How to monitor paging space utilization on AIX V5.3

The AIX Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC) facility can be used to monitor paging space utilization.

A sample Korn shell script is available which configures the AIX RMC so that a note is sent to specified email addresses when paging space utilization exceeds a threshold (50% by default). The threshold can be changed by editing the shell script. The email addresses are specified in a file with a suffix of .emailaddrs, residing the same directory and with the same base name as the shell script. (That is, if the shell script is named rmcpgmon, then the address file must be named rmcpgmon.emailaddrs.) It is possible to modify the shell script to take other actions instead of (or in addition to) sending a note.

The shell script configures RMC so that it is invoked once when AIX paging space gets more than 50% full and once when AIX paging space gets less than 45% full. Just to be clear, once an event triggers, it will not trigger again to run the shell script until it is rearmed. The event will rearm (and run the shell script once) when PctTotalPgSpUsed < 45.

Important note To configure AIX so that the shell script can send a note to a user on another host, follow instructions on the How to configure AIX V5.3 to send mail to users on other hosts web page.

The shell script requires a text file in the directory in which it resides, so it is best to put the script in a directory dedicated to resource monitoring (eg, /usr/local/rmc) rather than a directory such as /usr/local/sbin.

When invoked with no parameters, the shell script produces help text documenting the flags it supports:

# /usr/local/rmc/rmcpgmon
Usage: rmcpgmon {-e | -d | -q | -x}
       -e - enable monitoring
       -d - disable monitoring
       -q - query to determine if monitoring is enabled
       -x - used only when invoked by RMC monitoring for event or rearm
#

For detailed information about the AIX Resource Monitoring and Control (RMC) facility, see Basic resource monitoring, which describes how to exploit predefined conditions and responses in AIX RMC, and Advanced resource monitoring, which describes how to create and exploit custom conditions and responses in AIX RMC.

To list all RMC resource classes, run the command:

lsrsrcdef

To list attributes and values for resource class IBM.Host, run the command:

lsrsrc -Ab IBM.Host

Note RMC is bundled in AIX at no additional charge. RMC is only one option for monitoring paging space utilization. Tivoli is another option, among many. For more information, see Section 3.4.1, "IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus" in the End-to-End Planning for Availability and Performance Monitoring Redbook.

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