Recommended Software/Tools

[Ted Flanders]

I am fairly new to Administering HPUX. I have about 150 users on an L3000 box. Actually we are buying the box as I type this. What tools are "have to haves" for good administration? GlancePlus? Online JFS? etc. And why? And...how tough to learn to use them effectively? Thanks!

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

perl

[Mark Greene_1 · Accepted solution]

>>What tools are "have to haves" for good administration? <<

Like all things, it depends. If your system usage is going to be fairly consistent as to type and load, you can almost config the box and just let it run and keep and eye on it once a day or so.

If the system use is dynamic (on-line and batch in various amounts during the day and night) or you are running a web server or multiple databases or something more complex, you'll want some tools to manage the system and diagnose issues.

Glance is great for tuning and diagnosing performance problems. On-line JFS will be useful if the data is really dynamic. OTOH, if you are running a database that uses raw partitions, then on-line JFS will be practically worthless and a probably a waste of money.

The HP software cd's that come with the system have tons of software. Some of it is free, some of it requires a liscense. Some of the liscense required packages have time-limited demos so you can try before you buy.

There are a certain number of open-source and freeware products, like gzip and perl that you will definitely want, and want to have the lastest version of. You can find those and more here:

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/

HTH
mark

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Ted:

"Must-Have" for me includes Online JFS, MirrorDisk/UX and Glance!

Consider that with Online JFS you have additional mount options available to improve filesystem performance at runtime (see Technical Knowledge Base document KBRC00007737), in addition to being able to resize filesystems without unmounting them:

As for MirrorDisk/UX, the reason is obvious.

Glance is an absolute must-have too. The ability, using one tool, to navigate among the various performance meterics is invaluable in realtime. Glance has built-in help which is useful too.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Mike Hassell]

Ted,

It all depends on your environment really. I'm assuming that this is will be a production box, so I would recommend both Glance Plus and OnlineJFS as both of these are good HP tools that you'll want to ensure solid uptime.

I would also recommend the following free utilities that help the overall troubleshooting process:

tcpdump:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Networking/Admin/tcpdump-3.6.2/

Tcpdump provides a realtime network sniffer that can assist nicely when you suspect network problems.

lsof:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.61/

Lsof will help you in indentifying what applications have their hooks into what files, which can be very useful in many different ways.

perl:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/perl-5.6.1/

There are all kinds of perl scripts available on the net that can be customized to fit the needs of your environment, which can provide you with a wealth of information.

Hope that helps, enjoy the new L3000! :-)

-Mike

[John Carr_2]

Hi

JFS is good if you have a changing evionment as you can alter file systems without outage. If your system is unlikely to change or need its file systems chenging then JFS is a costly option.

glanceplus is great as you can visually see what your system is doing without analysing a load of statistics.

you can get trial copies of most HP software from

http://www.software.hp.com/

there are simply too many great tools to recommend, but you can guarantee the following postings will list them.

cheers
John

[S.K. Chan]

In my opinion ..
Must have
=========
1) GlancePlus
==> Gives accurate "realtime" data of your system performance and resources utilization. Definately need it if you want to tune your system performance or troubleshoot system performance problem.
Good read: (Managing System Performance)
http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90701/B2355-90701_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90701/00/00/57-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90701/00/00/57-toc.html&searchterms=glanceplus&queryid=20020619-095134
Good read: (Kernel Tuning and Performance Guide)
http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/otsearch/getfile?id=/hpux/onlinedocs/os/11.0/tuningwp.html&searchterms=Ciullo&queryid=20020311-145835

2) MirrorUX
==> Extension of LVM, where you would use MirrorUX to implement some level of high availability by mirroring all your data. For this you need to attend HP's LVM class to get the best out of it.

3) OnlineJFS
==> Or called Advanced JFS, an extension of the Base JFS whereby this allows you to extend/reduce your vxfs FS on-the-fly. Very handy and no downtime is needed.

4) STM/EMS
==> Diagnostics tool that should be installed by default.
Good read : (STM tutorial)
http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/otsearch/getfile?id=/hpux/onlinedocs/diag/stm/stt_summ.htm&searchterms=STM&queryid=20020619-100756

[Martin Johnson]

In addition to what has been already mentioned, I would recommend MeasureWare (MWA).
MWA monitors performance on your system and can be configured to generate alerts.

If you are going to administer multiple systems, I would also recommend Openview Operations (OVO/VPO/ITO or whatever they are calling it now). OVO not only will monitor system availability but you can monitor log files, such as syslog.log, for problems and generate alerts.

Marty

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Almost forgot: IgniteUX

[Unix Engineering]

And don't forget Omniback for backups.

[Mark Greene_1]

You will also want the security_check_patch utility which is patch B6834AA, and you'll have to download that. It will tell you what security related patches you have installed and what you may be missing. Very, very, helpful.

