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Fleet Server scalability

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Fleet Server scalability

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This page summarizes the resource and Fleet Server configuration requirements needed to scale your deployment of Elastic Agents. To scale Fleet Server, you need to modify settings in your deployment and the Fleet Server agent policy.

First modify your Fleet deployment settings in Elastic Cloud:

Log in to Elastic Cloud and go to your deployment.
Under Deployments > deployment name, click Edit.
Under Integrations Server:
- Modify the compute resources available to the server to accommodate a higher scale of Elastic Agents
- Modify the availability zones to satisfy fault tolerance requirements
For recommended settings, refer to Scaling recommendations (Elastic Cloud).

Next modify the Fleet Server configuration by editing the agent policy:

In Kibana, go to Management > Fleet > Agent Policies. Click the name of the Elastic Cloud agent policy to edit the policy.
Open the Actions menu next to the Fleet Server integration and click Edit integration.
Under Fleet Server, modify Max Connections and other advanced settings as described in Scaling recommendations (Elastic Cloud).

Advanced Fleet Server options

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The following advanced settings are available to fine tune your Fleet Server deployment.

cache

num_counters: Size of the hash table. Best practice is to have this set to 10 times the max connections.
max_cost: Total size of the cache.

server.timeouts

checkin_timestamp: How often Fleet Server updates the "last activity" field for each agent. Defaults to 30s. In a large-scale deployment, increasing this setting may improve performance. If this setting is higher than 2m, most agents will be shown as "offline" in the Fleet UI. For a typical setup, it’s recommended that you set this value to less than 2m.
checkin_long_poll: How long Fleet Server allows a long poll request from an agent before timing out. Defaults to 5m. In a large-scale deployment, increasing this setting may improve performance.

server.limits

policy_throttle: How often a new policy is rolled out to the agents.
checkin_limit.interval: How fast the agents can check in to the Fleet Server.
checkin_limit.burst: Burst of check-ins allowed before falling back to the rate defined by interval.
checkin_limit.max: Maximum number of agents.
artifact_limit.max: Maximum number of agents that can call the artifact API concurrently. It allows the user to avoid overloading the Fleet Server from artifact API calls.
artifact_limit.interval: How often artifacts are rolled out. Default of 100ms allows 10 artifacts to be rolled out per second.
artifact_limit.burst: Number of transactions allowed for a burst, controlling oversubscription on outbound buffer.
ack_limit.max: Maximum number of agents that can call the Ack API concurrently. It allows the user to avoid overloading the Fleet Server from Ack API calls.
ack_limit.interval: How often an acknowledgment (ACK) is sent. Default value of 10ms enables 100 ACKs per second to be sent.
ack_limit.burst: Burst of ACKs to accommodate (default of 20) before falling back to the rate defined in interval.
enroll_limit.max: Maximum number of agents that can call the Enroll API concurrently. This setting allows the user to avoid overloading the Fleet Server from Enrollment API calls.
enroll_limit.interval: Interval between processing enrollment request. Enrollment is both CPU and RAM intensive, so the number of enrollment requests needs to be limited for overall system health. Default value of 100ms allows 10 enrollments per second.
enroll_limit.burst: Burst of enrollments to accept before falling back to the rate defined by interval.

Scaling recommendations (Elastic Cloud)

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The following tables provide resource requirements and scaling guidelines based on the number of agents required by your deployment:

Resource requirements by number of agents

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Number of Agents	Memory	vCPU	Elasticsearch Cluster size
50	512 MB	Up to 2.5 vCPU	480 GB disk \| 16 GB RAM \| up to 5 vCPU
5,000	1 GB	Up to 2.5 vCPU	960 GB disk \| 32 GB RAM \| 5 vCPU
7,500	2 GB	Up to 2.5 vCPU	1.88 TB disk \| 64 GB RAM \| 9.8 vCPU
10,000	4 GB	Up to 2.5 vCPU	3.75 TB disk \| 128 GB RAM \| 19.8 vCPU
12,500	8 G	Up to 2.5 vCPU	7.5 TB disk \| 256 GB RAM \| 39.4 vCPU
30,000	16 GB	2.5 vCPU	7.5 TB disk \| 256 GB RAM \| 39.4 vCPU
50,000	32 GB	2.5 vCPU	11.25 TB disk \| 384 GB RAM \|59.2 vCPU

Recommended settings by number of deployed Elastic Agents

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You might need to scroll to the right to see all the table columns.

	50	5,000	7,500	10,000	12,500	30,000	50,000
Max Connections	100	7,000	10,000	20,000	32,000	32,000	32,000
Cache settings
`num_counters`	2000	20000	40000	80000	160000	160000	320000
`max_cost`	2097152	20971520	50971520	104857600	209715200	209715200	209715200
Server limits
`policy_throttle`	200 ms	50 ms	10 ms	5 ms	5 ms	2 ms	5 ms
`checkin_limit:`
`interval`	50 ms	5 ms	2 ms	1 ms	500 us	500 us	500 us
`burst`	25	500	1000	2000	4000	4000	4000
`max`	100	5001	7501	10001	12501	15001	25001
`artifact_limit:`
`interval`	100 ms	5 ms	2 ms	1 ms	500 us	500 us	500 us
`burst`	10	500	1000	2000	4000	4000	4000
`max`	10	1000	2000	4000	8000	8000	8000
`ack_limit:`
`interval`	10 ms	4 ms	2 ms	1 ms	500 us	500 us	500 us
`burst`	20	500	1000	2000	4000	4000	4000
`max`	20	1000	2000	4000	8000	8000	8000
`enroll_limit:`
`interval`	100 ms	20 ms	10 ms	10 ms	10 ms	10 ms	10 ms
`burst`	5	50	100	100	100	100	100
`max`	10	100	200	200	200	200	200
Server runtime settings
`gc_percent`	20	20	20	20	20	20	20

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