WebInspect slowing down my system

[Learner_7]

Hi All

When I run WI, my system gets really slow. Sometimes, I have to pause the scan in order to do some other tasks. 

My system has good configuration - a ram of 4GB is good I guess. 

I cant upgrade my system as it belongs to my organization. Is there any other way in which I can solve this issue ? 

[HansEnders]

4GB RAM with a single dual-core processor is now the expected minimum for WebInspect 10.40.  I would look for 1+ quad-core CPU and 8GB RAM as a working minimum, but you have what you were given.  See that attached System Requirements for WebInspect 10.40 (Fortify 4.30 release cycle).

WebInspect is not a quiet tool.  It will most definitely spike your network traffic, and it will use 100% of RAM and CPU, but at a Low Priority.  If you run other applications on the same machine, WebInspect will give up the resources it is using to those apps.  Its goal is to scan the target as quickly as the target can respond.  If possible, consider moving the WebInspect installation to a VM elsewhere on your network rather than your workstation.

You can adjust some scan settings to lessen this load.  The Requestors scan settings for Thread Count (5 Crawl, 10 Audit) can be lowered.  Bear in mind that the default settings are a balance between Speed and Thoroughness, so lowering the Threads drastically will cause your scans to take longer to complete.

You might also try using a Standard or Enterprise SQL Server on a separate machine.  SQL Express generally performs fine on the localhost with WebInspect, but given your situation, you may see a performance increase by off-loading the SQL component.  This assumes that you have a fast network connection with this SQL Server.

Additionally, you may want to only run one scan at a time, not the two scans allowed, and also not generate Reports during scans.

You may also want to restart WebInspect between scans.  There have been cases where the secondary browser.exe processes used for script parsing can linger after a scan completes.  If you add the Column "Command Line" to your Task Manager's Processes grid, you can understand the browser.exe items better.  On my own system I like to kill and restart SQL Express when not using WebInspect.

For the Windows Servcies control panel, ensure you have set to Manual or Disabled these services.

• WebInspect API - Used for integrations, generally only when the user wants it on.
• WebInspect Scheduler - Used to run Scheduled Scans or Enterprise Scans, when the user is not present or logged in.
• WebInspect Sensor - Set to Disabled!  Only used for our enterprise solution, WebInspect Enterprise (WIE), not for your WebInspect desktop product.

From the attached System Requirements:

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Hardware Requirements

HP recommends that you install WebInspect on a system that conforms to the supported components listed in the following table. Beta or pre‐release versions of operating systems, service packs, and required third‐party components are not supported.

Processor
2.5 GHz quad‐core or higher (recommended)
2.0 GHz dual‐core (minimum)

RAM
8 GB or higher (2 GB per core) (recommended)
4 GB (minimum)

Hard disk
100+ GB (recommended)
40 GB (minimum)

Display
1980 x 1080 (recommended)
1280 x 1024 (minimum)

Important: If you are running a WebInspect sensor with SQL Express, HP recommends that you use at least a 4‐core CPU and a 64‐bit operating system with at least 8 GB of RAM.

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