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Administering Websense Databases > Other factors that affect the performance of Websense reporting
Other factors that affect the performance of Websense reporting
Administering Websense Databases | Web, Data, and Email Security Solutions | v7.6.x - 7.8.x
Applies to:                                         
In this topic                                       
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Web Filter, Web Security, and Web Security Gateway (Anywhere), v7.6.x - v7.8.x
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Data Security, v7.6.x - v7.8.x
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Email Security Gateway (Anywhere), v7.6.x - v7.8.x
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Factors affecting Web Security reporting performance
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Factors affecting Email Security reporting performance
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Factors affecting Data Security reporting performance
Factors affecting Web Security reporting performance
Users' Web browsing behavior
Web browsing behavior varies widely among Websense customers. Periodically review your database performance, your reporting needs, and the actual data in the database so you can identify ways to reduce the demands on your reporting system.
Selective logging
Websense Web Security allows you to reduce the demands on your reporting system by not logging traffic to Web sites in selected categories. For example, online retailers might disable logging for Shopping categories. This can result in a large reduction in the amount of data that has to be stored and managed by Web Security reporting.
For information on configuring selective logging, refer to "Configuring how requests are logged" in the v7.6, v7.7, or v7.8 Web Security Help.
Use of Detail Reports over long time periods
Reports of Web browsing activity over long time periods (weeks and/or months) require much more memory, processor time, and disk I/O to generate. For better performance, run summary reports across long time periods on a regular schedule, then use detail reports only for investigating specific users in shorter time periods. If you have business requirements that demand generating detail reports across a large time window, you can:
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Schedule the reports to run during low-activity periods in your network.
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Invest in more hardware resources for your reporting system.
Number of scheduled reports or number of delegated reporting administrators
If you have several delegated administrators that use reporting each day or create several scheduled reports to run each night, this can degrade the performance of your Websense reporting tools. If you meet these usage profiles, consider investing in more hardware resources for your reporting system: more RAM, faster disks, faster CPUs, and higher-end versions of SQL Server and Windows that support more hardware.
Geographical location of users
If you have users distributed among multiple physical locations and your business does not require unified reporting across all users, consider deploying separate Log Server and Log Database instances in each location.
Calculation of Internet browse time
By default, a database job calculates Internet browse time at 2 a.m. for the previous day's activity. This is a memory-, processor-, and disk I/O-intensive activity. If you don't use Internet browse time to manage your users' Web browsing activity, consider disabling Internet browse time to improve the performance of your reporting system.
For information on configuring Internet browse time in Websense Web Security, refer to "Configuring Internet browse time options" in the v7.6, v7.7, or v7.8 Web Security Help.
Partitioning
The Log Database is segmented into partitions for easier data management. Depending on the time period covered by a report, Websense may need to query multiple partitions. This may make report generation less efficient.
By default, a new Log Database partition is created when the current partition size reaches 5 GB. (With Standard and Enterprise versions of SQL Server, you can also configure the Log Database to roll over at a specific time interval.)
Review the size and content of the partitions in the database after your system has been installed and receiving data for a few days, then tune the partitioning configuration (rollover size or time period) accordingly.
For information on managing partitions, refer to "Configuring database partition options" in the v7.7 or v7.8 Web Security Help.
Web Security hybrid users
The sizing guidelines in this document include logs generated by users managed by the Web Security hybrid service (Web Security Gateway Anywhere only). When sizing your reporting system, do not forget to include those users.
Configuration options that affect Log Database sizing, including selective logging, logging visits, and full URL logging, also apply to hybrid log records, so no special consideration needs to be made for those users.
Factors affecting Email Security reporting performance
Number of scheduled or custom presentation reports
If you create a large number of scheduled reports to run each night (more than 10) or use a large number of custom presentation reports (more than 10) each day, this can affect reporting performance. In particular, the following 3 reports place high demands on system resources:
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Top n External Recipients by Message Volume
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Top n External Recipients by Message Size
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Top n Data Security Policy Violations by Volume
If you meet these usage profiles, consider investing in more hardware resources for your reporting system: more RAM, faster disks, faster CPUs, and higher-end versions of SQL Server and Windows that support more hardware.
Partitioning
The Email Security Log Database is segmented into partitions for easier data management. Depending on the time period covered by a report, Websense reporting tools may need to query multiple partitions. Running such reports may be inefficient.
By default, Websense creates a new partition within the Email Security Log Database after storing 5 GB of data in a single partition. You can also configure Email Security to create a new partition based on a weekly or monthly time interval.
Review the size and content of the partitions in the database after your system has been installed and receiving data for a few days, then tune the partitioning configuration accordingly.
For information on managing partitions in Email Security Gateway, refer to "Configuring Log Database Options" in the v7.6, v7.7, or v7.8 Email Security Help.
Factors affecting Data Security reporting performance
Websense Data Security automatically archives database partitions containing older data to reduce storage requirements and maintain a high performance reporting experience. To further reduce the data storage requirements of Data Security, you can choose to create archive partitions sooner and keep fewer concurrent restored archives.
Refer to "Archiving incidents" in the v7.6, v7.7, or v7.8 Data Security Help for more information on archiving.

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