PXED performance considerations

It is important to understand that certain configuration keywords and the structure of the configuration file have an effect on the memory use and performance of the PXED server.

First, excessive memory use can be avoided by understanding the inheritance model of options from parent to child containers. In an environment that supports no unlisted clients, the administrator must explicitly list each client in the file. When options are listed for any specific client, the server uses more memory storing that configuration tree than when options are inherited from a parent container (for example, the subnet, network, or global containers). Therefore, the administrator should verify whether any options are repeated at the client level within the configuration file and, if so, determine whether these options can be specified in the parent container and shared by the set of clients as a whole.

Also, when using the logItem entries INFO and TRACE, numerous messages are logged during the processing of every PXE client's message. Appending a line to the log file can be an expensive operation; therefore, limiting the amount of logging improves the performance of the PXED server. When an error with the PXED server is suspected, logging can be dynamically re-enabled using the SRC traceson command.