Top talker optimization in NTA
In many environments, a majority of network traffic may be attributed to conversations represented by a percentage of all possible monitored flows. Top Talker Optimization allows you to configure NTA to only record those flows that represent conversations requiring the most bandwidth on your network. Recording only those flows representing the most bandwidth-intensive conversations can significantly improve database performance, reduce page load times, and increase reporting speed.
If you are monitoring a large number of NetFlow sources or interfaces, you may see more improved performance by setting this value lower than 95%.
Enabling this option will result in the intentional loss of some data that may otherwise be recorded if this option is set to 100%. However, the data that is lost corresponds to the least bandwidth-intensive conversations. In most environments, these low bandwidth conversations would not have been displayed in most widgets.
Setting the Top Talker Optimization to 100% means 40 to 100 times higher storage space requirements, and might affect widget rendering performance. Keeping 100% of flows is suitable only for small installations.
Manage top talker optimization
- In the SolarWinds Platform Web Console, click Settings > All Settings.
- Under Product Specific Settings, click NTA Settings.
- Scroll down to the Top Talker Optimization section.
- Enter a value in Capture Flows Based on This Maximum Percentage of Traffic.
- Click Save.