Kibana Discover high CPU usage, slow and laggy UI

[archon810]

Kibana version:
7.7

Elasticsearch version:
7.7

Server OS version:
OpenSUSE 15.1

Browser version:
Chrome 83

Browser OS version:
Win10 x64 May 2020 update

Original install method (e.g. download page, yum, from source, etc.):
zypper

Describe the bug:
Discover UI uses so much CPU, it freezes for multiple seconds and sometimes uses 100%+ CPU non-stop.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Load Discover with some data.
2. Try to enable some columns, move them around, or in our case simply hover on Selected Fields without even selecting them.
3. Observe the CPU for the tab spike to 100%+ and the whole UI become very laggy. Help you lord if you do this after refreshing the data a few times or changing up some queries. I frequently have to close and reopen the tab just to get it to respond again and not be a laggy mess. Just moving the mouse around the empty area of the screen starts using 20-50% CPU for the tab.

Expected behavior:
Decent performance without page hangs.

Screenshots (if relevant):

Errors in browser console (if relevant):

Provide logs and/or server output (if relevant):

Any additional context:

[archon810]

Potentially loosely related:

• [Meta] Kibana platform performance  #63848
• [meta] Kibana loading performances optimizations  #62263
• Improve loading performance #49015

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app (Team:KibanaApp)

[kertal]

@archon810 I could not reproduce such a CPU workload using our cloud service, Kibana 7.7, with an inexpensive Win10 Laptop using Chrome 83, workload was never more than 10%. Did you experience similar performance issues in other parts of Kibana? Could you share some details about the structure of the documents that you're querying ? Maybe provide an example? Which hardware are you using? Many thx!

[archon810]

@kertal Sure, I can reproduce this on pretty much all machines we have, so I don't think it depends on one. The one I was last testing on is a Core i9 desktop with 32GB of RAM, built in the last 1.5 years.

The problem happens the most on Discover because this page shows actual data, including all the fields (though collapsed). Things get worse if I load the data several more times by scrolling down or run several queries. It got really bad several times when trying to move selected columns around. At some points, the whole tab froze for multiple seconds entirely.

Example data is filebeat nginx logs, for example, or PHP logs.

It's hard to show something concrete without doing lots of editing for private data, but here's a quick GIF that doesn't really have anything private. Just moving the mouse spins the CPU to close to 100%:

I'd like to help Kibana get faster and less laggy, and I can help debug this if you'd like over Zoom or something similar.

[kertal]

@archon810 thx for your valuable input, I will continue researching 👍

[timroes]

@archon810 Thanks for your offer. I dropped you a mail to your Gmail address. Looking forward hearing from you :-)

[archon810]

Following the discussion with the legendary @timroes and the subsequent fix, I'm pleased to report that the UI is a lot snappier in 7.8 now.

Thank you.

[otisg]

Will the fix get applied on the 7.7 branch and be added to 7.7.2?

[kertal]

Will the fix get applied on the 7.7 branch and be added to 7.7.2?

@otisg yes, it was merged back and will be part of 7.7.2

[timroes]

@otisg Since 7.8.0 is already released there is no further 7.7 patch release planned unless significant severe security issues will pop up. So I fear you'll not get a 7.7.2 with that fix in it, but need to update to 7.8.0 to get it.