Tuning Lansweeper for optimal performance

[ErikT]

The time spent scanning your network depends on various items. Lansweeper scans a variety of Operating Systems and features through various protocols. Depending on the OS and scanning details set in Lansweeper, the time for each scan varies. 

While consolidating all your subnets into one big scanning target may yield comprehensive results and provide you with the insights you're after, this is likely not the most efficient use of resources. 

Here are some tips to optimize scanning times, and keep the resources spent balanced. 

IP range scanning target

• Split up your IP ranges in small chunks and mirror them to the subnets you have in your network. 
• If you have IP ranges hosting non-Windows assets only, set the target to ignore Windows devices.
• Alternatively, if you have Windows-only ranges, disable SSH scanning for these ranges.
• Schedule your scanning targets. By default IP Range Scanning targets are set to scan daily at 12:00. Set each IP Range individually to spread the load.

Active Directory Scanning targets

At the time of writing, Lansweeper has three AD scanning targets: Active Directory Domain, Active Directory User Path, and Active Directory Computer Path. 

Each of these scanning targets serves their own purpose, though we won't discuss their differences in great detail in this post. More importantly, and more relevant to this topic, each of these targets can be tweaked to scan very specific information from your AD. 

Active Directory Domain

• Cannot be scheduled 
• Can be optimized by adding OU and site filters

Active Directory User Path

• Can be scheduled 
• Used to target a specific OU set by the ADSI path
• If you need to scan more than one user group: create, configure, and set an Active Directory User Path scanning target for each group. 

Active Directory Computer Path

• Can be scheduled 
• Used to target a specific OU set by the ADSI path
• If you need to scan multiple computer groups: create, configure, and set an Active Directory User Path scanning target for each group.

Please note that Lansweeper will not refresh AD information if it already did in the last 20 hours. This 20-hour cooldown is tracked in the scanning service memory and is not reset by rescanning the device.

Scanning threads

Scanning threads are a number of simultaneous worker processes Lansweeper fires towards the Lansweeper database. These combined threads are limited to 99 (100 - 1 thread allocated to the scanning server).

• IP Threads determine how many IPs can be checked during scanning.
• Computer Threads determine how many Windows computers can be scanned simultaneously.
• Deployment Threads determine how many deployments are run simultaneously.

Tweaking these can increase performance significantly. The downside is that it can also have the opposite effect if not done carefully, so use caution. 
Depending on your specific environment, let's say you have a Windows-only environment and don't use the Lansweeper deployments module. You could drop the number of Deployment Threads and add to Computer Threads. 

The tweaking you can do here is subject to your environment, and no straight recommendations can be given. Our advice is to try different settings and see what's best in your environment. 

Please note that any changes you make to these threads won't take effect until you restart the Lansweeper Server service on your Lansweeper server.

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[Tim_N]

I love this article Erik. Great pointers! 

Another helpful tip I heard from one of our 100,000+ asset users was the dividing of scanning assets based on whether they were static (like Firewall, switches, printers, servers, etc) or dynamic (like laptops and computers that can be turned on/off) which could be missed in scans. 

This customer would scan their static devices at night and dynamic targets during the day when they'd be onsite and turned on. This type of division could also help increase scan times. 

I'd love to hear what other users do to increase their scan times. 

[Mister_Nobody]

Also you can increase scanning performance of Windows Asset via scanning interval settings https://LS_server_name/Scanning/Itemwaittime/

1. Run Query to Analyze scanning time of classes/items:

Select Top 1000000 tblassets.AssetID,
  tblassets.AssetName,
  tblassets.IPAddress,
  tblassets.Userdomain,
  tblassets.Username,
  tblassets.oscode,
  tblassets.memory,
  tblassets.Processor,
  TsysWaittime.CFGname,
  TsysLastscan.Scantime,
  TsysLastscan.Lasttime,
  TsysWaittime.Waitdays
From tblassets
  Inner Join TsysLastscan On tblassets.AssetID = TsysLastscan.AssetID And
      TsysLastscan.Scantime > 5
  Inner Join TsysWaittime On TsysLastscan.CFGcode = TsysWaittime.CFGCode
Order By TsysLastscan.Scantime Desc

2. Disable unnecessary long-scanning classes/items or set longer interval between scanning.

[Mister_Nobody]

If you have a lot of complex reports then you have to optimize their or set interval to refresh rarely.

[Case-connector]

@Mister_Nobody 

Thank you for sharing your expert tips. These are great additions to the post!

[fedelmann3108]

Hello,

We have between 8000 and 9000 Assets (and a comlete class B network for IP scan) and we recan every asset daily.
With 99 Scans in total lansweeper cannot do this a all.
is there a way to increase "IP Threads" over 100?
Our current setting is 25 Computer Threads and 74 IP Threads.
I would like to configure 50 Comuter Threads and 175 IP Threads.

CPU cores is not an issue. I can provide as much CPU cores as needed.
I can also provide enough RAM if needet.
The host lansweeper uses has 128 Cores and 3 TiB of RAM

[Mister_Nobody]

You have to setup additional scan servers.