impact of new software

[Shivkumar]

Dear Sir,

I want to measure the impact of a new software on hpux 11i. I mean how do i measure the performance on the system before and after the installation of the new software ?

Thanks,
Shiv

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

Which software you are talking about ?

You can measure the output of few performance monitoring commands like sar, vmstat and iostat before and after installation. If you have glance plus installed , you can have a perfect graphical view for this.

But if the glance plus is not there then the outputs should be collected for a long duration and also at peak system usage time, otherwise the results would not be as expected.

There are certain application performance monitoring tools as well.

HTH,
Devender

[Rick Garland · Accepted solution]

There are many tools/utilities out there for measuring performance. But you need to get them 1st and take measurements before installing the application. You want a baseline to begin with. "How is the system performing before the application is installed".

Some of tools to do these measurements include sar, vmstat, iostat. These tools are standard with the OS. Get your sar utility setup so you can begin data collection. I am attaching a script that will provide breakdown of system performance using sar. Modify the script to your environment. A crontab entry for collecting the data is as follows;
# will produce output every 20 min during work hours
# and hourly otherwise
#0 * * * 0,6 /usr/lbin/sa/sa1
#0 7-18 * * 1-5 /usr/lbin/sa/sa1 1200 3
#0 19-6 * * 1-5 /usr/lbin/sa/sa1

This just an example. You can also use the script as a template for vmstat and iostat.

Other tools such as GlancePlus and Perf View provide graphical representations of performance. PerfView can be handy because it can provide historical statistics. Glance is realtime. These are cost products from HP and they are good products.

Whatever method is choosen, do get that baseline measurement so you can see the changes before and after the installation of new software.

[Mahesh Kumar Malik]

Hi Shiv

If you have Glance Plus installed, you may measure the system performance before and after installation of new software or else sar may also be useful to see impact of system performance with new software

Regards
Mahesh

[Ted Buis]

The MeasureWare component of GlancePlus Pak is very useful for creating these type of measurements. GlancePlus Pak is included in the Enterprise Operating environment or is available as a layered product that can be purchased separately to add to the Foundation Operating Environment. I would recommend the book, "HP-UX 11i Tuning and Performance", by Robert F. Sauers to get an overall survey of the use of performance tools. The second edition is for 11i, so make sure you get it rather than the first edition.