Performance - Other Tools (non AIX commands)
Quick Links to this page:
VPA - nmon - nmon-Analyser - nmon-Consolidator - pGraph - Roll-Your-Own - nstress-Tools - Ganglia
LPAR-Monitor - SEA-Monitor - HMC-LPAR-data-2-rrd - Gmon-v6 - WLM - Performance-Toolbox
PM - rPerf - Munin - ryaacct - Galileo
Virtual I/O Server - Performance Monitoring
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This is a review of every tool I know about that can help including
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Visual Performance Analyzer - an eclipse-based performance visualization toolkit.
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It consists of three major components:
- Profile Analyzer - analyzes system profiles.
- Code Analyzer - shows detailed information and analyzes application binaries.
- Pipeline Analyzer - examines how code executes on IBM Power processors.
- Follow this link to VPA on Alphaworks http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/vpa
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nmon - Nigel's AIX and Linux Performance Monitor
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nmon displays all the important performance stats on one screen
- This is a popular free tool for monitoring AIX (and Linux on POWER, Intel, AMD and Mainframe).
- Alternatively, nmon can save the data to a file for later analysis and graphing (see the analyser below).
- nmon was developed for benchmarking but many people use it to study production performance and write performance reports.
- Take this link to the nmon section nmon for AIX and Linux tool page
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nmon Analyser - Steve's Excel spread sheet to graph nmon output
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This is a popular addition to nmon for further analyse of performance data and graphing.
- All the nmon data is automatically graphed for you.
- From the graphs you can then determine bottlenecks, understand how the resourses are used and start tuning.
- Take this link to the nmon analyser section nmon Excel Analyser and Graphing page
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nmon Consolidator - Steve's Excel spread sheet to graph lots of nmon output from different machines/LPARs
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This is a new addition to nmon and allows the monitoring of many machines at once.
- Graph all the LPARs of one machine for the global view
- Graph many older machines and plan the server consolidation on to POWER5 LPARs
- Or just look at many machines at once.
- Take this link to the nmon Consolidator section nmon Excel Consolidator page
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pGraph Federico's Java Performance Graph Viewer
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- This tool can take data from nmon (AIX and Linux), vmstat, iostat or topasout from AIX
- It is Java based to allow you to graph and analyse the data dynamically (on Windows and AIX).
- It can read multiple data files from the same system or multiple systems.
- No limits on the number of data records.
- Take this link to the pGraph section pGraph Java Graph Viewer pages
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"Roll Your Own" AIX Performance Monitor - sample code
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A collection of tools demonstrating how to get performance data from AIX 5L
- There are C code sample programs for you to follow (for programers only)
- Included are pre-compiled binaries for AIX 5.3
- Take this link to the Roll Your Own section Roll-Your-Own Code Samples and Tools page
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Stress Test your pSeries/AIX System
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These are a number of programs to stress you CPU, memory, disks and other features:
- Soak testing = check a new machine/disk to remove early life failures
- Prove performance of machine upgrades or alternative disk configurations
- Learn performance monitoring and tuning
- Each tool uses one resource like CPU or memory or disks - so you can investigate one aspect at a time.
- Added together these tools can keep your whole machine busy!
- Take this link to the nstress section nStress Collection of Testing Tools
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Ganglia for Cluster Performance Monitoring with POWER5 additions
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Many large AIX High performance Computing (HPC) clusters use this excellent tool to monitor performance across large clusters of machines.
It is now a useful tool for monitoring the LPARs on a single POWER5 machine.
- The data is displayed graphical on a Website, includes configuration and performance statistics.
- This is also increasingly being used in commercial data centers too to monitor large groups of machines.
- Ganglia can also be used to monitor a group of logical partitions (LPARs) on a single machine - these just look like a cluster to Ganglia.
- Ganglia is not limited to just the AIX, which makes it even more useful in hetrogenous computer rooms.
- Take this link to the Introduction to Ganglia section Ganglia HowTo with POWER5 additions
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lparmon - System p LPAR Monitor in Java version 2 from AlphaWorks
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- LPARmon allows you to monitor System p logical partition on Windows or Linux.
