Zookeeper Priority

Zookeeper Priority sets the amount of CPU power Zookeeper can use.

Zookeeper’s default behaviour of using only a portion of the computer’s CPU resource may not be ideal for all scenarios.

Zookeeper connects to all Hippotizer machines on the local network and maintains a cache of data for each one. The CPU overhead of this work can be significant, especially for larger networks with substantial media libraries. Zookeeper uses other computer resources such as memory and GPU though these are not a limiting factor in most cases.

The total load of a Hippotizer system is determined by many factors, the most important are:

• The total number of Zookeepers on the network – each Zookeeper adds load, especially if the Zookeeper is running on a slow computer.
• Number of clips in the media library (not size). In testing, libraries with greater than >15,000 clips or images add load
• The total number of layers and mixes on the network.
• Network infrastructure bottle-necks: HippoNet will work only as fast as the slowest segment. A damaged cable, bad NIC or wireless hop will degrade the entire network.

Setting Zookeeper Priority should be considered a second option to optimising the show setup as it is potentially hiding an underlying issue instead of fixing it.

Zookeeper Priority

By default, Zookeeper uses only a fraction of the computer’s CPU resources in order to allow other applications (or the Hippotizer Engine) enough time to operate normally. There are situations where this may not be the desired behaviour:

• All the above optimisations have been made and Zookeeper is still running slowly.
• The Zookeeper machine is reporting single core CPU Saturation (some CPU cores are consistently running at >75% while others remain low or idle).
• Zookeeper is running on a stand-alone machine not running the Hippotizer Engine or other important applications (such as a visualiser)

• Normal The default. Zookeeper will use 50% or less of the available CPU cores.
• High Zookeeper will use all available CPU cores

!Setting Zookeeper Priority to High on a system running the Hippotizer Engine will degrade playback performance. Set to High only on remote Zookeeper systems.