topic Re: Free VMS Performance Tools in Operating System - OpenVMS

Free VMS Performance Tools

Warren G Landrum — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:25:53 GMT

All,

I'm having a serious brain-fart and cannot think of any of the free tools that are available for us to use to do VMS Perf Mgmt. All I can think of righ now is the CA suite of tools that includes DEC Performance Advisor and Data Collector.

Help!

Warren (the Senile One!)

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Andy Bustamante — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:36:28 GMT

Hi Warren,

T4 and TLViz are good starting point. http://h71000.www7.hp.com/OpenVMS/products/t4/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN I can't say enough good things about T4.

TDC http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/tdc/?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN is also useful and has some different bells and whistles.

Monitor in batch can provide some good immediate information. T4 uses monitor as one source of collection.

Andy

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Andy Bustamante — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:29:39 GMT

If I can borrow the Senile label, I'll add another tool. Availability Manager, http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/availman/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN can provide real time information about a system. Very useful for diagnostics and has the ability to apply "fixes" to the system, force quorum to be recalculated, adjust quotas and even force a crash.

Welcome to the VMS forums.

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Hein van den Heuvel — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:50:18 GMT

Warren,

Any particular problem you are trying to resolve / monitor?
A specific problem description might trigger thoughts of other tools to consider.

T4, as mentioned, is pretty good, also for long term trend monitoring.

You may also look as 'pawz' from ex-deccies such as Prem Singha. I believe some components are free.
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/partners/perfcap/index.html#eCAP
http://www.perfcap.com/Products.htm

Hope this helps some,
Hein van den Heuvel (at gmail dot com)
HvdH Performance Consulting

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Robert Gezelter — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:01:27 GMT

Warren,

I can only add an Amen to the chorus concerning the use of T4. While even the basic MONITOR functionality is extremely useful, the ability to do time duration analysis in invaluable.

I also recommend the article on T4 by Steven Lieman. The article can be found at: http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/v3/t4.html

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Volker Halle — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 03:33:14 GMT

Warren,

TDC is only a data collector, you need ECP to have a graphical view of the data:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ecp/index.html

Note: ECP is not avaliable to run on OpenVMS I64. But you can look at the data collected on I64 with ECP running on Alpha.

Volker.

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Colin Butcher — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:24:08 GMT

Hi,

T4 yet again. Just sitting there looking at monitor and a few other things live can help too - it never hurts to get a feel for a system's behaviour first hand.

Another good source of T4 information is the openvms.org VMS audio updates - Steve Lieman has provided several T4 tips that way too.

The key thing for me is to understand what the system's typical purpose and workload are - then you can begin to decide whether what you observe makes sense in the context of what it's supposed to be doing.

Usually it's the code that needs fixing! That's where the big wins tend to be.

Cheers, Colin (www.xdelta.co.uk).

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Ian Miller. — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 09:47:53 GMT

Another one not mentioned so far is HP PERFDAT
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/v8/perfdat.html

I think its not free but for performance and capacity planning its worth a look.

I think the free ones have been covered already.

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Paul Beaudoin — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:19:25 GMT

Waren,

Don't forget to look at the Freeware disks either. There have bees a number of excellent contibutions over the years.

Regards

Paul

Re: Free VMS Performance Tools

Warren G Landrum — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:37:44 GMT

Thanks guys. That refreshed my memory. Just need to look at some CPU usage stats over a period of time to start getting justification for new gear.

Warren