# Meaning of worker task slots available metric

**URL:** <https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770>\
**Category:** Community Support\
**Created:** [August 23, 2022, 9:37am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770 "2022-08-23T09:37:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dmitriy\_Khodakovskyi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/dmitriy_khodakovskyi/32/2635_2.png) [@Dmitriy\_Khodakovskyi](https://community.temporal.io/u/Dmitriy_Khodakovskyi)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2022, 9:37am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/1 "2022-08-23T09:37:01Z")

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Hi! Could you please help me to understand these metrics?  
It never goes below ~235. My worker options:

```auto
		MaxConcurrentWorkflowTaskPollers: 24,
		MaxConcurrentActivityTaskPollers: 16,

		MaxConcurrentWorkflowTaskExecutionSize: 256,
		MaxConcurrentLocalActivityExecutionSize: 256,
		MaxConcurrentActivityExecutionSize: 256,

```

Does it mean I have enough worker task slots, or does it indicate that I should decrease the max concurrent task pollers size for better utilization?

 ![Screenshot 2022-08-23 at 11.27.36](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/temporal/original/2X/1/1e1bba6a74654504deb3e755642eb92c6bf8b0d2.jpeg)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tihomir](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/tihomir/32/6580_2.png) [@tihomir](https://community.temporal.io/u/tihomir)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2022, 4:12am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/2 "2022-08-24T04:12:27Z")

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It would mean that you have excess worker task slots available which could change during your peak hours - does your maru load test reflect expected peak loads?

> does it indicate that I should decrease the max concurrent task pollers size for better utilization

Would look at worker tuning guide for this, specifically [here](https://docs.temporal.io/application-development/worker-performance/#poller-count).

Also look at [this](https://community.temporal.io/t/what-are-the-recommended-settings-for-workflow-and-activity-pollers-count/5617) forum post for detailed info on selecting poller counts.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dmitriy\_Khodakovskyi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/dmitriy_khodakovskyi/32/2635_2.png) [@Dmitriy\_Khodakovskyi](https://community.temporal.io/u/Dmitriy_Khodakovskyi)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2022, 9:08am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/3 "2022-08-24T09:08:31Z")

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Thanks for your reply!  
I have read worker turning post a few times, but unfortunately, changing the pollers count didn’t give a significant effect in my case.

I stopped on this Maru scenario and performed tests with different configurations of the Temporal/Maru Workers setup:

```auto
{
    "steps": [{
        "count": 1000000,
        "ratePerSecond": 1000
    }],
    "workflow": {
        "name": "basic-workflow",
        "args": {
            "sequenceCount": 1
        }
    },
    "report": {
        "intervalInSeconds": 10
    }
}

```

For now, I am still trying to understand where to bottleneck to performance, at least to get 1k wf/per sec. But the main goal it’s getting a clear understanding of what to tune to achieve even more of the 1k wf/per sec , and it seems to me is a too difficult task(

According to the forum post:

> The general rule of thumb is that you always want to have your poller waiting for tasks, and not having task backlog build up.

Does it mean the problem with configuration Maru workers if P95 poll latency starts to drop? They are not capable of handling all tasks, I need to play with Poller’s count ?

Also, I would like to ask about HearBeat latency (I attached the screenshot). Does this also indicate a performance problem with the Maru worker itself?

 ![Screenshot 2022-08-24 at 10.52.12](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/temporal/original/2X/8/89c7eca280e9424d96f6c4b9007c02f7c6dd3c36.png)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jonatmil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@jonatmil](https://community.temporal.io/u/jonatmil)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2023, 11:03pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/4 "2023-08-23T23:03:06Z")

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> [@Dmitriy\_Khodakovskyi](#):
>
> For now, I am still trying to understand where to bottleneck to performance, at least to get 1k wf/per sec. But the main goal it’s getting a clear understanding of what to tune to achieve even more of the 1k wf/per sec , and it seems to me is a too difficult task

Were you ever able to find a proper resolution? I am in a similar situation running Maru tests and trying to understand how to get to 1k workflows/sec. Currently I am way under this number (~25 wf/sec with 3 activities). @tihomir could you weigh in if not?

Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tihomir](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/tihomir/32/6580_2.png) [@tihomir](https://community.temporal.io/u/tihomir)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2023, 11:26pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/5 "2023-08-23T23:26:13Z")

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| how to get to 1k workflows/sec  
Hi, what does this mean in terms of actions/s for your use case?  
(server metrics emit `"action"` counter metric that could look at and share during your load test).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jonatmil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@jonatmil](https://community.temporal.io/u/jonatmil)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2023, 6:12pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/6 "2023-08-24T18:12:27Z")

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Essentially we are trying to understand the performance metrics using Cassandra vs. MySQL. Currently we are running performance testing with Cassandra. Ideally, we would like to be able to maximize the number of state transitions per second (perhaps 1k wf/sec is a misleading goal). We have several grafana dashboards set up to try and gather information on how to proceed, but the queries are either not set up correctly or hard to interpret.

 ![Screenshot 2023-08-24 at 11.08.25 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/temporal/original/2X/6/6501eb6ef8756e219fb829bf7d4c0c4d3a8c1bcf.png)  
 ![Screenshot 2023-08-24 at 11.08.48 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/temporal/original/2X/2/20aa3ba7ff6795e984cec5de67bfc3b442694eb2.png)  
 ![Screenshot 2023-08-24 at 11.10.57 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/temporal/original/2X/3/313d3b2cdd143ee52b0b2637993df49c4a93e34e.png)  
 ![Screenshot 2023-08-24 at 11.11.31 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/temporal/original/2X/d/d352212fe1fde9a2b6c0a19c12419f7188c00a55.png)

Can you provide any feedback on how to improve/understand these readings? Are there other tuning metrics I should be looking at?

Thanks

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jonatmil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@jonatmil](https://community.temporal.io/u/jonatmil)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2023, 3:08pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/7 "2023-08-28T15:08:51Z")

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Double-tapping this 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jonatmil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c4cdca/32.png) [@jonatmil](https://community.temporal.io/u/jonatmil)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2023, 5:01pm UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/meaning-of-worker-task-slots-available-metric/5770/8 "2023-08-29T17:01:19Z")

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Would appreciate any guidance on these performance metrics 🙂