The underlying problem is that in 11.0.1/7.3.1 there is now a unified nodes table. Previously when NCM had its own database no locks were taken on the NPM nodes table, but now there are.
NCM_Nodes is a view that includes the Nodes tables; this at NPM<11.5 is a single table with many updates and reads on it. this causes excessive contention as process that want slowly changing data (like the vendor and machinetype) get stuck behind processes updating the response time, cpu load, memory buffers, etc.
I'm trying to get our firewall configuration files shrunk -- they appear to contain all of the IPS templates, which really don't need to be backed up given they get updated a couple of times a day.