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Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

 
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MarkSeger
Frequent Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

disk types - collectl gets all its data from /proc/diskinfo, as do most tools including sar. For now, all I look at are types of: cciss, hd, sd and dm. It would be fairly easy to extend that list.

As for dm, there is a slight trick in that when I display total disk usage not to include the dm numbers.

I have played a tad with virtual environments such as netware, to at least make sure collectl will run in them and it does. But I haven't done anything with virtual disks, at least not yet. If you care to shoot me an email with an extract from /proc/diskstats I might be able to add support and let you try it out for me. ;-)

-mark
Heironimus
Honored Contributor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

There are a few tools that read sar output and generate better reports for you. One I've used a couple of times is ksar ( http://ksar.atomique.net/ ). Even though it's written in Java and I'm seriously anti-Java, I have to admit that I think it generates pretty graphs.
MarkSeger
Frequent Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

Actually I just became familiar with ksar and have to agree, it is pretty slick. I even wrote a quick script to make collectl data look like sar data and was then able to plot it. The only problem is ksar is to heavily ties into sar data you can only display sar data with it.

On the other hand have you heard of tlviz? It's actually a visual basic tool designed for plotting VMS data but is general enough that with a couple of minor tweaks I was able to convert collectl output to the format it prefers. For those heavily committed to sar I'd suggest converting its output to something tlviz can read and you won't be sorry. It can overlay data from multiple systems on the same plot, generate trend lines and all other kinds of fancy features I haven't seen anywhere else. And yes, it is freeware. Just google it.

-mark
MarkSeger
Frequent Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

I'm happy to report collectl now DOES support xen virtual disks, thanks to some email exchanges and testing with brian. Look for it in the next release which I'm hoping to get out in the next week or two OR if you really want to get your hands on it sooner drop me a line and you can help test it.
-mark
Steven McCoy
Valued Contributor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

Congrats, that feature may come in handy for us.

I am really enjoying working with collectl, thanks for the tips. I especially love the plot flag (-P) when using gnuplot.

Great tool!
wvsa
Regular Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

Mark;

Thank you for your input. In reading the thread and being a new user to collectl (looks like a great tool now have it running 20 blade servers) do have a few questions:

1. How can I modify the collectl output to read by tlviz. We use tlviz to read performance info from our EVA's so I'm familar with the tool.

2. How would you use gnuplot to view collectl output?

3. What options would you recomend to use to run collectl. Here is snippet of the config file
DaemonCommands = -f /var/log/collectl -r00:01,14 -m -F60 -s+CDFNYZ. Believe this line tells collectl what to collect.

Thank you for your response


Norm
wvsa
Regular Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

All;

Thank you for input, looks like the thread was helpful for several of us. Thanks for the ksar post.

MarkSeger
Frequent Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

to answer your questions:

- I wrote a utility to convert collectl plot data to tlviz readable data, but it's not open source! Send me an email and an HP customer I'll give you a copy.

- Using gnuplot for plotting is a little more complicated but it can be done. If you're not a gnuplot user you may have a lot of reading to do OR you could read the data into something like Excel and use its plotting facility, OR I have another non-open source tool I can share that calls gnuplot for you.

- when I run collectl I don't change anything in collectl.conf and just run it as is.

The whole thing about -s can be confusing in that it controls both the collection as well as display, noting collectl collects the same data whether you specific a lower or upper case letter! If you use lowercase c, on playback you only set CPU summary data which is typically enough. You can always play it back again with -sC if you really think you need details. Same goes for all the -sdfn. Make sense? Try this:

collectl -c5 -scdn -f/tmp

and you'll get a file with 5 samples. Now play it back with

collectl -p /tmp/xxx

and you'll see summary data for cdn. Now play it back with

collectl -p /tmp/xxx -sCDN

and you'll see detail. You can even mix 'n match OR try -scdnCDN and get everything.

enjoy
-mark
wvsa
Regular Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

Hi Mark,

Just sent you a email, not knowing your email address I'm hoping I'm sending it to the right place.

Norm
MarkSeger
Frequent Advisor

Re: How can I gather performance history for redhat linux

Just thought I'd let you and anyone else watching this note that I just released a new version of collectl on sourceforg. Big news here is I finally cleaned up the NFS reporting section and added NFS V4 support. Also new, but perhaps less interesting is I added support for /proc/buddyinfo which tells you how your memory is fragmented.
-mark