What is the role of the poller in NPM, and how does poller count affect scalability?

• A. Pollers collect data from devices; adding pollers distributes load, improving scalability; too few pollers can cause delays and missed data
• B. Pollers store data in the database
• C. Pollers are used for user authentication
• D. Pollers are irrelevant to scalability

Answer: (A)

Pollers are the data collection workers that reach out to network devices to gather performance metrics (like CPU, memory, interface statistics) and then feed that information into the monitoring database. The number of pollers you have directly affects how many devices can be polled in parallel. Adding more pollers distributes the workload, shortens the time it takes to complete a polling cycle, and helps prevent queues from building up, which in turn improves scalability as your environment grows. If you don’t have enough pollers, devices share the same polling resources, leading to delays, longer collection times, and a higher chance of missing data during busy periods. Remote pollers can be added to push work closer to devices and further optimize scalability, while the poller role is not about storing data or authenticating users.