Getting Started with
IBM PM of OS/390 Java TM Technology Edition
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Performance Monitoring of OS/390, or PM of OS/390 for short, is a workstation-based function that allows you to monitor the various resources in an OS/390* system and even in a sysplex in a very flexible way. PM of OS/390 provides filtered data in a graphical format within DataViews, allows you to manage multiple DataViews as one entity by providing the concept of a PerfDesk, and offers the means to make definitions such as DataViews and PerfDesks persistent for reuse at any time.
The new PM of OS/390 Java TM Technology Edition is now provided on a product level and runs in contrast to its predecessor on any Windows** platform, such as Windows 9x/NT**. The dependency on OS/2* disappeared while at the same time appearance and functionality of PM of OS/390 have been greatly improved.
This tutorial introduces the Java Edition of PM of OS/390 to you and helps you get started using PM of OS/390 in order to monitor the performance of your OS/390 system, your parallel sysplex, or many sysplexes in your enterprise. The following seven lessons guide you step by step through the terminology and usage of PM of OS/390. The examples shown in this document are based on the sysplex My Sysplex that has been created during installation of PM of OS/390. You are encouraged to carry them out on your installation!
I assume that the guided installation of PM of OS/390 on the workstation has been finished successfully and that the appropriate level of the Java runtime environment exists for the operating system platform you use. When you chose the typical installation or selected the Java Runtime in the custom installation, the appropriate level of Java Runtime Environment is installed without impacting any other Java installation on your workstation.
It is also assumed that the distributed data server, that you have uploaded to the host before, is started and active on one system within each sysplex that you want to monitor.
If these prerequisites are not fulfilled, please check the appendix for a quick reference of what is necessary to do or follow the detailed instruction guidelines shipped with this function.
During the installation you were prompted to specify a program folder for PM of OS/390. The default is "RMF Workstation Products". Navigate to it by clicking on the Start-button, then on Programs, and last click on PM of OS/390 within the program folder created. When you start PM of OS/390 the first time a screen similar than the one below is shown:
The window entitled PM of OS/390 is divided into two parts. On the left side a notebook with two tabs is shown - one for the PerfDesks, that means basically the various graphical views and their folders that you have defined, and the other one for the resources PM of OS/390 has access to. The first time you start PM of OS/390, the PerfDesk section only shows one item - the Samples PerfDesk folder. Later on you will see how to create your own PerfDesk folders to organize all your views based on functional or organizational requirements.
On the right side a notebook is provided with a tab for each PerfDesk that is currently open. For example, the figure on the next page shows you the Sysplex - Overview PerfDesk which consists of four DataViews. A DataView displays a bar chart of performance metrics -so called series- and controls the retrieval of the data from the host. This allows you to have different refresh intervals in the DataViews as well as to start or stop data sampling in one DataView without impacting other DataViews.
Below the bar chart in a DataView, the legend classifies the series by color and name. If you add multiple metrics, each one is presented in a different color. The control panel below or left of each DataView allows you to start or stop data sampling for this DataView just by clicking on the colored status button on the lower left corner. A green color indicates active data sampling, while a red color indicates no data sampling. If you move the slider you can navigate back and forth on the time axis. The current sample as well as the related time stamp indicate the time you are currently looking at.
In the figure above, the DataView with the title Processor utilization of systems in Sysplex shows you the systems in that sysplex with the highest processor utilization. The DataView consists of one series that is called % processor utilization by mvs image. The sample has been collected at 04:26:40 on February 2nd and you see that system AQTS reports the highest CPU utilization. A series like this is called value-list since for one metric (here, processor utilization) a list of values is reported (here, by mvs image). As a general rule, value-list series can always be recognized by the preposition by.
Similarly, the DataView with the title I/O: Volumes with highest activity in Sysplex shows you the value-list i/o intensity by volume1 for the seven volumes with the highest I/O intensity in the sysplex. As you look at the labels underneath the bars you see the system name that is placed in front of each volume label. This tells you from which system this I/O intensity has been measured. In the example above, the highest I/O intensity volume is ML1106 on AQTS with a value of 1284 ms/s. The way the labels are created in general is the subject of lesson 3 where the resource naming concept is described.
