Technical Tip: High CPU usage for agent.exe

The Reveal Agent is designed to be as lightweight as possible to avoid impacting the performance of its host machine, however depending on the machine workload the current CPU or memory consumption for agent.exe can vary significantly.

Symptom:

Possible causes:

• High transient file event activity (e.g. a virus scan).
• Misconfigured policy rules.
• Unnecessary/excessive content inspection.
• Incompatibility with another piece of software on the machine.

Troubleshooting:

In all cases, collect performance metrics from the Reveal Agent and send them to the Fortinet Support team for analysis.

With this data, investigate if there is any way to optimize the agent to reduce the load, or if this is a consequence of an incompatibility that requires a workaround.

Windows:

Agent:

To collect performance data from the agent, open an administrative command prompt and run:

"C:\Program Files\Jazz Networks\Agent\agent.exe" debug bundle -t 1800 -m performance_lite

Or from an administrative PowerShell:

& 'C:\Program Files\Jazz Networks\Agent\agent.exe' debug bundle -t 1800 -m performance_lite

This will take a variable amount of time to run, usually under 5 minutes but up to 30 minutes, and collects 60 minutes of performance data from the agent. The name of the zip file will be displayed, having been placed in the same directory that the command was run from.

Operating System:

To collect performance data from the whole system, use the Windows Performance Monitor:

1. Select the Windows Start menu and search for 'performance'.
2. 'Right-click' on Performance Monitor and select Run as administrator.
3. In the left pane, select Data Collector Sets.
4. Open System and select System Performance.
5. 'Right-click' on System Performance and select Start.
6. Allow the profiling to run for 1-2 minutes
7. 'Right-click' on System Performance and select Stop.
8. The files will be placed into C:\PerfLogs\System\Performance\<Computer Name>
9. Zip up the contents of the folder to attach to a support ticket.