eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by FSContDistTest

A content distributor is a stateless component that receives content in batches from the connectors and distributes batches to the item processing component i.e., the document processor which subsequently sends the processed batch for indexing.

Each FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint farm has one or more content distributors. You can ensure good performance by verifying that the following conditions are true:

  • Item processing components are effectively utilized
  • Incoming content batches are quickly distributed for processing

This test auto discovers the content distributors in a Fast Search server 2010 for SharePoint farm and reports the following for each content distributor:

  • The current load on every content distributor, thus revealing the overloaded distributors;
  • Delays (if any) in content processing, and the probable reasons for the same - is it because the content distributor took too long to send the batches for processing? is it because the document processor took too long to send the processed batches for indexing? is it because of the absence of adequate ‘valid’ document processors to handle the load? is it because of ineffective usage of the available document processors?

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
FSAvgDispTime Indicates the average time taken by this content distributor to send a batch to the document processor since the last measurement period. Millisec A document processor converts the items in a batch to a unified internal format. Ideally, the value of this measure should be below 10 millisec. A value higher than 10 millisec indicates a network congestion or overload.
FSAvgProTime Indicates the average time taken by the document processor associated with this content distributor to process a batch. Millisec The value of this measure would vary based on the type of the batch content and the size of the batch. Typically the value of this measure must be less than 60ms.
FSCliCreFeeTime Indicates the number of times the feeding sessions have been created by clients on this server. Number The FAST Search Connector (often referred to as the FAST Content SSA) is where you can add content sources, and it is responsible for content acquisition. After content has been acquired by a connector, it is fed from the FAST Content SSA to one of the registered Content Distributors in FS4SP.

This measure reports the number of sessions the Content SSA has created on the Content Distributor for feeding content.

FSDocPro Indicates the number of document processors registered with this content distributor. Number When a server consists of multiple content distributors, then the document processor would be evenly distributed across all the content distributors.
FSDocProBusy Indicates the number of document processors registered with this content distributor that are currently processing a content batch. Number The value of this measure must be equal to the FSDocPro measure under maximum load.
FSDocProInv Indicates the number of document processors registered with this content distributor that are currently invalid. Number Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero. A high value indicates that many of the document processors registered with a content distributor are currently invalid, and hence, unusable. This will compel the content distributor to impose more load on the ‘valid’ document processors, thus causing a performance slowdown.
FDDocProUnuse Indicates the number of document processors registered with this content distributor that are currently unused. Number Too many unused document processors indicates ineffective utilization of the available processors. This could cause serious processing delays, especially when the load is high.
FSOpeSetSub Indicates the number of operation sets submitted to the document processors by this content distributor. Number  
FSOpeRec Indicates the number of operations received by this content distributor. Number  
FSNumOfOpe Indicates the number of operations in this content distributor since the last measurement period. Number  
FSOpeRate Indicates the rate at which the operations were carried out by this content distributor since the last measurement period. Operations/sec A very low value for this measure indicates a processing bottleneck on the content distributor.
FSProLoad Indicates the current processing load on this content dispatcher. Number A high value is indicative of a heavy load on the content distributor. Compare the value of this measure across distributors to figure out which distributor is currently handling the maximum load and is probably overloaded.