Besides value-list series, PM of OS/390 also provides single-value series. On a chart, a single-value series is shown for several intervals at once, that means that instead of certain instances on the x-axis the sample time is shown instead. So, single-value series can be seen as trends for a certain metric. Like with value-list series, it is possible to add multiple single-value series to one DataView, however, it is not possible to mix the type of series within a DataView.
PM of OS/390 is a client/server application. The client on the workstation is periodically asking for data provided by one or more servers on remote hosts. This lesson shows you how to define such remote hosts to PM of OS/390. Before that, however, I would like to show you a feature that allows you to change the look and feel of this application. When you select the View menu item on the action bar, a pop-up menu is opened. By default, the item System Look and Feel is selected which means that all the graphical controls are rendered in a way common to the system you are currently working at.
To define a remote host2
, select the menu item File on the action bar and then click on New, then on Sysplex... . The dialog shown in Figure 4 is displayed in response to that.
In this lesson you will learn to navigate through the resources tree that is shown when you click on the Resources notebook tab. PM of OS/390 has a certain concept of what resources are and how they are organized in the sysplex.
A resource is any facility of a computing system or an operating system required by a job or task. The resources handled by PM of OS/390 are based on a data model that defines the hierarchy of these resources. The top resource is the Sysplex. It is the root of the resource hierarchy tree. Below the Sysplex in the hierarchy are the resource types Coupling Facility and Image. Children of Coupling facility are resources of type CF-Structure while the children of Image are resources like I/O-Subsystem, Processor, or Storage.
In PM of OS/390, resources are named according to the following convention: each resource is identified by its
<upper level qualifier>,<resource name>,<resource type>
Examples of resource descriptors are:
SYS2,DATA01,Volume
This descriptor describes a volume named DATA01 that is mounted in MVS image SYS2.
SYS1,Image
This descriptor represents the resource type Image and its SMF name SYS1. The upper level qualifier isn't specified here since each MVS image is unique in a sysplex.
For some resources, only one instance exists within its containing resource. The convention for these resources is that the resource name is simply omitted. For example, there is only one SQA or only one processor3 in an MVS image so this resource would be identified by:
SYS2,SQA or by SYS2,Processor
Before you can look at the resources in your sysplex, you have to open a connection to that sysplex. My Sysplex is open already. You can recognize this by the [+] sign in front of the sysplex description. Figure 5 shows the resource configuration of the My Sysplex. To open any other sysplex, go to the Resources notebook page, click on the sysplex description with the right mouse button, and select Open.
The resources are ordered hierarchically in a configuration tree. The nodes of this tree can be expanded interactively, starting at the root node. The root node represents the top level resource Sysplex. Even if the remote host associated with a description is an isolated system, it is still modeled as a sysplex.
The links between the nodes of the resource hierarchy represent relationships. However, the semantics of these relationships are not uniform for the whole tree. In most cases, the relationship is 'contained', which means that the resource represented by the higher level node is an aggregate of the resources represented by its lower level nodes.
The [+] sign before the sysplex description or before any resource indicates that you can expand it into its contained resources. Just click on the [+] beside the sysplex description and the contained resources should be listed indented below. Vice versa, if a [-] sign is shown beside a resource you can click on it to collapse its contained resources. A resource without a [+] before its name has no contained resources and thus cannot be expanded any further.
For example, go to My Sysplex and click on [+] beside "My Sysplex - MCLXCF01,Sysplex". The configuration tree for the resource My Sysplex is expanded and you see the MVS images as well as the coupling facilities configured in that sysplex. When you click on [+] beside "AQTS,Image" in turn, the resource tree of system AQTS is expanded and all resources contained in that system are shown.
Now you should be familiar with the most important concepts that belong to PM of OS/390. This is the point in time where you can start to create your own DataViews. The following case study assumes that you have a sysplex and that one goal of operations is to monitor the activity on the sysplex and its contained systems continuously.
How do we start with the definition of such a DataView? The first consideration is to identify the metrics that you need in order to tell whether a system has high or low activity. There are several possibilities how to define what 'activity' really means. In the following example, 'activity' is interpreted as
You might have your own understanding of 'activity'. That is fine. Once we have gone through this example, you can try to create your special 'Activity DataView'.
Depending on the number and type of the metrics, you also have to choose more than one DataView for that purpose. But this is not really a problem since PM of OS/390 helps you to manage a set of DataViews together with the help of a PerfDesk. As far as PerfDesks are concerned, you will learn more in the next lesson.
