Performance Tools?

[Terry Kummell]

We have an application that is written in UniKix. It is a dispatch system that references an informix database. We are currently running HP-UX 10.20. The group that contains these users is called unikix and it consists of 481 users.

The problem is that whenever a new dispatcher is added to the system, they complain that the system is slow. In the past, when one of the 'fast' logon ids became available, the adminsitrator would delete the 'slow' id and modify the 'fast' id. The dispatcher would be happy and all was well.

Unfortunately, there is a queue forming of 'slow' ids waiting for a 'fast' id. So I think it is time to try to understand what is going on and get a resolution (if possible).

The questions are: "What tools do I have available to profile this application?" ""How do you approach a problem like this?"

I do not have much experience with HP-UX. In SCO Unixware, I guess I would use truss on the process id as a starting point.

Any help MUCH appreciated!

Regards,

Terry Kummell
CCI-Triad

[Stefan Farrelly]

To really delve into performance on HP-UX you need to install Glance and/or Measureware/PerfView. Glance will allow you to pick an individual process and see exactly what its doing performance wise so you can see where any bottleneck lies.
Theres lots of simple commands you can use (Glance is purchaseable but you can install with a free 60 day trial) such as sar and vmstat but I dont think these will be specific enough for your sort of problem, theyre more system wide performance problem tools.

[Steve Sauve]

That's an odd one,
My first thoughts would be to take a look at the user setups (compare a "fast" and "slow" user). The next thing would be to watch some processes using glance or even better Perfview if you have it. Of course there are the old reliables (top and ps -ef). Those are probably the places to start.
In trying to track down the problem, it sounds like some type of legacy script/setup that was done up to a point and now the new users aren't getting added to it. Perhaps a file out there with UID's hardcoded in it.

Hope this helps,
Steve

[James R. Ferguson]

Terry:

I certainly "second" the recommendation for Glance. It's available on a trail basis if you like -- its on one of the application CDs. Glance has good builtin help which explains the metrics you are viewing. You can drill-down; look at processor, memory, physical and logical IO by device and file system; look at the resources used by a particular process (pid), etc. etc. In my mind, its a MUST HAVE.

...JRF...

[Albert E. Whale, CISSP]

Terry,

Being a bit of an Informix DBA and Unix Admin, I've got to ask. Is the data at all orgainized by User ID? Your description of the problem indicates that there may be some database maintenance which would better organize the Queries being used against the Database.

There are Many Tools to monitor the database (which appears to be the REAL problem, because in fact by your own description, there are users which are not running slow).

Informix has the ww.iiug.org availabel with MANY Resources there for you as well.

Hope that Helps!

Have a Great Day!

[Tim Malnati]

All the performance tools that have been mentioned are helpful but I think it's time to do a detailed analysis of both the 'fast' and 'slow' user id invokation. There has to be something different here. If there is nothing different at the unix level, then the people supporting the unikix engine will probably need to become involved.