Customizing data collections
When you use Collection Services to collect performance data, you control what data is collected and how often it is collected.
You can select from the collection profiles that are provided. The Standard profile collects the data categories that are typically needed by IBM® Performance Tools for i licensed program product. The Standard plus protocol profile collects the communications data categories as well as the data categories that are typically needed by IBM Performance Tools for i licensed program product. Or you can select Custom to create your own customized profile. There are also several other profiles available.
When creating a customized profile, you can select from a list of available data categories, such as system CPU, local response time, disk storage, and IOPs (input/output processors). For each category of data that you collect in your customized profile, you can specify how often the data will be collected. For many categories, you will want to select the default collection interval, which you can set from predefined settings between 15 seconds and 60 minutes. (The recommended setting is 15 minutes.)
- Explicit time intervals as may be set up in the Custom profile.
- Categories with interval restriction such as, disk storage, input/output processors, and communications-related categories which must collect at least every 5 minutes.
The collected data is stored in a management collection object (system object type *MGTCOL). To prevent these management collection objects from becoming too large, the collection must be cycled at regular intervals. Cycling a collection means to create a new collection object and begin storing data in it at the same time data collection stops in the original collection object. You can specify any cycle interval from one hour to 24 hours, depending on how you plan to use the data.