The second consideration is whether you would like these metrics grouped together in a value-list, in other words by Image, or whether you just want to create one or more standalone DataViews for a certain system. Since our case study assumes that we want to monitor the activity in a sysplex, the first option is the better choice.
As the next figure shows, you select the sysplex resource on the Resources notebook page and click the right mouse button for the context menu.
The New DataView... Menu item gets you to the dialog shown on figure 8. Here you can enter the title of the DataView. The default title "New DataView" is selected and can be changed just by typing over it. Also, when the DataView you intend to create is a value-list it might make sense to arrange the bars in vertical rather than horizontal orientation. This is the case, for example, when looking at resources with long names, such as "SYS2,CICSD1,Volume." In our case study, the resource names are just the system names themselves, so the default (horizontal orientation) is appropriate.
Now, click on Ok to get to the actual Series Definition dialog. As figure 8 shows, you can choose from a rich set of metrics that are related to the resource selected.
If you have just created a new DataView, the dialog shows you all possible metrics for the resource, value-list metrics as well as single value metrics. Earlier I have mentioned that you cannot combine both kind of metrics in one DataView. To reduce the number of metrics shown, select the List-button in the Metric Types group in order to only show value-list metrics. From this list in turn select:
You might think that the number of active and delayed users by MVS system is not sufficient for your purpose. It would be good, if each system's processor utilization is provided as well. There are two choices:
The first alternative is to create a second DataView in the same way as the previous one. If the proportions of the metrics "processor utilization" and "# users/jobs" in your installation is about the same, the second alternative is to add the new series to the existing DataView. However, I recommend to separate different kind of metrics in different DataViews.
Nevertheless, for the purpose of demonstration, here is the second alternative: move the mouse cursor somewhere to the background of the bar chart and click the right mouse button. The DataView context menu shown in a popup window allows you to add any number of series.
To add the processor utilization, click on Add Series... , specify
% processor utilization by mvs image
in the Series Definition dialog, click on Add, and then on Close.
The new series is immediately added to the DataView and by clicking on the red button, new values are sampled.
The context menu can also be used to change the properties of a DataView (title, orientation, and automatic rescaling) at any time. Similarly, you can clear the whole DataView just by selecting the Remove Values... Menu item. If you want to remove a specific series from the DataView, place the mouse cursor on one of the bars representing that series, click the right mouse button and then Remove Series.
Now, please try to add a DataView by yourself. The new DataView should monitor the five volumes with the highest I/O activity rate in the sysplex. If you are done with that, your Sysplex - Overview PerfDesk should now look like figure 9.
We have seen a PerfDesk as a collection of DataViews so far. But PerfDesks are really more than that. With PerfDesks it is possible to start or stop data sampling in all the DataViews at once. A PerfDesks also functions as a container for its contained DataViews. Thus, only the DataViews of the selected PerfDesk are shown while other PerfDesks and their views remain in the background. To manage PerfDesks, PM of OS/390 provides a separate notebook page called PerfDesks.
When you click on the PerfDesks notebook tab, a tree-view is shown that displays all existing PerfDesk Folders. So far, only one exists, namely the Samples folder. If you click on the [+] sign, the PerfDesks within that folder are shown. Since you only added new DataViews to an existing PerfDesk, only one PerfDesk is listed - Sysplex - Overview. Again, by clicking on the [+] sign, the PerfDesk is expanded and its DataViews are listed.
If you want to override the current PerfDesk, just click Ok now. If you want to create a new PerfDesk in the same folder, give it a name in the Save PerfDesk field.
For organizational purposes it also makes sense to create a new PerfDesk Folder. You might keep folders for example to separate PerfDesks for different sysplexes or systems or in order to manage different kind of views. To create a new folder, click on the Create folder...-button and specify a name for this folder.
If you would like to change the PerfDesk name later on you can do so just by getting the PerfDesk's context menu when you click somewhere in the blank are of a PerfDesk and then select Change Description... Alternatively, select the PerfDesk you would like to rename in the PerfDesk notebook, then in a row click on File, on Change Settings..., and last on PerfDesks... . In both cases you are prompted for the new name and finish with Ok.
