Installation manual

Report Database Recommendations and Bandwidth Usage
You can have a single Apple Remote Desktop data collection database for any number
of clients. However, avoid having all the clients upload their report information at
the same time. As the number of clients grows, the network usage from the clients
as they upload their report data could come in bursts over a short period of time
overwhelming the network buer on the Task Server. In such a case, you’ll probably
give yourself your own denial-of-service attack. Increasing the number of Task Server
computers can divide the network and computing load among several computers
for better performance and better network citizenship. However, there’s no way to
aggregate report data across several collectors and display it on one administrator
computer, so you would need multiple administrators to balance your network load
in this way.
If you use a single database for a large number of clients, you should stagger the
generation of report caches over the time between which you want to run reports.
For example, if you normally run a report every week, then set 1/7th of your clients
to rebuild caches on day one, another 1/7th for the next day, and so on. Stagger the
cache rebuild over the course of the day as well.
You should keep in a given list the minimum number of computers necessary for
your purposes. When a list is selected, the clients in the list send status updates at a
minimum of every 20 seconds. A large number of clients in a list (for example, 1000)
would result in about 50 updates a second.
Creating more lists doesn’t create more resource overhead for Remote Desktop, and
it lets you quickly and easily administer the clients you want with a minimum wait.
Depending on your network and list sizes, you may nd that smaller lists result in more
productive and reliable administration.
What Bandwidth Does the Default System Overview Report Use on a LAN?
The average System Overview Report cache is about 20 KB. While reporting, the
administrator and client computers will always try to use all available bandwidth (most
IP-based client/server applications work this way). Therefore, on a 10 Mbit/sec. network,
the report data collection for a single client may use 100% of the bandwidth for 0.016
seconds. Assuming a list of 1000 computers, all trying to report at the same time, this
may use 100% of the bandwidth for 16 seconds. Naturally, faster networks perform
better, and networks with a slow bottleneck like a DSL or modem line perform worse.
System Report Size
The le system data which is uploaded to the report database (labeled “File Search
data” in the Reporting preference pane) contains a signicant amount of data. For a
client with 10 GB of les on the hard disk, the report data uploaded can easily reach
5 MB in size. With hundreds or thousands of clients, this data can add up quickly and
might tax network resources. Data for other reports (System Overview, Application
Usage, and User History) are only 8 KB to 12 KB each, and have little impact.
12 2 Chapter 8 Administering Client Computers