[KLUG Members] Re: RS6000

[Adam Williams]

> vmstat
> kthr     memory        page                   faults    cpu
> ----- ----------- ----------------------- ------------ -----------
>  r b   avm   fre   re  pi  po  fr  sr  cy  in   sy  cs us sy id wa
>  0 0 48743   477    0   0   0   5  22   0 199 1973 124 19 10 69  2

The first line of vmstat output is culmulative/average since boot.  Always
throw the first line away.

But you've never paged, which is pretty amazing.

Do something like "vmstat 30 100 > vmstats.out"

This will display vmstats every 30 seconds 120 times. (3600 seconds or one
hour).

Throw away the first line and load result into a spreadsheet.  Then you
can peruse the results at leasure.

> iostat:
> tth:    tin   tout  avg-cpu %user   % sys   % idle   % iowait
>         1.2  217.3          18.8    10.0     68.8       2.5
> Disks:       % tm_act     Kbps   tps    Kb_read    Kb_wrtn
> hdisk0          3.8      32.5    5.0    1775749    1392203
> hdisk1          1.7      35.1    2.8    2755568     666536
> cd0             0.0       0.0    0.0          0          0
>I have no idea what vmstat is showing.  I guess avm= memory, so like
>48MB here.  What is the rest there?

It displays memory in "pages"  avm = the total amount of memory in the
machine.  Divide the Mb you know the machine has by avm to get the page
size (often 4Mb)

I have a slide on the output of VM stat in my Performance Tuning
presentation on the KLUG site.

>Iostat makes more sense, at least I know where those TPS reports went
>to. Um Yeah, I'm gonna need those TPS reports. UnnKay.
>>The 640 is the only one in the catalog without a price. Even the 7026
> od 6M1 lists prices up to $105,350.  Yowsa!

You can get a very loaded 620/640 for about $40k, or a 660 for $65k.  Note
that these prices are "list" and include 40Gb tape drive, 6 drives,
hardware RAID, rack mount and UPS. (The 660 included an expansion cabinet
and power distribution unit).  And these prices are almost a year old.
Buying an RS/6000 isn't like buying a PC.  You get a rep and you specify a
configuration,  they quote it at list.  When you agree that a
configuration is correct you get an offer off the list, usually with a
rather hefty discount.  Call IBM and ask, thats free.  I'm NDA'd on the
'net' prices

>>Is there some way to capture these values over time to graph them?  I
>would like to try out the chart feature in OpenOffice, anyway.
>(keep in mind this only has korn shell...I need to put bash on it
>somehow).

Just "nohup vmstat 30 120 > vmstats.out &" and check in an hour.  It is
also nice to start one with at when your work day starts set to run at
something liek 5 minute intervals till work day end.  Do that for a week.
Chart each one and lays the days on top of each other to see if you have
any trends.