Configuring the FillDB database performance

DatabaseBoostLevel parameter

The FillDB utility offers a parameter called DatabaseBoostLevel to optimize BigFix performance.

On Windows systems: The possible values for the DatabaseBoostLevel parameter are 1 for enabled and 0 for disabled. The default value is 1.

On Linux systems (fresh installations and upgrades): The DatabaseBoostLevel parameter value is always: Database Boost Level is ON with maxBatchSize = 1000.

The improvements to BigFix performance depend on the environment in which BigFix runs. To find the best performance configuration for your environment, tune the data insertion mechanism in the FillDB database as follows:

  1. Enable the performance log.
    Set the following string value in the [HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\BigFix\Enterprise Server\FillDB] registry:
    "PerformanceDataPath"[REG_SZ] = "[BigFix Server folder]\FillDB\FillDBperf.log"
    
  2. Restart the FillDB service and monitor the performance log for a while, registering the database insertion rate in "rows per second" of the various tables.
  3. Add the DatabaseBoostLevel DWord value to the registry key HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\BigFix\Enterprise Server\FillDB and set it to 0.
  4. Restart the FillDB service and monitor the performance log again for a while, registering the database insertion rate in "rows per second" of the various tables.
  5. Compare the insertion rate before and after setting the new value of the DatabaseBoostLevel parameter, ensuring that you keep the same level of workload during the monitoring. The more rows that are processed per second, the better the performance. The key tables to monitor are: questionresults, fixletresults, actionresults and longquestionresults. The number of rows processed per table is an indicator of the importance that the table has in your environment.