As Procura mentioned, you will definetly want ignite-ux. It is not pre-installed, but it is on the software cd (#3, IIRC), and is not code-word protected (i.e., it's not a liscened product). You cannot make a bootable back-up with out this, and you will definitely want to make a bootable back-up. Two, actually, because Murphy hates tape.

HTH
Mark

[steven Burgess_2]

Hi Ted

And for trouble shooting use lsof tool

This can be downloaded from

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.61/


Here are its uses


To see all open files of a paricular process (via its pid):

# lsof -p

To see all open files associated with a command:

# lsof -c cron

...or by a logon name:

# lsof -u
# lsof -u

...or what process is using a TCP socket:

# lsof -i tcp:161
# lsof -i udp:161

Hope this helps

Steve

[Tom Dawson]

Ted,

I would not argue with any of the suggestions already made. But I'd like to comment on S.K. Chan's item 2). You certainly want to have some sort of High-Availability protection of your data. And head his recommendation for taking the LVM class! When I started administering HP-UX systems I had a heck of a time with Mirror/UX.

If you're in the purchasing phase, I would recommend looking at using some sort of RAID array. With that, you wouldn't even need the Mirror/UX product. Which HP will charge extra for.

Tom

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Not for the points!

Cannot do without the GNU tools from http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Gnu/

awk, cpio, diffutils, findutils, grep (can do recursive), less (well, a better more), sed, tar (can do beyond 2Gb files), and unzip

and if you are going to develop software,

autoconf, automake, binutils, bison, flex, gcc, gdb, m4, make, and patch

and for sysadm (http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/):

di, lsof, sudo, tusc

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You've been given a pretty good list but unless I've missed it, a biggie has been left off. You really need to purchase a commercial grade backup sytem like OmniBack. The ability to do fully automated backups and 'point-and-click' restores is priceless.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Clay, I still use GNU cpio for backup's: All systems over the network to a single DLT8000, where every system has it's own logical tape (no rewind)

Just had to use it today to restore a file from the system at the end of the tape, well wwithing 30 minutes. Perl scripts me be as practical as point-n-click systems if you know what you're doing, and it is a whole lot more portable.

[John Carr_2]

Hi

and of course the most useful tool to any new sys admin is "SAM" this will do one whole lot of tasks for you and if you turn on the logging it will tell you which commands and options it uses to achieve its purpose.

cheers
John.

[Tim D Fulford]

MeasureWare was mentioned above. I actually comed bundled in GlancePlus PAK, so you get glance (real-time system monitoring, loke top but with bells & whistles) And MWA (historical performance)

The only other thing you might also get is PerfView to make graphing the MeasureWare data easy.

Tim

[Tim D Fulford]

MeasureWare was mentioned above. I actually comed bundled in GlancePlus PAK, so you get glance (real-time system monitoring, loke top but with bells & whistles) And MWA (historical performance)

The only other thing you might also get is PerfView to make graphing the MeasureWare data easy.

Tim

[Tim D Fulford]

MeasureWare was mentioned above. I actually comed bundled in GlancePlus PAK, so you get glance (real-time system monitoring, loke top but with bells & whistles) And MWA (historical performance)

The only other thing you might also get is PerfView to make graphing the MeasureWare data easy.

Tim

[Tim D Fulford]

MeasureWare was mentioned above. I actually comed bundled in GlancePlus PAK, so you get glance (real-time system monitoring, loke top but with bells & whistles) And MWA (historical performance)

The only other thing you might also get is PerfView to make graphing the MeasureWare data easy.

Tim

[Tim D Fulford]

MeasureWare was mentioned above. I actually comed bundled in GlancePlus PAK, so you get glance (real-time system monitoring, loke top but with bells & whistles) And MWA (historical performance)

The only other thing you might also get is PerfView to make graphing the MeasureWare data easy.

Tim

[Tim D Fulford]

Measure Ware was mentioned above. It comes in the GlancePlus PAK so you get glance (real-time monitoring like top but with bells & whistles) and MeasureWare (historical performance monitoring)

You might also think about PerfView to graph up the MeasureWare data more easily (but MS Excel will do, but takes much longer)

Tim

[Mark Landin]

Glance was mentioned numerous times :) and it's a good tool. An alternative that I've liked better is SOS/9000 from Lund Performance systems (www.lund.com). Advantages are that it has an Oracle performance module (for Oracle users), and has the capabilities of Measureware built-in. Their price for Perfview-like capabilities is somewhat less than HP's Perfview. You also get a free yearly performance audit and "tune-up" included with your annual support.

[Ted Flanders]

What are some of the costs of these? I know that some are trail versions, thats fine. But what is the cost of GlancePlus? Or the Mirroring Software? I have looked on HP site and havent been able to find out the cost of the license for one server. Links would be helpful. And by the way, thanks for all the help, I love this forum!