Is it normal to see PA-7500 MP to show CPU usage in the range 30-40% without any activity?
Question
We can See Management Plane CPU utilisation (approximately ~35%) during idle periods, with no active management activity in PA-7500 Dashboard (System resources widget). Is this normal and what causes this behaviour?
Environment
• PA-7500
• PA-7500-MPC
Answer
For the PA-7500 platform, this behaviour is expected and considered normal. Due to the architecture of the PA-7500, multiple background daemons continuously perform health checks and internal processing, which results in a steady baseline Management Plane CPU utilisation even during idle conditions.
Engineering team have confirmed that a Management Plane CPU utilisation in the 30–40% range during idle times is normal and does not indicate a performance issue.
Additional Information
The processes contributing most to the Management Plane CPU usage. The primary contributors observed were: NAT_APP DP_MP_V2 These processes are part of the normal system operation and are designed to utilise Management Plane resources as required for proper functionality. Based on the logs and current behaviour, there are no indications of a fault or abnormal condition on the device.
admin@PA-7500> show system resources follow
top - 17:53:13 up 60 days, 36 min, 1 user, load average: 13.13, 13.17, 13.13
Tasks: 537 total, 3 running, 534 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 21.3 us, 0.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 78.5 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 127913.3 total, 108548.4 free, 11611.4 used, 7753.5 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 1023.9 total, 1023.9 free, 0.0 used. 116021.0 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
14576 root 20 0 64.6g 48844 15096 R 737.5 0.0 604986:22 nat_app
14570 root 20 0 64.3g 27924 13860 R 612.3 0.0 518595:50 dp_mp_v2
9024 root 20 0 70.9g 835976 260672 S 6.0 0.6 5316:11 brdagent
6989 root 0 -20 375656 77496 16128 S 0.7 0.1 137:11.13 md_apps
14557 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.7 0.0 436:41.94 kni_dpkni0
14558 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.7 0.0 437:13.97 kni_hakni1
14560 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.7 0.0 436:11.30 kni_pmkni2
35932 admin 20 0 21540 3580 2456 R 0.7 0.0 0:00.02 top
37063 nobody 20 0 932632 50568 21008 S 0.7 0.0 136:33.89 httpd
12171 root 20 0 717688 45232 30956 S 0.3 0.0 213:10.34 pan_dhcpd
12204 root 20 0 2007372 305692 38188 S 0.3 0.2 24:04.56 logrcvr
21606 nobody 20 0 927464 44820 20584 S 0.3 0.0 41:32.08 httpd