Slow PDF Generation when a high number of Network Objects have been configured

Summary

When having a large number of subnet objects that are being reported on, any PDF Report generation including a Detailed Subnets report can be slow and in cases where the number of subnets is large enough, can make both the CLI and the Web UI unresponsive.

Overview

When generating a PDF report from the Web UI, it is noted that it can take a lot of time, depending on the amount and type of data selected to be included in the report. When scheduling a report and including 'Detailed Subnets' in it, it can be found that this is one of the most labour intensive reports to be generated, regardless whether it's done at its scheduled time or whether it is being generated ad-hoc. The Detailed Subnets report subsection is one that looks at all the network objects and, if their 'Reporting' option is set to be on (the green checkmark), will include them in the report.

When dealing with a lot of these subnets, it is found that the UI can be sluggish and completely unresponsive while the PDF Report is being generated. Note that this is not just the web UI, but the CLI as well. Pages will not load, the browser will continually being trying to load any URL clicked on, but it won't load the page, and in some cases, freeze the browser.

Cause

When working with subnets and their associated Detailed Subnet reports, the information required to be put on that report is located in various places in the database. In previous versions of the firmware (v7.0.3u1 and earlier), pulling the information from the database was inefficient. It was observed that some of these SQL queries were taking multiple seconds to execute on systems that have hundreds of subnets.

Resolution

In v7.4 of the Exinda firmware, this problem has been fixed.

The reporting has been modified so that the back end SQL queries are made more efficient and faster. The Web UI and the CLI in this version, aside from a few moments of non-responsiveness, will be accessible while a PDF report including Detailed Subnets is being generated.

Defect ID

D-03211

Additional Information

Please note that there can still be some slowness in how the report is generated when there are a large number of subnets that are being reported on. The Web UI and CLI will be usable but it can still take time to generate the report; ie, 15 minutes to create a report with hundreds of subnets (resulting in a large scale report of hundreds of pages). This is still normal behaviour; given the large amount of data that is needed and the associated reporting data along with each subnet, it is a large amount of data to be processed.

Defect URL

https://www4.v1host.com/Exinda/defect.mvc/Summary?oidToken=Defect%3A62515