On the PerfDesks notebook page introduced above, you can now see that the tree-view has changed according to the specifications you have made. The context menu for the entries within this tree-view allows you to open PerfDesks or to delete them. PerfDesk folders can be removed in a similar way. Beware because in this case all contained PerfDesks are removed as well.
When you open a PerfDesk, the PerfDesk is added to the Open PerfDesks notebook but the DataViews do not automatically start sampling. To start sampling on all DataViews at once, click the Start-button on the bottom of the notebook. Notice, that the status button of each DataView switches from red to green in this case. Vice versa, data sampling is stopped for all DataViews when you click the Stop-button. Last but not least, to close a PerfDesk use the Close-button.
Finally, you can instruct PM of OS/390 to start one or a set of PerfDesks automatically whenever a sysplex is opened. In lesson two, which dealt with the definition of the remote hosts, I briefly mentioned this mechanism. Recall, that when a sysplex is defined, you can specify whether or not PerfDesks in a certain folder are started automatically. So, if you would like to start a number of PerfDesks for any sysplex or standalone system, go to the File action bar item and in a row click first on Change Settings...then select Sysplex... . The Change Sysplex dialog now displayed looks familiar to the one you have seen in lesson two. Select the folder containing all the "auto-"PerfDesks in the group box Start PerfDesks in Folder .
The automatic startup of PerfDesks is effective only when you start PM of OS/390. In this case also the data sampling of the DataViews is started. However, PerfDesks are not started automatically when you open a sysplex from the Resources notebook page. This implies when you have specified a startup PerfDesk Folder in a sysplex definition as described above, this change is effective only after the next invocation of PM of OS/390.
What can you do if, for example, your activity PerfDesk shows that unacceptable delays occur on one system or the activity rate of a volume is so high that this might be an indication for a severe problem in the near future? In such a case you need to acquire more information. You need to know what the main delays are that cause the overall system delay. Or you are interested in the jobs using the device with the high activity rate. PM of OS/390 helps you to find the answers for to these questions.
The most interesting function in PM of OS/390 is its capability to navigate through the large number of resources or users that are using the resources or that are delayed by these resources in an intelligent manner. With this Analysis function you can drill down a problem. If your sysplex activity PerfDesk showed a very high activity rate, you can ask PM of OS/390 to show the jobs that are using the associated volume most, i.e. the jobs that are responsible for the activity rate. On the other side, PM of OS/390 would show you the jobs that are impacted most because they need to wait for that volume.
The analysis also provides you context information about the resource you are looking at. The context of a volume, for example, is among other things the breakdown of response time into IOS queue time, connect time, disconnect time, and pending time.
To start the analysis, place the mouse cursor somewhere on the bar showing an interesting metric, for example a bar indicating a high device activity rate and click the right mouse button. The series' context menu is shown and the first item you see is called Analysis... Click on it and the PM of OS/390 Analysis in <sysplex> dialog is displayed. To make it simple, you can also double-click on the interesting bar to get to the dialog.
The top part of this dialog tells you the resource you are currently looking at. In the example above, we have a DataView Sysplex I/O Activity providing the volumes with the highest activity rate in sysplex MCLXCF01, so the current resource type is Sysplex and the name of the sysplex is MCLXCF01.
The metric we have selected is shown below - also what the current value is and to which resource it belongs. As you can see, it is Volume SMS168 on system AQTS.
In the middle and bottom part of the dialog you can select
AQTS,SMS168,Volume - Context
and click on Ok. The analysis type
AQTS,SMS168,Volume - Context by Job
provides you the jobs on system AQTS that use volume SMS168 most in that sample plus the jobs on system AQTS that are delayed most since someone else is using the volume.
The analysis type differs from resource to resource. PM of OS/390 only offers analysis types that are related to the resource you have selected.
In the last lesson of this tutorial, I would like to introduce some interesting goodies that help you to make your job more efficient.
The first thing to mention is the powerful sorting and filtering capabilities for list-value DataViews. So far we only made use of the existing default handling. The defaults take care that list-values are sorted in descending order, that means the most interesting ones are shown first. The default number of items shown is five. Nevertheless you might need to change the default, for example to concentrate only on a list of jobs or volumes that obey a specific naming convention. Also the number of five items might be too restrictive for you and you would like to see 10 items in a value-list DataView.
