High system cpu after 11.31 upgrade

[Nick_237]

Hi all, we have recently upgraded one of our 8640 vpars from 11.23 to 11.31 and ever since it has been showing what i think are strangely high levels of system cpu use. For good measure, we also upgraded the oracle database running on the box from 10.2.0.2 to 11.1.0.6.

The total set of changes was:
- hpux 11.23 -> 11.31
- March 08 goldpacks
- various subsequent fix up patches for known issues with vhand and glance including phkl_38038
- oracle database 10.2.0.2 -> 11.1.0.6

Odd symptoms since the ugrade include:
- generally between 10% and 20% higher total cpu usage than previously
- in particular system cpu now hovering around the 20% mark during the online day - prior to upgrading this was around 5%
- glance cpu report shows system cpu normally between 10% and 15% with V Fault cpu between 5% and 10%
- memory report shows small levels of page outs even though we have around 20G free physical memory
- the system calls breakdown shows the pstat system call to be virtually the highest in terms of cpu used which doesn't seem right!

Support have suggested applying the sept 08 patch bundles which i guess may sort it out, but does anyone have a decent explanation for what may be happening here?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

What media did you use?

I 100% agree with support.

The explanation depends on what media you used for the upgrade.

Ideas:
1) upgrade-ux is terrible and does not convert the system properly leading to possible performance problems. Admins on this forum recommend cold install versus upgrade. You are lucky based on my experience the upgrade even worked.
2) The early released of the 11.31 OS had significant performance problems similar to what you experienced. This leads me to believe you used an older release.
3) staying current with the September 2008 patch bundles is a good sysadmin idea even if you had no problems at all.
4) Some of your applications may need update as they behave differently under 11.31.
5) Did you know Oracle does not support using upgrade-ux at all?

SEP

[Nick_237]

Steven, thanks for your reply. Your point about upgrade-ux is clearly a concern. However neither oracle support nor HP support seem to agree that this is upgrade method is "unsupported". Why do you believe this to be so?