- You run a daemon on each LPAR and this tool on your workstation to overview the use of resources.
- This new version to has increased flexibility, definable colours and dynamically adding nodes.
- You can also saving the data to files and and AIX or Linux logos for each LPAR.
- It can, in addition, send you visual, popup, audio and email alerts.
- You only need Java 1.4.2 to run this version.
- You can also override LPAR names
- Take this link to the LPARmon web page on IBM AlphaWorks - http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/lparmon
- This website includes documentation, download, FAQ and Forum for questions
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Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) Monitoring for the Virtual I/O Server
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The Virtual I/O Server feature allows a virtual internal Ethernet to be connected to a real physical network one POWER5 machines.
- However, monitoring the SEA network trafic is not easy and missed by most AIX tools
- If you put an ID address on the SEA you only get to see the traffic to and from the Virtual I/O Server and not the traffic between the virtual and physical networks.
- Take this link to the shell script to monitor SEA network traffic section Share Ethernet Adapter Statistics Tool
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LPAR2RRD - CPU Cross Partition Graphs from HMC data with RRDTool
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- The tool is capable to produce historical CPU utilization graphs of LPARs and shared CPU usage
- all LPARs (AIX, VIOS, i5OS, Linux on POWER) and all CPU pools stats are included
- The data is extracted from HMC via ssh and loaded into the RRDTool database
- Gives you CPU Cross Partition Graphs based on 60secs CPU utilization averages provided by HMC (agent-less)
- It collects complete physical (HW) and logical configuration of all managed systems and their lpars and all changes in their state and configuration.
- Project home
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gmon v6 - System p Graphical LPAR Monitor for Windows XP
New Version 6 - Frame Aware - works with Partition Mobility (AIX6 & Linux)
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- gmon allows you to watch multiple AIX and Linux LPARs on a Windows PC
- It is dynamically updated, colourful and displays all the important information in one place
- gmon automatically figures out which Frame your LPar is running on and displays a corresponding Frame Utilization Meter
- Take this link to the gmon section - gmon Windows Monitor Tool for LPARs page
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Workload Manager (WLM) for AIX
Performance Toolbox (PTX)
This is an extra package for AIX with adds the performance GUI tools for monitoring one machine in depth and multiple machines.
The package is extremely flexible and can save data for later processing.
See the Redbook "Customizing Performance Toolbox and Performance Toolbox Parallel Extensions for AIX" for more details and the Performance Tools Redbook.
IBM Performance Management for AIX (PM/AIX)
Find out more from the below:
Videos:
rperf - Relative Performance number
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This korn shell script outputs the offical rPerf number for the current machine
- If the rPerf number is not available for the number of CPUs in the machine or LPAR then a rough guess is made by dividing the top rPerf number by the number of CPUs
- Note: older machines only have Relative OLTP numbers (rolpt).
- Take this link to the rPerf Relative Performance script
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Munin - General purpose network-wide graphing framework (grapher/gatherer)
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Munin is a highly flexible and powerful solution used to create graphs of virtually everything imaginable throughout your network, while still maintaining a rattling ease of installation and configuration. Munin is Free Software, actively supported and developed as an Open Source project. It is reported to work on all common Unix-like systems, including AIX and all Linux distributions.
- Linux-plugin for graphing real (physical) cpu usage in an lpar exists.
- Munin can be compaired to lpar2rrd and Ganglia, but while lpar2rrd is exactly that and nothing else, and Ganglia is for clusters computers, Munin is a more general purpose monitoring tool.
- WebSite: http://munin.projects.linpro.no
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ryaacct- Roland's Yet Another AIX Advanced Accounting toolset
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This tool very quickly sets up AIX Advanced Accounting, cron jobs and scripts to cenrally extract data to allow you to very accurately determine CPU use. This can be a boon for:
- Performance managing your machines
- Used as a worked example of how to extract the information
- Used as the basis for charging user for resources consumed
- Take this link to the ryaacct
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Galileo Performance Explorer for AIX
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