CPU Usage Report

The CPU Usage Report shows how hard the CPU is working over time for the selected time period. This chart can answer questions such as, “Are some of the other issues I'm seeing with my traffic due to overworking the appliance?" This chart can also ask questions such as, "I see the appliance's CPU is highly utilized. What traffic issues could cause this to be happening?"

The CPU usage may be high due to a variety of processing intensive traffic characteristics.

• The number of new connections per second is high
• The number of accelerated connections is high
• The amount of acceleration traffic is - The appliance is encountering more accelerated traffic than it can handle. If this is the case, latency can be introduced when the appliance queues the packets for acceleration and cannot process them fast enough. Using virtual circuits, you can limit the amount of accelerated traffic to be processed.
• The type of traffic is analysis intensive - The appliance is encountering more analysis-intensive traffic than it can handle. For instance, VoIP traffic is CPU intensive due to the processing required to compute the metrics such as rFactor, MOS, jitter, etc.

To diagnose a CPU usage problem, for each period where the CPU usage is high, compare with the Connections report, the Accelerated Connections report, the Reduction report, and the VoIP solution report.

Where do I find this report?

Go to Monitor > System > CPU Usage.

Where do I find the other reports for diagnosing the reason for high CPU usage?

• The report for number of new connections can be found at Monitor > System > Connections. See Connections Report for more details.
• The report for the number of accelerated connections can be found at Monitor > System > Accelerated Connections. See Accelerated Connections Report for more details.
• The report for the amount of accelerated traffic can be found at Monitor > Optimization > Reduction. See Reduction Report for more details.
• The report for VoIP traffic can be found in the Solution Center (Solution Center > Show Solution Center). See Solution Center to create the VoIP report or VoIP Report for more details.

How do I interact with the interactive flash time graphs?

• To understand how to get a better look at traffic patterns and to remove clutter on the time graph, see Using Interactive Time Graphs.
• To understand how to set the desired time range for a chart, see Setting the Time Range.
• To understand how to print the report or schedule the report, see Printing and Scheduling Reports.