Deployment Performance

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Applies To: Forefront Endpoint Protection

We recommend that you perform a staged, or phased, roll-out of the FEP client to your client computers. With this type of deployment, you can monitor the additional traffic and load on your Configuration Manager infrastructure as you add the client computers to your FEP deployment.

Effects on databases during deployment

In general, as more client computers running FEP are added to your deployment, more space is used in the Configuration Manager database and the FEP database. When data is written to a database file, the activity uses both processors and disk space. Separating the databases on different servers running Microsoft SQL Server reduces this load.

To determine if you are experiencing performance issues on the server running SQL Server that hosts your databases, use Performance Monitor to monitor the performance counters described in the following sections.

Physical Disk: % Disk Time

The Physical Disk: % Disk Time counter monitors the percentage of time that the disk is busy with read or write activity.

If this counter is high (more than 90%), check the Physical Disk: Current Disk Queue Length counter to determine how many requests are waiting in queue for disk access.

Physical Disk: Current Disk Queue Length

Current Disk Queue Length should be sustained at no more than 1.5 to 2 times the number of spindles that compose the physical disk. Most physical disks have only a single spindle, but redundant array of independent disks (RAID) arrays can have more than one spindle. Hardware implemented RAID arrays appear as a single physical disk, but RAID arrays created through software appear as multiple physical disks.

Physical Disk: Average Disk Queue Length

Average Disk Queue Length is the average number of the read and write requests waiting in the disk queue for the period of time during which you monitored.

Effects on the Configuration Manager Site Server during deployment

Deployment of the FEP client software only has a minor effect on your Configuration Manager site servers. To monitor the impact of the FEP client on your site servers, you can use the following performance counters:

  • SMS State Status: Message Files Processed/min

  • SMS Status System: Processed/sec Total

For more information about troubleshooting Configuration Manager performance, see Troubleshooting Configuration Manager Performance (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=210838) in the Configuration Manager Technical Library.