> #### CPU use

> Fathom's CPU utilization should typically be in the range of 1-5% (with possible spikes as noted below). Factors that might result in greater levels of CPU utilization include:

> - A very high number of monitored resources relative to the processing power of the host system — The number of resources you can monitor with Fathom before Fathom introduces an unacceptable CPU load is very dependent upon the processing power of the host system.
> On most systems monitoring a moderate number of resources such as 10 databases, 20 system resource monitors, and 20 network resource monitors, the CPU load of Fathom should be minimal. Host systems with greater processing power will be able to support greater resource counts.

> - A very short polling interval on monitored resources — Each poll of a resource requires a small measure of CPU utilization. Polling a large number of resources with very short polling intervals will increase Fathom's load on the CPU. Using the default Fathom polling interval should minimize this problem.
> If Fathom's CPU utilization becomes a problem, you can reduce it by increasing the polling interval of monitored resources. For example, rather than polling databases every 5 minutes, you can set them to poll every 15 minutes.

> - A very high level of user interaction with Fathom through the Fathom Management console — Each page displayed in the Fathom Management console needs to be produced by Fathom, and, therefore, requires a small measure of CPU utilization. A very high level of user interaction with the Fathom Management console will increase Fathom's load on the CPU. This is especially true of any page that displays graphical data. One feature to be particularly conscious of is Fathom's Auto Refresh capability. This feature allows you to configure the Fathom Management console such that the displayed pages are automatically refreshed at a specified rate. Automatically refreshing pages with lots of graphical data at a high frequency will increase Fathom's load on the CPU.
> - Very high levels of report execution — Fathom uses an OpenEdge database for storing trend information and the Progress 4GL for running reports. This combination makes Fathom's historical reports very efficient; however, running reports very frequently or against a large volume of historical data will increase Fathom's load on the CPU.
> You should use Fathom's scheduling facility to schedule reports to run at off-peak hours. You can also install a copy of Fathom on a nonproduction host and use it as the Fathom trend database for the Fathom installs on your production hosts. Doing this will allow you to offload the management of Fathom's trend data and run Fathom's historical reports from your production host.

> - A large number of jobs — Like reports, jobs can put a heavy load on the CPU. The scheduling algorithm of your operating system might give all available CPU time to execute jobs or reports, which can cause a spike in CPU utilization while the job or report is running. You should schedule CPU-intensive jobs, such as database backups, to run at off-peak hours to minimize the chances of introducing too much overhead during peak system times. Offloading jobs to nonproduction systems is another option.

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