article Tru64 Performance Metrics

Related Documentation Version of up.time affected Affected Platforms
All Tru64

The up.time 4 Tru64 agent collect the following performance metrics from the systems on which it is installed:

The Tru64 agent uses a number of utilities to gather these metrics including:

  • collect: a utility that is bundled with Tru64 and collects operating system and process information. The collect utility comes with Tru64 versions 4.x and 5.x.
  • sar: collects information about system activity.
  • vmstat: collects virtual memory metrics.
  • ifconfig: configures the parameters for network interfaces.
  • ps: reports on the status of processes.
  • swapon: a Tru64 utility that reports on the allocation and usage of swap space.

Each set of performance metrics is averaged between the interval at which the up.time monitoring station polls the agent (e.g. every 10 minutes).

CPU

The up.time agent uses the sar utility (with the -u and -f options) to collect the metrics listed below from a Tru64 agent. The statistics returned by the agent are averaged for all CPUs on the system.

Metric Explanation
% Usr The amount of time that the CPU spends in user mode.
% Sys The amount of time that the kernel spends processing system calls.
% WIO The amount of waiting time that a runnable process for a device takes to perform an I/O operation.
Multi CPU Usage Whether or not a system wity multiple CPUs is effectively balancing tasks between CPUs, or if processes are being forced off CPUs in certain circumstances.
Run Queue Length The percentage of time that one or more services or processes are waiting to be served by the CPU.
Run Queue Occupancy The percentage of time that one or more services or processes are waiting to be served by the CPU.

Multi-CPU

The up.time agent uses the psrinfo utility on a Tru64 system to collect information about CPUs, then uses the sar and mpstat utilities to collect the metrics listed below from systems with multiple CPUs. The CPU statistics output by the agent are an average of all the CPUs on the server.

Metric Explanation
User % The percentage of CPU user processes that are in use.
System % The percentage of CPU kernel processes that are in use.
Wait I/O % The percentage of time that a process which can be run must wait for a device to perform an I/O operation.
SMTX The number of read or write locks that a thread was not able to acquire on the first attempt, as reported by the mpstat command.
XCAL The number of interprocess cross-calls. In a multi-processor environment, one processor sends cross-calls to another processor to get that processor to do work. Cross-calls can also be used to ensure consistency in virtual memory. Heavy file system activity such as NFS can result in a high number of cross-calls.
Interrupts The number of CPU interrupts.
Total % The total amount of User %, System %, and Wait I/O%.

Memory

The up.time agent uses the following commands to collect memory metrics from a Tru64 system:

  • vmstat
  • swapon -s (free swap)
  • sar -b -f (cache)
  • sar -g -f (paging and swapping)
  • sar -p -f (page-in activity)

The statistics that the agent returns are for the entire system.

Metric Explanation
Free Memory The amount of physical memory available to the operating system, system library files, and applications.
Cache Hit Rate How often the system accesses the CPU cache.
Page-outs/s The rate at which pages were written to disk.
Page-ins/s The rate at which pages were read from or written to the disk.
Page Frees/s The number of pages that are freed from memory each second.
Attaches/s The number of pages that get attached to memory each second.
Page-out Reqests/s The number of requests to perform a write operation that occur each second.
Page-in reqs/s The number of requests to perform a read operation that occur each second.
PageScans/s The number of pages that are scanned each second.
PageFaults/s The number of page faults that occur each second.
Software Locks/s The number of software locks that are issued each second.

Disk

The up.time agent uses the following commands to collect disk metrics from a Tru64 system:

  • collect -i1 -R7s -sd
  • sar -d -f (free swap)

The agent collects volume capacity statistics from each filesystem, while the disk statistics (%busy, Read/Write/s) are returned for each disk.

Metric Explanation
Disk (Spindle) Name The names of each disk on the system.
Usage (% Busy) The percentage of time during which the disk drive is handling read or write requests.
Blocks per second The number of read and write operations on the disk that occur each second.
Transfers/s The average number of bytes that have been transferred to or from the disk during write or read operations.
Average Queued Requests The number of threads that are waiting for processor time.
Average Service Time The average amount of time, in milliseconds, that is required for a request to be carried out.
Average Wait Time The average time, in milliseconds, that a transaction is waiting in a queue. The wait time is directly proportional to the length of the queue.

Network

The up.time agent uses the following commands to collect network metrics from a Tru64 system:

  • ifconfig
  • netstat -I (free swap)

Except for TCP retransmits, the agent averages all statistics per interface.

Metric Explanation
Receive Rate The rate, in kilobytes per seconds, at which data is received over a specific network adapter.
Send Rate The rate, in kilobytes per seconds, at which data is sent over a specific network adapter.
Packets Inbound Errors The number of inbound packets that contained errors, which preventing those packets from being delivered to a higher-layer protocol.
Packets Outbound Errors The number of outbound packets that could not be transmitted because of errors.
Collisions The number of signals from two separate nodes on the network that have collided.
TCP Retransmits The number of packets that have been re-sent over a network interface.

Process

The up.time agent uses the following commands to collect process metrics from a Tru64 system:

  • vmstat (blocked, running, and waiting processes
  • ps

By default, the agent only gathers the top 20 processes, and sorts them by the highest CPU usage.

Metric Explanation
Number of Processes The number of processes that are currently running on a system.
Process Creation Rate This metric determines whether or not there are runaway processes on a system or if a forking-based process (like a Web server) is spawning too many processes over a specified period of time.
Processes Running The number of processes that are currently running.
Processes Blocked The number of processes that are currently being blocked from running.
Processes Waiting The number of processes that are currently waiting to runn.
Workload - User The demand that network and local services are putting on the system, based on the IDs of the users who are logged into a system.
Workload - Group The demand that network and local services are putting on the system, based on the IDs of the user groups that are logged into a system.
Workload - Process Name The demand that network and local services are putting on a system, based on the processes that are running.
Workload Top 10 - User The 10 network and local services that are are putting the most load on the system, based on the IDs of the users who are logged into a system.
Workload Top 10 - Group The 10 network and local services that are are putting the most load on the system, based on the IDs of the user groups who are logged into a system.
Workload Top 10 - Process Name The 10 network and local services that are are putting the most load on the system, based on the processes that are running.

User

The up.time agent uses the following commands to collect user statistics from a Tru64 system:

  • ps -eo
  • last (login history for the last 10 users on the system)
Metric Explanation
Login History The number of times or frequency at which a user has logged into a system during any 30 minute time interval.
Sessions The number of sessions or number of distinct users who are logged into a system during any 30 minute time interval.

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