Release Automation

  • 1.  Limit on how many agent one NES can handle

    Posted Jun 14, 2017 08:17 AM

    I'm trying to find limits on how many agents can one Execution Server can handle by itself.

    I've looked into the documentation and couldn't really find any relevant info.

     

    Currently, our NES are virtual machines with 4 cores and 8Gb of memory each.  We've reached the 200 agents limit (in nimi_config.xml : <config> <nimi> <keepalive> <server> <capacity>200</capacity> <...>) and I've increased it to 500 but I'm not sure how many agents can such a NES handle without peformance problems.

    Our daily work is very limited and we have less than 10 release per day and less than 100 jobs per day.

     

    Is there any doc/recommandation on such agent limit ?



  • 2.  Re: Limit on how many agent one NES can handle

    Posted Jun 14, 2017 08:25 AM

    Hi Phil,

     

    Please find the below the answer in below links, Hope this helps. 

     

    System Requirements - CA Release Automation - 6.3 - CA Technologies Documentation 

     

    CA Release Automation 5.x / 6.x Architecture and Implementation Best Practice Guide 

     

    Thanks and Regards,

    Manju



  • 3.  Re: Limit on how many agent one NES can handle
    Best Answer

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jun 14, 2017 08:40 AM

    Hi,

     You are referring to the write section the file which control the capacity of the NES in terms of how many agents it can handle is defined in nimi_config.xml file on <NES install Dir>/conf

     

    There are two configuration which control the whole mechanism

    1: capacity: You can consider it as an upper-limit of the total number of agents NES going to allow connections to

    2: warn-capacity: It is the number of agents always going to get connection if we cross this limit you may notice some agents going offline from time to time or not getting connected to NES.

     

    for example: you have a NES A and total number of agents in your ENV say 250. NES A have capacity of 200 and warn-capacity of 190. With this configuration NES will allow connection to 200 Agents at max but post 190 it will raise an alarm. So consider a scenario now where you have 198 Agents connected to this NES, now in case if this agent receive a new request of 5 more agents it will preserve 190 active connections and can only accommodate another 10 to reach capacity of 200, to do so it will have to decline over max 3 agents so either it can deny from new request or can close connection of existing agents (this is something intrinsic to product).

     

    Beside that the above value is the default value and there is in-build system capacity how max connection it can change for example in 6.3 it can have around 500 agents so you can change the above two configuration accordingly.

     

    Please check your respective release document for that benchmarks.

     

    Regards,

    Saurabh



  • 4.  Re: Limit on how many agent one NES can handle

    Posted Jun 22, 2017 07:48 AM

    Thanks Saurabh.

     

    I did found during my investigation the explanation/formula for the <capacity> and <warn-capacity> parameter in the nimi config file.

    I was more interested to see if there was an hard limit on the number of agent one NES can handle. You're suggesting that there is a limit of 500 in V6.3. I tried to find that reference somewhere in the docs, but couldn't find one.

    Would you be able to give me that reference ?

     

    Thanks a lot !



  • 5.  Re: Limit on how many agent one NES can handle

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jun 22, 2017 08:06 AM

    Hi Philippe,

     I think there was no explicit mentioned about this bench mark number but been collateral mention of same. I think the limit of capacity for 6.3 is 1000.

     

    I am sharing the link which I found where it been mentioned and describe for 6.3. I also verified the same for 6.4 and it remain same.

     

    Section to look in document is Formulaically.

     

    https://docops.ca.com/ca-release-automation/6-3/en/installation/install-to-provide-high-availability/execution-server-high-availability-and-scalability

     

    I hope it will be of help.

     

    Regards,

    Saurabh