Performance Diagnostic Tool (PDT) is used to determine potential performance problems on systems. It is an optional installable component of Base Operating System (BOS) and the fileset is called bos.perf.diag_tool. PDT takes about 1MB of disk space.
PDT application consists of 3 components :-
1. Collection :- programs that run from cron or by the user to collect and record the data.
2. Retention :- The data collected is reviewed and discards the data that is obsolete.
3. Reporting :- A report is produced from the current set of data collected.
PDT attempts to identify :-
1. Unbalanced resources i.e. disks , paging space , spread of disks
2. Usage trends , How many users use the system
3. Processes take up a lot of CPU, inappropriate system parameters
4. Hardware / Software problems that may affect system performance
NB:- After the use of this tool it still requires further system admin as to find the root cause of the problem .
To enable PDT execute the folowing script as root :- /usr/sbin/perf/diag_tool/pdt_config
A menu will be displayed , select option 4 , this will add entries to the cron entry adm uder /usr/spool/cron/crontabs
Sample report would be something like this
I/O CONFIGURATION
- Note: volume hdisk7 has 6848 MB available for allocation
while volume hdisk5 has 0 MB available
PAGING CONFIGURATION
- Physical Volume hdisk1 (type: SCSI) has no paging space defined
- All paging spaces have been defined on one Physical volume (hdisk1)
- Physical Volume hdisk7 has 800 MB of paging space,
while Physical Volume hdisk0 has only 256 MB
- Paging space hd6 on volume group rootvg is fragmented
I/O BALANCE
- Phys. volume hdisk10 is not busy
volume hdisk10, mean util. = 0.00 %
- Phys. volume hdisk6 is not busy
volume hdisk6, mean util. = 0.00 %
FILE SYSTEMS
- File system hd2 (/usr) is nearly full at 92 %
VIRTUAL MEMORY
- VMM has identified 9 bad frames
you can set the severity level depending on what you want to monitor.
Severity 1 Problems
 Journaled File System (JFS) becomes unavailable
 JFS nearly full
 Physical volume not allocated to a volume group
 All paging spaces defined on one physical volume
 System appears to have too little memory for current workload
 Page space nearly full
 Possible problems in the settings of load control parameters
 VMM-detected bad memory frames
 Any host in .nodes becomes unreachable
Severity 2 Problems
 Imbalance in the I/O configuration (for example, disks per adapter)
 Imbalance in allocation of paging space on physical volumes with paging space
 Fragmentation of a paging space in a volume group
 Significant imbalance in measured I/O load to physical volumes
 New process is identified as a heavy memory or CPU consumer
 A file in .files exhibits systematic growth (or decline) in size
 A file system or page space exhibits systematic growth (or decline) in space utilization
 A host in .nodes exhibits degradation in ping delays or packet loss percentage
 A getty process consumes too much CPU time
 A process with high CPU or memory consumption exhibits systematic growth (or decline) in resource use
 maxuproc indicated as being possibly too low for a particular user ID
 A WORKLOAD TRACKING indicator shows an upward trend
Severity 3 Messages
Severity 3 messages provide additional detail about problems identified at severity levels 1 and 2. This includes the data-collection characteristics, such as number of samples, for severity 1 and 2 messages.
There are threshold files which you can set up for monitoring specific tasks and if they are reached , allow you to send an email or an alert .
The tool is o.k to start off getting an overview of system , but i found that you can write your own , and tailor it according to your own needs.
HTH a little
laters