--- title: Reduce the infrastructure agent's CPU footprint source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/infrastructure-troubleshooting/troubleshoot-infrastructure/reduce-infrastructure-agents-cpu-footprint --- ## Problem The New Relic infrastructure agent is consuming too much CPU. ## Solution The New Relic infrastructure agent is designed to report a broad range of system data with minimal CPU and memory consumption. However, if you have a need to reduce your CPU consumption, you can disable or decrease the sampling frequency of various samplers and plugins. This topic highlights some `newrelic-infra.yml` configurations that may reduce your CPU usage: - [Reduce event sampling](#samplers) - [Reduce agent plugin reporting](#reduce_plugins) - [Review on-host integrations](#on_host_integrations) ### Reduce event sampling [#samplers] The infrastructure agent reports several [default events](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/manage-your-data/data-instrumentation/default-infrastructure-events) at specific frequencies. To lower the overhead, you can reduce the sampling frequency in seconds, or you can completely disable the samplers by setting the corresponding property value to `-1`. > #### ⚠️ IMPORTANT > > We don't recommend a sample rate larger than 60 seconds because you may see gaps in the New Relic user interface charts. The table below lists some samplers to configure: | Event | Sampling frequency | Allow/deny list | | ------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Network | [Network sampling rate](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#metrics-network-sample-rate) | Not available | | Process | [Process sampling rate](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#metrics-process-sample-rate) | [Allow list (Windows only)](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#allowed-list-process-sample) | | Storage | [Storage sampling rate](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#metrics-storage-sample-rate) | [Deny list](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#file-devices-ignored) | | System | [System sampling rate](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#metrics-system-sample-rate) | Not available | ### Reduce agent plugin reporting [#reduce_plugins] The infrastructure agent has built-in plugins that collect inventory data (specific system configuration and state information). For some systems, the CPU consumption may be relatively high if the plugins are gathering a lot of data. To reduce the footprint, you can disable or decrease the sampling frequency for specific plugins that report data you don’t want. **How to enable and disable plugins** - **Disable a single plugin:** To disable a plugin, set the corresponding property value to `-1`. - **Disable all plugins:** `disable_all_plugins: true` - **Enable selected plugins:** To enable certain plugins, insert an exception in `disable_all_plugins`. For example, the following configuration disables all plugins, and reenables the Network Interfaces and SELinus plugins to report every 120 seconds: ```yml disable_all_plugins: true network_interface_interval_sec: 120 selinux_interval_sec: 120 ``` **Disable SELinux `semodule -l` (Linux only)** The SELinux plugin periodically invokes the `semodule -l` system command to get information about the existing SELinux modules. In most CentOS/RedHat distributions, this command will generate CPU consumption peaks. To disable this functionality, insert the following configuration option in your `/etc/newrelic-infra.yml` file: `selinux_enable_semodule: false` **Reduce or disable Sysctl (Linux only)** The Sysctl plugin walks the whole `/sys` directory structure and reads values from all the files there. Disabling it or reducing the interval may decrease some CPU System time in the infrastructure agent. You can disable inventory frequency by setting it to a negative number or reduce the frequeny by setting the `sysctl_interval_sec` configuration value to the number of seconds between consecutive executions of the plugin. For example, to execute the plugin once every 10 minutes: ````yml sysctl_interval_sec: 600 ``` To disable the Sysctl plugin: ```yml sysctl_interval_sec: -1 ``` The current default value for the `sysctl_interval_sec` property is `60`. ```` **Additional plugins to reduce or disable** The following inventory plugins are not especially CPU consuming, but you can still reduce their frequency or disable them by setting the corresponding configuration options. **Linux plugins** For configuration of these Linux plugins, see [Plugin variables](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#plugins-variables): - Cloud Security Groups - Daemon Tools - DPKG - Facter - Kernel Modules - Network interfaces - RPM - SELinux - Supervisord - Sysctl - Systemd - SysV - Upstart - Users - SSHD configuration **Windows plugins** For configuration of these Windows plugins, see [Plugin variables](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/install-configure-manage-infrastructure/configuration/infrastructure-configuration-settings#plugins-variables): - Network interfaces - Windows services - Windows updates ### Review on-host integrations [#on_host_integrations] If you use infrastructure on-host integrations, this may have additional impacts on CPU usage. The nature of the impact and the methods to adjust the impact depend on the integration you're using. Here are some ways to adjust on-host integration CPU usage: - See if your [integration](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/integrations/host-integrations/host-integrations-list) has configuration options you can adjust. - If possible, spread out the monitoring load by adding additional infrastructure agents. For example, the Kafka integration allows a [multi-agent deployment](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/integrations/host-integrations/host-integrations-list/kafka-monitoring-integration#multiple-agents).