use of sar

[Shivkumar]

dear sirs,

i have heard that we normally do not use sar for collecting performance data as it gives incorrect result most of the time. is it true ? what should we use in place of sar then ?

thanks,
shiv

[RAC_1 · Accepted solution]

what you have heard is absolutely not true. Sar is good tool to look at system performance. We use sar to collect daily data tthrough sa1 and sa2 (variant of sar data collection scripts)

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

SAR is a good tool to collectsystem performance datas. It provides you with good deal of information. Glanceplus is a good alternate to sar. But, it is $$$.

-Arun

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi,

it is preferrable that you use measureware.

you can configure automatic gathering and reporting using appropriate line on cron.

/opt/perf/bin/extract -xp -r /home/shiv/zgbltemplate -g -b today 00:00 -e today 23:59 -f stdout | /bin/mailx -s 'Server1: Measureware Performance report' shiv01@yourserver.mu >/dev/null 2>&1

and the template can be configured accordingly.

e.g.
# more /home/shiv/zgbltemplate
REPORT "MWA Export on !SYSTEM_ID"
FORMAT ASCII
HEADINGS ON
SEPARATOR="|"
SUMMARY=60
MISSING=0
DATA TYPE GLOBAL
YEAR
DATE
TIME
GBL_CPU_TOTAL_UTIL
GBL_MEM_UTIL
GBL_SWAP_SPACE_UTIL
GBL_MEM_CACHE_HIT_PCT
GBL_DISK_UTIL_PEAK
GBL_FS_SPACE_UTIL_PEAK
GBL_MEM_PAGEOUT_RATE
GBL_MEM_SWAPOUT_RATE
GBL_MEM_QUEUE


You can then use the data to plot appropriate graphs.

Of course there are many other tools that can use. Some of them come from the Openview Suite.

hope this helps!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

No the information provided by sar is always correct and simply clarifies the utilization of the resources. The reason for not using sar most of the time is because it gives very basic information of various parameters together. A detailed information about all of these parameters can be found indivisually by top, vmstat, iostat, vxstat etc.

Also if you have something like glance then you could get more realistic/captured information.

HTH,
Devender

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

If you are testing an application's performance on Unix OS, if you really want mission critical datas about IO/Sec, threads, pages, etc.. NetIQ is the best tool. You can setup counters and it collects data per sec or milli sec, post them to server, where you can do manipulation/graphs etc..

http://www.netiq.com/

-Arun

[Geoff Wild]

And if you want to simply your adminstration of performance/capacity and you have some cash, there is a tool called sarcheck which analyzes the sar data for you and provides recomendations.

http://www.sarcheck.com

Also, HP has something called System Health Check (lite version is free):

http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=SHCBASE01

I too also use measureware:


root's cron:

55 23 * * 1-5 /opt/perf/bin/extract -xp -r /home/gwild/zgbltemplate -g -b today 7:00 -e today 18:00 -f stdout | /bin/mailx -s 'svr003 performance report' gwild >/dev/null 2>&1


# cat /home/gwild/zgbltemplate
REPORT "MWA Export on !SYSTEM_ID"
FORMAT ASCII
HEADINGS ON
SEPARATOR="|"
SUMMARY=60
MISSING=0
DATA TYPE GLOBAL
YEAR
DATE
TIME
GBL_CPU_TOTAL_UTIL
GBL_MEM_UTIL
GBL_SWAP_SPACE_UTIL
GBL_MEM_CACHE_HIT_PCT
GBL_DISK_UTIL_PEAK
GBL_FS_SPACE_UTIL_PEAK
GBL_MEM_PAGEOUT_RATE
GBL_MEM_SWAPOUT_RATE
GBL_MEM_QUEUE


Rgds...Geoff

[Mahesh Kumar Malik]

Hi Shiv

sar is a good utility to get snap shot of system resources utilisation. You may also use licensed product like Glance pack to get similar data

Regards

Mahesh

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Shiv,

When I had an oracle performance problem and called HP support a few years ago they gave me what become these scripts:

http://www.hpux.ws/system.perf.sh

They needed some work and one was broken, but in the end, sar as all you need for a good non-graphical picture of performance.

Direct answer to your question. No. Not true. Properly patched and properly used sar does give good answers.

SEP

[Muthukumar_5]

It is based upon what kind of monitoring? Lots of commertial tools are there which is very useful. And few good scriptings are there too for monitoring.

Choose glance tool for monitoring. Which is very good.

--
Muthu