Planning for performance monitoring

When you plan to monitor Db2 performance, you should consider how to monitor performance continuously, how and when to perform periodic monitoring, how you will monitor exceptions, and the costs associated with monitoring.

Your plan for monitoring Db2 performance should include:

• A master schedule of monitoring. Large batch jobs or utility runs can cause activity peaks. Coordinate monitoring with other operations so that it need not conflict with unusual peaks, unless that is what you want to monitor.
• The kinds of analysis to be performed and the tools to be used. Document the data that is extracted from the monitoring output. These reports can be produced using Tivoli® Decision Support for z/OS®, IBM Tivoli IBM® OMEGAMON® for Db2 Performance Expert on z/OS XE, other reporting tools, manual reduction, or a program of your own that extracts information from standard reports.
• A list of people who should review the results. The results of monitoring and the conclusions based on them should be available to the user support group and to system performance specialists.
• A strategy for tuning Db2 describes how often changes are permitted and standards for testing their effects. Include the tuning strategy in regular system management procedures.

  Tuning recommendations might include generic database and application design changes. You should update development standards and guidelines to reflect your experience and to avoid repeating mistakes.

Cost factors of performance monitoring

You should consider the following cost factors when planning for performance monitoring and tuning.

• Trace overhead for global, accounting, statistics, audit, and performance traces
• Trace data reduction and reporting times
• Time spent on report analysis and tuning action