Tenable Nessus Manager Performance

Tenable tested Tenable Nessus Manager performance in two scenarios. Scenario 1 is when Tenable Nessus Agents are connected to Tenable Nessus Manager and polling for jobs. Scenario 2 is when Tenable Nessus Agents are actively scanning and uploading scan results.

Testing Environments

Tenable used the following testing environments for the two scenarios.

Scenario 1

  • OS: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-75-generic x86_64)
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.60GHz
  • Cores: 2

Scenario 2

  • OS: Windows 10 v. 1703 (OS Build: 15063.447)
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.59GHz
  • Cores: 2

Scenario 1: When Tenable Nessus Agents are Connected to Tenable Nessus Manager and Polling for Jobs

Number of Agents Number of Agents Sending Job Requests at a Time (2%) MAX CPU Usage Average CPU Usage Average Agents Page Load Time
1,000 20 33% 5% 0.60 seconds

2,000

40 34% 5% 1.05 seconds
5,000 100 43% 6% 1.7 seconds
7,500 150 92% 7% 3.22 seconds
10,000 200 100% 7% 3.26 seconds
Number of Agents Number of Agents Sending Job Requests at a Time (5%) MAX CPU Usage Average CPU Usage Average Agents Page Load Time
1,000 50 38% 7% 0.88 seconds

2,000

100 39% 7% 1.14 seconds
5,000 250 54% 6% 1.73 seconds

Scenario 2: When Tenable Nessus Agents are Actively Scanning and Uploading Scan Results

Number of Agents MAX CPU Usage Average CPU Usage Average Agents Page Load Time Scan Report Size
1,000 65% 52% 1.16 seconds 363 MB

2,000

82% 53% 1.45 seconds 726 MB
3,000 82% 46% 1.67 seconds 1079 MB
4,000 86% 40% 1.70 seconds 1452 MB
5,000 99% 47% 1.73 seconds 1780 MB