CPU question.

[tismofied]

I have a windows host connected with pulse-agent. the cpu is constant at ~20%. Is this normal for this high usage?
I noticed there is Monitoring cadence section but I think it's just for pve nodes, I didn't see one for hosts.

[rcourtman]

The host agent should use very little CPU itself (<1%). If you're seeing 20% in Pulse, that's likely your Windows host's actual CPU utilization being reported, not the agent's own resource consumption.

To verify: open Task Manager and check if pulse-host-agent.exe is using significant CPU. If it's low (<1%), then the 20% is just what your system is actually using.

Regarding monitoring cadence: the --interval flag works for host agents (default 30s). To change it, you'd need to reinstall with a custom interval:

$env:PULSE_INTERVAL = "60s"
irm http://<pulse-ip>:7655/install-host-agent.ps1 | iex

If the agent process itself is consuming 20% CPU, that would be unexpected - let us know and we can investigate further.

[tismofied]

The host agent should use very little CPU itself (<1%). If you're seeing 20% in Pulse, that's likely your Windows host's actual CPU utilization being reported, not the agent's own resource consumption.

To verify: open Task Manager and check if pulse-host-agent.exe is using significant CPU. If it's low (<1%), then the 20% is just what your system is actually using.

Regarding monitoring cadence: the --interval flag works for host agents (default 30s). To change it, you'd need to reinstall with a custom interval:

$env:PULSE_INTERVAL = "60s"
irm http://<pulse-ip>:7655/install-host-agent.ps1 | iex

If the agent process itself is consuming 20% CPU, that would be unexpected - let us know and we can investigate further.

let me know what else is needed please. thank you for getting back to me. 😄

[rcourtman]

Thanks for the screenshots. That confirms what I expected - the pulse-host-agent is using 0% CPU (as shown in Task Manager), and the ~19% you see in Pulse is your Windows system's actual CPU utilization being reported.

This is correct behavior. The agent just reads the CPU usage from the OS and reports it to Pulse - it's not causing the 19% itself.

If you want to reduce how often the agent reports metrics (and slightly reduce network overhead), you can use the --interval flag as mentioned earlier. But the CPU reading itself is accurate.

[tismofied]

Thanks for the screenshots. That confirms what I expected - the pulse-host-agent is using 0% CPU (as shown in Task Manager), and the ~19% you see in Pulse is your Windows system's actual CPU utilization being reported.

This is correct behavior. The agent just reads the CPU usage from the OS and reports it to Pulse - it's not causing the 19% itself.

If you want to reduce how often the agent reports metrics (and slightly reduce network overhead), you can use the --interval flag as mentioned earlier. But the CPU reading itself is accurate.

excuse me for being dense but I am afraid I don't get it. it clearly shows 16% cpu usage under the agent. once I stop the agent the 27% overall percentage drop to ~ 5 or 4
I am sorry you are right. It must have been the thanksgiving turkey that blocked my brain bloodflow. Lol
Thanks again for the great server.