NMON as a data source

LPAR2RRD saves and presents this data:
  • OS CPU utilization of user/sys/IO wait/idle in %
  • Memory utilization of used/FS cache/free memory in MB
  • Paging rate in MB/sec
  • Paging space utilization in %
  • SAN (FC & vSCSI) throughput per adapter
    • data in MB/sec
    • IO/sec
  • LAN (ethernet) throughput per adapter
    • data in MB/sec
    • packet count

NMON files could be fed either from the central NMON repository or from NMON files being collected on each LPAR
  • online mode: each 10 minutes the agent reads NMON file, process new records and sends them into the LPAR2RRD server
  • offline mode: once a day you can process single or all NMON files and load data into the tool
  • NMON file grapher feature: manual NMON file upload via the UI

Prerequisites

  • Install the OS agent and start LPAR2RRD server (daemon) on LPAR2RRD host

Online mode

  • run nmon in the background mode for data collection, here is an example (you can use already scheduled one if exist) 
    00 00 * * * LANG=C; export LANG; /usr/bin/nmon -f -t -D -E -s60 -c1440 -m'/var/nmon'
    Note: it will start nmon on next midnight
  • schedule OS agent in cron and provide it nmon data directory (/var/nmon in this case) 
    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/perl /opt/lpar2rrd-agent/lpar2rrd-agent.pl -n /var/nmon <LPAR2RRD-SERVER>  > /var/tmp/lpar2rrd-agent-nmon.out 2>&1
Then the OS agent checks /var/nmon for a new data in all nmon files and sends it to the LPAR2RRD server.
When "-n" is specified (mean NMON load) then the OS agent does not collect any data itself, it uses only NMON data
It will process only non compressed nmon files.

Offline mode

Activation is the same as for online mode, just schedule it once a day like here at the midnight:
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/perl /opt/lpar2rrd-agent/lpar2rrd-agent.pl -n /var/nmon <LPAR2RRD-SERVER>  > /var/tmp/lpar2rrd-agent-nmon.out 2>&1
It is able to load data from all existing files in NMON data directory into LPAR2RRD server
You can even load all your historical NMON data in once into LPAR2RRD server

Notes:
  • Each LPAR requires at least 30MB disk space for storing of data on LPAR2RRD server.
  • We suggest NMON sample rate 60sec (the same as for usual OS agent data) but it will work even with higher sample rates (up to 10 minutes).
  • We are aware that NMON provides far much data metrics however LPAR2RRD stores and graphs only most important ones.
    It is along with philosopfy of the tool to act as the front-end tool for admins and users. For deeper analysis is necessary to use another tools like NMON analyser, sar, iostat, perfPMR etc.