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aix 5L - load average

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td3201

Technical User
Dec 19, 2006
1
US
I have a 5.1 box that has a load average anywhere from 9 on up to what it is right now:
load average: 23.08, 22.51, 20.60

The performance isn't great but what else can I use to determine if we simply need to move to a bigger box?
 
Hi

Performance analysis/tuning is always a bit of a circular process - you will never escape the bottleneck of your slowest component.

The thing to do is to follow an ordered, disciplined sequence. Where is your bottleneck now?

Start with the CPU. If the system performance is not bound by the CPU, is it constrained by memory? If not memory, what about disk I/O? Failing that, move on to the network interfaces. Finally, look at the application(s). This is the general rule.

There are various methods, but I have seen many people reporting great success using NMON - available as a free download from IBM. It provides you with a point-in-time overview of the system, whilst at the same time generating historical data that can be viewed as graphs in Excel.

Personally, I favour simple tools like "ps aux", "vmstat", "iostat", "sar", "filemon", and "fileplace", because these are usually enough to reveal any configuration howlers that would be contributing to any slowness that I might be experiencing. I'd turn to the more complex tools like NMON if I failed to reveal anything using the simpler methods...

HTH

Kind Regards,
Matthew Bourne
"Find a job you love and never do a day's work in your life.
 
Further to the excellent advice offered by Matthew, what is the box used for? If it's an Oracle database server (and this probably applies to other RDBMS too), sizing the SGA and other parameters, as well as ensuring that your datafiles etc are located appropriately, with regard to how they are accessed by the application can have a great impact on performance too.

Database tuning is a bit of a black art, but there are some excellent resources out there (and in here of course) to assist in gaining a general overview of the basics.

Alan Bennett said:
I don't mind people who aren't what they seem. I just wish they'd make their mind up.
 
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