How to check Management Plane CPU resource usage

• Palo Alto Firewalls
• Supported PAN-OS
• CPU Usage

If you suspects management functions don't work properly and want to check MP CPU usage of firewall, follow the instructions below.

1. Step1) Gather Tech Support File. How to collect it is here.
2. Step2) Extract the file collected in Step1.
3. Step3) Navigate to /var/log/pan directory and open mp-monitor.log (or mp-monitor.log.X) file.
   Note: This file are saved as multiple rotate files.  mp-monitor.log is the latest and mp-monitor.log.4 is the oldest.
4. Step4) Search '--- cpu' section as follows and check values.

xxxx-01-29 15:50:52.126 -0800  --- cpu
Last 180 seconds
Avg (%)    Max (%)
95         100
Load Avg:
13.20 10.95 9.18 9/1638 27387
-----------------------------

• Here are the details of the outputs.

xxxx-01-29 15:50:52.126 -0800  --- cpu

• The date and time is important information to check data, it should be checked first. 

Last 180 seconds
Avg (%)    Max (%)
95         100

• The above outputs mean that CPU resource usage rate for last 3 minutes.
  In this example, CPU usage rate average for the last 3 mins was 95% and CPU usage rate hit 100% at least once during the last 3 mins.

Load Avg:
13.20 10.95 9.18 9/1638 27387

• The above outputs mean that how many processes or tasks were waiting in average in 3 different timeframe.
  From left to right, values for 1 minutes, 5 minutes and 15 minutes.
• In this example, load average for the last 1 mins was 13.20, one for the last 5 mins was 10.95 and one for the last 15 mins was 9.18.

5. Step5) Compare values of multiple "--- cpu"  sections, and judge whether MP CPU was high in specific time or not.