Is there a maximum number of sensors PRTG 8 can handle? From customer experience, what is the highest number of sensors a company has in their PRTG 8 system? We are putting PRTG 8 in side by side performance comparison to the HP Openview system we already have in place. We want to retire Openview but need to be assured PRTG 8 can handle the number of devices and sensors.

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Hello,

it is very hard to answer this question with a definitive "General Answer". It simply depends on too many factors, how much sensors a PRTG installation is able to "take":

  • The hardware on which PRTG runs on
  • The Windows on which PRTG runs (we recommend no Vista/2008 R1 if you want to use WMI Sensors in large scale, due to their weak WMI - Performance)
  • The Windows Versions monitored by PRTG (see the point above)
  • The Sensor types used and their settings (For example Ping and SNMP sensors are more likely to perform well in a mass-setup then WMI or EXE-Sensors), such as Scanning Intervals, Timeouts, but also for example SNMP Version on SNMP Sensors (SNMP v3 is much more stressing then SNMP v1)

We have a test-setup with a bit above 20,000 sensors in our lab, which runs fine on an 8-Core-CPU (the CPUs are almost idling) with 16GB of RAM. This system has almost only Ping and SNMP Sensors. You might also want to consider the usability of such a big setup, the time you spend with scrolling etc..

Best Regards.


Nov, 2010 - Permalink