Tuning Zabbix

[fmtaylor2]

My zabbix implementation constantly has this:

QUEUE OF ITEMS TO BE UPDATED
Delay Count
5 seconds 623
10 seconds 3
30 seconds 76
1 minute 945
5 minutes 378
More than 5 minutes 73
Total:0

more or less. But you get the idea, at any given point in time I am about 1000 or so items behind. I have a number of hosts with a number of items that don't check, or fail to check every so often (UserParameters, so my fault). I have tried increasing both the number of server processes, and the number of agent processes, but I cant seem to get the number of checks over one minute delayed to go down (to zero is my goal).

Is there a magick formula for determining the optimum number of servers and agent processes. Something like

(number of server processes/number of hosts) = [number of agents per host per second] / [number of checks per host] = seconds per host

Or some way to determine how many agents and how many servers I have to have with a given number of checks per host in like a 100 host environment.

[adam.vollrath]

I came across a post on this forum about using prime numbers for your check timings. Giving each item a different prime number ensures that, on average, checks will be spread out, with just a few every second. Neat idea.

But I don't think that would solve your problem, where your queue is backed up. I'd suggest increasing the timings on some of your items. Do you really need 600+ items updated every 5 seconds? Would 7 seconds work for some of them?