Performance counters for HPSIM 4.2 ?

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

I'm having performance problems in SIM (4.2) and was wondering if anyone happened to know any good performance counters to monitor as I'm kind of stuck on finding the problem at the moment ?

[David Claypool]

Your SIM 4.2 server should have automatically been licensed for PMP. What does it report?

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Err, well, is there any way to access it via the system homepage instead of via SIM, as when the problem occurs I really can't do a thing, the web interface just hangs there for a few minutes and then I'm usually logged off, which I have assumed is due to some timeout in java (?).

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Possibly also depending on java version I see either the "loading" screen or just a blank screen (I've tried several Java versions on different clients)

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Ah, joy, I finally logged in, so here's what it says. It's got a critical status of red, and when clicked this message comes up:


A critical status in the Performance (PF) column could indicate that PMP was unable to retrieve the required information from the server. PMP attempts to retrieve the required information at least twice before reporting the critical status.

1. Verify that the monitored server is up and running.
- Yes it's very much running :-)

2. Verify that the network connection between the monitored server and the middle-tier server is open in both directions (ping).
- Yes again, as it's the server itself.

3. Restart all Insight Management agents on the monitored server.
- Done a restart of the server itself a few times, I hope that counts, and SIM will then run for 5-30 minutes before problems begin again.

3. Verify that the monitored server meets the minimum requirements (Refer to the HP ProLiant Essentials Performance Management Pack Support Matrix).
- The application runs on a dedicated DL580 G4 with 2 CPU's and 4 GB RAM, the SQL database runs on a dedicated DL585 with 4 CPU's and 4 GB RAM, should be quite adequate for me as the only user during
troubleshooting.

4. Restart the monitoring session through PMP Administration page. To access PMP Administration page, go to Systems Insight Manager console menu and click on Options->Performance Management Pack Options->Configuration.
- Done via restart, but I'll retry this.

5. Set the sample rate or data collection interval of the server to the minimum value in order to reduce the status update latency.
- Value is default but I'll look into changing this too.

So from what I can see no big issues and still yet a big shiny red icon ?

[Rob Buxton]

I'd just use standard Windows Performance monitor to have a look at the Server. What does that report?

PMP showing red, either PMP does not have access, check the SNMP settings then try restarting the PMP Service.

The later 1.4.2 JRE's should all work fine with HPSIM 4.2. I had _07 and _08 both working fine. 1.5 has a few problems still.
Try clearing the Java Caches.

Is the problem the same when accessing HPSIM from a workstation or the local server?

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Yes, using perfmon was what I was trying to do, but processor is mostly idle, disk is idle, and so on, the server uses hardly more than one gig of ram and that's when I got to ask if there were any more specific counters to look into ?

SNMP checked and restarted.

I do not think the Java versions really are the problem here, just mentioned that the symptoms look different.

Yes the problem is the same regardless of whether from a remote client or running IE on the server console itself.

[Rob Buxton]

What about Proxy Servers etc?
Is the HPSIM Server in the list of Servers to bypass the Proxy?
Note that in IE, you can check the Bypass Proxy for local addresses box. But as soon as you add any kind of domain suffix to the request then that is assumed to be non-local.
E.g. if your link is to https://server.yourco.com:50000 then unless that domain is in the bypass proxy list then it will go via the proxy.

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Yes, that's not any issue.

I should point out that the problem is kind of sporadic, meaning that from time to time performance is great, especially some 5-30 minutes after reboot, but then it kind of degrades until you're force-logged-out and re-login will be extremely slow until you restart the services again.

[Rob Buxton]

Not sure then, the issues I've seeen are when the mxdomain manager process starts using excessive CPU.
Anything else on the Server?
The other area where I've seen performance degradation is when the disk holding the database log file becomes full. This was the problem where the HPSIM Database log file grows.
We changed a database setting, can't recall exactly what but I found the answer in these forums. Something to do with simple recovery.

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

>Anything else on the Server?
- No, nothing.

>The other area where I've seen performance degradation is when the disk holding the database log file becomes full. This was the problem where the HPSIM Database log file grows.
- I'll look into this thanks for the suggestion.

>We changed a database setting, can't recall exactly what but I found the answer in these forums. Something to do with simple recovery.
- Yes, I've set that up, thanks.