Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

With the increasing usage of LPAR to support multiple applications, I realized that the current tools or software in the market available is good for reporting or monitoring resource utilization from an LPAR level. Does anybody know if there is there any known tools, software or GUI available within pseries or external parties that can provide utilization from a whole systems perspective?

A bit of background below:
- I have p570 with multiple LPARs (using both dedicated and shared pool and running micropartition)
- the current tools which we have - e.g. Director and Nmon provides CPU, memory, disk utilization on LPAR level
- I needs a tool which reports on a server level so that he can do summarization of resource utilization on a server level instead of having to work out the utilization on each LPAR level and then doing aggregation on a weekly basis
- I am also looking into VIO now. So the tool should be able to support all of the above + VIO.
- any chance any one can give me some ideas? Many thanks for any possible help.
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Originally posted by: jubal

this is a great topic, in which ive tried finding the same answer with little or no success. The need though is significant. Ideally, the hypervisor might be the area where this functionality could best be provided. Ive not found much in terms of tools in this area.

On another note. ive put a tool package together that collects statistics from multiple lpars. Its a series of perl scripts that use nfs and rexec to centrally coordinate and collect results. Im happy to share if there is any interest.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Hi Jubal,
I'm definately keen to look at what you have developed. Thanks for the kind offer .
cheers,
dennis
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Originally posted by: woofer

While it isn't a complete solution, have you reviewed the Utilization Data Management feature on the HMC in V5R1 and later? It provides a frame view of how processors and memory have been assigned, and it provides global statistics on how the shared pool has been used. It has system, LPAR and shared pool views of data collected hourly, daily or monthly. It shows, in one place at least, the CPU assignments to all LPARs, including entitlement, whether they are shared (capped or uncapped) or dedicated, and their shared pool utilization percent (how much of their entitlement they actually consumed.) I consider this a step in the right direction, but far from the complete approach we'd all like. Another approach is to use Performance Tool Box (PTX), but it is a licensed program product. It requires the user to define what data should be saved or displayed, but you can get a surprising amount, including percent of entitlement consumed and other metrics that have been added since POWER5 and Advanced POWER Virtualization. I'm no expert at using the tool, but I've seen it employed by colleagues. It has the advantage of allowing you to sample and store data for as long as a year and play it back or display it in a variety of ways.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Hi,

Are you able to provide some info on how you enable and use this 'Utilization Data Management' feature on the HMC?

I've followed the steps for enabling the collection of data but when I select 'View Utilization Data' I only get a list of events like LPAR activation, etc.

How do I view CPU assignment, entitlement, shared pool view?

Thanks in advance.
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Originally posted by: woofer

Presumably you are getting as far as the View Events pop-up window and the Utilization Events. You highlight one of the samples and press OK. That brings up the Sampling Event window, which includes the system view, or system configuration state. In the upper left corner is a pull-down menu called View. If you click on it, you can open System (already open), LPAR and Pool. The LPAR view gives you the LPAR name, LPAR ID, current processor mode, chrrent processor units (entitlement), current processors (virtual processors), current sharing mode, current uncapped weight, current 5250 cpw percent (iSeries only), entitled cycles, total utilization, and utilization percent. The Shared Processor Pool view gives you the shared processor pool id (0, since there's only one), current available pool processor units (how much entitlement remains unassigned), configured pool processor units, borrowed pool processor units (don't know what that one means myself), total pool cycles, utilized pool cycles, pool utilization percent. You can also use the command line to extract this information. Do a command line login and run a man on lslparutil. In some respects, that's even a little more sophisticated than the GUI, if you look at all of the filtering rules you can use.
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Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

Thanks for your reply, woofer, but I'm still stuck! I must be missing something simple.

I select 'View Utilization Data' which then pops up a 'View Events' window. I then choose the managed system name. Then I select 'Hourly' and a date/time range e.g. 20/08/2006 at 9am to 28/08/2006 at 9am. Maximum number of events is 200. Then I click OK. A 'Utilization Events' windows appears. A list of events is shown e.g. '8/26/06 1:43:20AM EST LPAR14 State Changed to Running'. I can select these events for viewing. I don't see a Sampling Event window.

Any idea where I'm going wrong?

Thanks again.
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Originally posted by: woofer

When you see that window with the date and time, click OK on one of those samples. You should now see a window that says System, and there's a tab in the upper left corner called View. Click on view and pull down LPAR or Pool. You're actually looking at the System view already in the first window that opens up. Hope that helps.
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Originally posted by: bassemir

Have you seen the LPAR monitor tool on IBM AlphaWorks? Take a look at this tool and see if it satisfies your need. I think it is pretty cool.

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/lparmon
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