You can modify the default filter only when you create a DataView or when you add a new series to an existing DataView. Before you click on button Add to add the series to the DataView, click on the Filter notebook tab to change the sorting and the filters according to your needs. A dialog such as that shown in the figure below comes up:
As this example shows, you can reduce the number of logical control units (LCUs) monitored by specifying a name-pattern.
Clicking on Refresh causes PM of OS/390 to get the current list of contained resources from the host, in this case the list of LCUs in sysplex MCLXCF01. It may take a while when you do this but since this list is unlikely to change very often, you probably have to do it only once.
You can determine the sort order, whether the items in the DataView should be sorted by the value or maybe by the name, whether the list should be presented in ascending order or in descending order.
You can also specify boundaries to only provide items in the DataView that fall within the bounds of the specified thresholds. This keeps uninteresting LCUs out of the DataView and lets you concentrate on the important ones only.
Once the thresholds are set you can finally choose how many elements from the filtered list you would like to see and whether the low-value range or the high-value range of list elements is shown on the DataView.
A very useful function is the capability to save the values and names of a series within a *.WK1-spreadsheet file. This allows you to export the data into your favorite spreadsheet application for performance analysis or capacity planning over a longer period in time4 .
Go to the DataView that contains the series that you would like to save and click on the button to invoke the Save Plot of Selected Series dialog. Figure 13 is an example of what you get once you have invoked this dialog.
The chart on top of figure 13 represents the course of one of the series shown in the DataView over the time. In the case of a value-list, the resource with the highest value during the monitoring period is picked and shown. If there are multiple series in such a DataView, the first one is picked automatically. However, you are free to select any other series in that DataView and/or the resources that are shown on the chart. For single value DataViews, all series are picked at once and their course is shown on the graph.
Once you selected the series and resources that you would like to save, you can also limit the time window. For example if the series are available from 8.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. and you are only interested in saving the data collected around noon, change the From and To time values below the chart accordingly. To expand such a smaller window for better readability, press the button labeled Zoom. To condense, click on the same button - now labeled Total.
Finally, when all selections are made, press the Save...-button and a File Save dialog appears where you can enter the name of the *.WK1 file that PM of OS/390 should create. The number of rows in the resulting spreadsheet corresponds with the contents shown in field # Samples. The Print...-button, finally, allows to print the chart shown on the window on any printer installed on your workstation.
When you have created a couple of DataViews, the PerfDesk might become badly arranged. To arrange all DataViews in the PerfDesk properly, click on the View action bar menu item and then select Tile Data Views. This option distributes the space within the PerfDesk equally to all DataViews defined on that PerfDesk.
For each individual series in a DataView it is possible to search for the highest or lowest value for such a series since PM of OS/390 has been started. Once you selected that function with the context menu of a series (right mouse button-click on a bar) the DataView moves forth or back on the x-axis and shows you the data at that time.
Since the Java 2 platform has no concept how to handle Help-requests consistently and transparently for an application, PM of OS/390 uses the assistance of a web browser to display a help file once you press the Help button. If you want to change the browser used by PM of OS/390, select View from the action bar, then Options, and finally Help Browser. On the dialog, either select Netscape** Navigator or Microsoft** Internet Explorer.
If the times shown in the DataView does not match the local time of your workstation, you can change the local time zone by clicking in a row first on the action bar item View, then on Options, and finally on Set Timezone. Set a time zone to match the contents of field GMT-offset and Timezones with your local time. Click Ok when you are done.
This document explained the most important concepts of PM of OS/390. This should help you to get started with PM of OS/390 and to use the application efficiently at your site. Refer to the extended publications described in "Bibliography" below for further details and assistance.
Detailed installation instructions can be found in file rmf.htm located within the PM of OS/390 install directory. For your convenience, I have put a summary inside here:
rmf.htm located in the install path of PM of OS/390
Resource Measurement Facility
User's Guide SC28-1949-05
1
I/O intensity is defined as the product of I/O activity rate and I/O response time.
2 PM of OS/390 has already created a remote host for you during installation. It is My Sysplex that you saw in Lesson 1. For this definition, the default Port Number 8801 is assumed. You can change the settings for My Sysplex at any time by selecting in a row first the menu item File, then Change Settings, and last Sysplex... .
3 RMF does not differentiate between single processors but only looks at the total processing capacity in an SMP environment.
4 The *.WK1 format specification allows a maximum of 8000 values in one spreadsheet file.