System Resources Monitoring

[Rick Collatos]

I am fairly new to Unix Administration (6 months). I am
running HP-UX 11.0 on a N9000. The system supports an
Unidata Database. How do I insure that anything everything is running properly on my system. It was setup before I was hired and we are beginning a major database conversion and I have been given the task to make sure that the system is running at peak perormance. Is there some programs I could run to tell me how the system resources are being utilized. I know that the CPU usage is set to 50% for System and 50% for applications. Is this a good mix? The server only houses the database and is access by about 200 users. Any information would be appreciated.

[Patrick Wallek]

There are several tools that are bundled with HP-UX: sar, vmstat, top come to mind initially. These allow you to look at thing live and also to track the performance over time. Check the man pages on those commands for more informaiton.

Then there is GlancePlus that will allow to monitor the system live and see what everything is doing.

There is also MeasureWare and Perfview, they have recently changed their names to VantagePoint or something similar, that allow you to tracak performance over a long period of time. There is also a utility from Lund Performance, though I don't remember the name.

[Steffi Jones_1]

Use sar to get a general picture.
Other tools "only" for their intended usage:

-top for CPU usage (ignore memory figures, they only confuse)
-vmstat for VM
-iostat for disk I/O and
-swapinfo -t for swap space.

Steffi Jones

[Rhonda Thorne]

To help you interpret the information you gather from the previous posts, you can buy the HP tuning and performance monitoring book at fatbrain.com or your Barnes and Noble. It goes through performance from deffenition to diagnosing bottnecks and solutions. Even database solutions.

Good luck, performance tuning is an art not a science and is different between 2 boxes same vendor or not

[Darrel Louis]

It?s not only CPU memory etc, you should look at but also your kernel parameters.
If 200 users will be connecting to the server you should increase some kernel parameters.
like maxusers(if there is a formula it will increase nproc, nfile etc.), npty, nstrpty etc.
Check the following url:
http://www.docs.hp.com//hpux/onlinedocs/os/KCparams.OverviewAll.html

[Trevor Dyson]

Hi Rick,

Amongst other things I do, I run some of the training courses for HP Education.

I believe the System and Network Admin I and Performance and Tuning courses would be just the trick to help you out with your performance tuning duties.

There is also a book that will help you to understand how to use some of the commands mentioned above:

HP-UX Tuning and Performance (Concepts Tools and Methods)
Robert F Sauers and Peter S Weygant Prentice Hall/HP Proffessional Books
ISBN 0-13-102716-6