification.
MAC Address Polling
EPICenter provides an option for doing Telnet-based polling of switch FDBs to gather MAC address
information about edge ports. This feature is disabled by default. If enabled, its frequency can be
modified to reduce the load on the overall system and the network.
MAC address polling is enabled or disabled globally through the MAC Polling Server Properties in the
Admin applet. If enabled, MAC address polling can then be enabled on a per device basis through the
Inventory Manager.
Through the MAC Polling Server Properties, you set the amount of load, which determines the amount
of elapsed time between sets of FDB polling requests. A complete MAC address polling cycle consists of
multiple groups of requests, until all devices with MAC address polling enabled have been polled.
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EPICenter Concepts and Solutions Guide