Hardware Requirements

Tenable Nessus Agents

Tenable Nessus Agents is a lightweight, user space program and only use minimal system resources.

Generally, an agent uses 50 MB to 60 MB of RAM (all pageable). However, agents use additional memory when scanning (all pageable; the amount of memory depends on the scan configuration) and when updating plugins (all pageable). Agents use almost no CPU while idle, but they are designed to use up to 100% of CPU when available during jobs.

For more information on Tenable Nessus Agent resource usage, see Nessus Agents Performance.

The following table outlines the minimum recommended hardware for operating a Tenable Nessus Agent. You can install Tenable Nessus Agents on a virtual machine that meets the same requirements specified.

Hardware

Minimum Requirement

Processor

1 dual-core CPU

Processor Speed

> 1 GHz
RAM > 1 GB
Disk Space

> 2 GB, not including space used by the host operating system

The agent may require more space during certain processes, such as a plugins-code.db defragmentation operation.
Disk Speed 15-50 IOPS
Note: You can control the priority of the Tenable Nessus Agent relative to the priority of other tasks running on the system. For more information see Agent CPU Resource Control.

Tenable Nessus Manager

Scenario

Minimum Recommended Hardware

Nessus Manager with 0-10,000 agents

CPU: 4 2GHz cores

Memory: 16 GB RAM

Disk space: 5 GB per 5,000 agents per concurrent scan

Note: Scan results and plugin updates require more disk space over time.

Nessus Manager with 10,001-20,000 agents

 

CPU: 8 2GHz cores

Memory: 32 GB RAM

Disk space: 5 GB per 5,000 agents per concurrent scan

Note: Scan results and plugin updates require more disk space over time.

Note: Engage with your Tenable representative for large deployments.