Monitoring Db2 for IBM i

The Db2 for IBM i sensor is automatically deployed and installed after you install the Instana agent.

Supported versions

Supported IBM i platforms are: 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, and 7.5.

Currently, we are supporting only remote monitoring of Db2 for IBM i.

Configuration

The monitoring of Db2 for IBM i will be automatically started once the IBM i configuration is in place and Collections Services is started. Please follow the IBM i Series configuration instructions.

The Db2 for IBM i will be presented as a separate entity within the IBM i dashboard.

Collection Services configuring and startup

Collection Services Configuration

The Db2 for the IBM i sensor uses the IBM i Collection Services to provide SQL performance data. Collection Services can be configured and managed through the IBM® Navigator for the i Performance interface or the Configure Performance Collection (CFGPFRCOL) control language (CL) command. The configuration can be used to change certain collection attributes and to determine how Collection Services manages data collections.

The default collection interval is specified as part of the configuration and affects the granularity of data that is displayed by the Db2 for the IBM i sensor. Changes to the configuration affect the data that is collected from many system resources, and not just data for the Db2 for the IBM i sensor. Collection Services can collect data at regular time intervals of 15 seconds up to 1 hour. The default collection interval is 15 minutes. For optimal metrics collection, consider setting the collection interval to 5 minutes.

Collection profiles are used to control what data is collected and how often the data is collected. The Db2 for the IBM i sensor uses the SQL (*SQL) category that is included in the *STANDARD and *STANDARDP collection profiles.

The amount of disk resources that are used by Collection Services varies depending on the settings that you use. For more information about disk consumption, see Understanding disk consumption by Collection Services.

Collection Services startup

In order to configure Collection Services, Start Performance Collection (STRPFRCOL) command can be used in the following way:

STRPFRCOL 
    COLPRF(*CFG)
    CYCCOL(*YES)

Parameters

Parameter Name Description Value
COLPRF Collection profile name (*STANDARDP) CFG
CYCCOL Cycle Collection Services data collection YES

More detailed information can be found here.

Metrics collection

To view the metrics, select Infrastructure in the sidebar of the Instana User interface, click a specific monitored host, and then you can see a host dashboard with all the collected metrics and monitored processes.

Configuration data

  • Collection Services
  • Collection Services Library name

Performance metrics

Metric Description Granularity
Active queries Total number of queries currently active. 15 seconds
Logical database reads Total number of times the database module was called by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Logical database writes Total number of times the internal database write function was called by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Asynchronous database reads Total number of asynchronous physical database read operations for database functions for all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Asynchronous database writes Total number of asynchronous physical database write operations for database functions for all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Synchronous database reads Total number of physical synchronous database read operations for database functions for all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Synchronous database writes Total number of physical synchronous database write operations for database functions for all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Database commit operations Total number of database commit operations performed by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Database rollback operations Total number of database rollback operations performed by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Miscellaneous logical database operations The number of miscellaneous logical database operations (updates, deletes, force-end-of-data, opens, closes, and releases) performed by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
Plans in SQL plan cache Total number of plans currently in the SQL plan cache. 15 seconds
Plan cache size The current size (in megabytes) of the SQL plan cache. 15 seconds
Plan cache size limit The maximum size (in megabytes) that the SQL plan cache is allowed to be. 15 seconds
SQL cursor count Total cumulative number of SQL cursors that were full opened by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds
SQL cursor reuse Total cumulative number of SQL cursors that were pseudo-opened by all jobs within the interval. 15 seconds