Originally posted by: Steve_ATS

Could we get an explanation of what the longterm archive script is useful for? Exporting and re-importing for PCM? Any support statement with it?

Also, some comments from customers we have done demos with:

1) Request to make the partition spread percentages adjustable

2) Can (with the python script or some other mechanism) recordings be exported/archived?

3) Is there a mechanism for PCM read another HMCs recordings? Also, if we have dual HMCs, can they read recordings from one or do both HMCs have to have recording enabled?

4) Do we have a rough formula for disk sizing? # partitions X sampling X default metrics X days? Presume full-up metric set with VIOS 2.2.3.

5) More requests on printable reports - we might want a best-practices or recommendation, I'm not sure if there is any general "saving and printing views" from HMC browser views. But long-term, I think customers want some auto-generated daily/weekly/monthly report that just gets scheduled (via HMC scheduling) and emailed like DPO notifications.

Thanks,

Steve N.

Originally posted by: Niraj Shah IBM

Hi Steve,

PCM utilization metrics are also available over REST API. There are multiple types of metrics and you can find details about all supported metrics from the REST API reference document - HmcRestApi_ReferenceDoc_Release810.0_V1.0.pdf. One of the metrics is long term monitoring metrics. The long term archive script (ArchiveLongTermPerformanceMonitorKJson.py) is simple example to demonstrate how to export the utilization data. There is no support statement with the example program.

Responses to the customer comments,
1) We understand the requirement to make spread percentage adjustable and will plan it for a future release.
2) Yes the data are available over REST APIs. A REST client can fetch them and archive them. The long term archive script (ArchiveLongTermPerformanceMonitorKJson.py) is a sample program for the same purpose.
3) Two HMCs does not share the PCM data. You can fetch them from the same HMC where PCM is enabled. In case of dual HMC scenario if you want to see them both the HMCs you need to enable PCM for both the HMCs.
4) We do have rough estimation for the disk size but actual would depend on many parameters. System configuration, # of partitions, # of VIOSes, for how long the PCM is enabled and so on.
5) We understand the "saving and printing" requirements and will plan it for a future release.

Thank you.
Regards,
Niraj Shah 

Originally posted by: MichaelQuaranta

Steve - I agree it would be helpful for an estimator. For the Tivoli Data Warehouse, there is a spreadsheet where you can adjust sample rate, retention etc. and get an estimate of disk size - it would be nice if we could create such a spreadsheet for PCM as well. Personally I believe there are customers who would be afraid to turn something like this on without some assurance it won't blow out disk space and crash their production HMC.

Niraj - I would be happy to help create a spreadsheet if you could share some of the parameters.

Originally posted by: Niraj Shah IBM

Steve,

We have Python scripts to export PCM data - as you requested in 2nd query. Please check out https://github.com/PowerHMC/HmcRestClient. You can find PCM specific scripts from https://github.com/PowerHMC/HmcRestClient/tree/master/src/performance_capacity_monitor. This program works with HMC release 8.2.

Michael, Steve,

The PCM server utilization data are stored a separate volume on HMC. There is call home function in case the PCM data crosses certain threshold limit and they can not grow beyond the max allocated size.  In worst case scenario if the pruning logic fails and the data are piling up it will only fill up the disk volume allocated for the PCM function. It would not harm other functions of HMC.

I will put together an excel and share here in few days.

Thanks and regards,
Niraj

Originally posted by: Alex99

Hello

I am not familar with python. Is there any reason to use Python 3.4.2? We have python 2.6.8 on our AIX Systems and I am not sure how to install V 3.4.2

Any hints?

regards

Alex

Originally posted by: Niraj Shah IBM

Alex,

There is no specific reason to use Python 3.4.2. That was the latest available version from Python when we started developing the HmcRestClient examples. We have tested the code on 3.4.2 and not on the other versions.

Python downloadable for the AIX platform is available from http://www.perzl.org/aix/index.php?n=main.python but I have not tried it. The latest available version is 2.7.x, I am not aware about availability of Python 3.4.x version. You can check it in the AIX forum - https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/forum?id=11111111-0000-0000-0000-000000000747.

Regards,

Niraj