System i Performance-Monitoring Tools Product Roundup

Article ID: 21148

Posted February 1st, 2008

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It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing," is a jazz song lyric that applies to the System i in the area of performance. Even the largest models can function poorly if system resources are used inefficiently. Performance—monitoring tools are a class of system—management applications that help system managers and operators tune their machines for maximum efficiency.

This roundup compiles 23 products that help keep System i resources in fighting trim so they can serve their users. Here, we focus only on products that provide a wide range of resource— and attribute—monitoring and control functions.

Although other solutions contain various tuning features of specific parts of system environments, such as high—availability systems and database—tuning applications, those products focus on links in what is often a chain of circumstances and problems that sap performance power. Even though products that exclusively offer file and database reorganization, storage defragmentation, and other services that address important parts of the processing environment, we gather here solutions that affect overall system performance, partition performance, or the user—critical areas of interactive response and maintenance of service levels.

These solutions are also capable of reacting to poor—performance problems rather than being limited to monitoring or reporting functions. They also pinpoint server—based, rather than potentially network—based, performance troubles. Finally, this roundup is limited to solutions that run under i5/OS, or that reside on a client PC but specifically monitor and tune System i resources.

The product descriptions provided here offer only a summary of each solution's major capabilities. For more complete information about each products, please consult the vendor or product URLs that follow each description.

John Ghrist is senior product editor for System iNEW. He would like to thank Cassie Deemer for her help with this article.

System i Performance—Monitoring Tools

Automated Operations System
Syan, Ltd.
Automated Operations System is a suite of System i server—management applications that includes performance—management tools that help managers control resources and workloads.
syanplc.com

Automatic Partition Resource Manager (APRM)
Barsa Consulting Group, LLC.
APRM is designed to automatically balance processing resources, collect workload statistics every 15 seconds, and tune systems with user—configurable tuning rules. With the new LPAR technology, this product lets users manage many servers via a single new server. It also has the capability of monitoring performance for each partition (with viewable statistics) that helps system managers determine if and when resources should be moved.
barsaconsulting.com

BMC Patrol for iSeries — Perform
BMC Performance Manager for iSeries
BMC Software, Inc.
BMC Patrol for iSeries — Perform helps managers understand system performance by providing tools for statistical analysis of historical performance as well as present workloads and resource consumption. It also provides tools for modeling future needs, identifying the root cause of bottleneck areas, and performing contingency planning.

BMC Performance Manager for iSeries monitors System i servers, optimizes critical infrastructure, generates in—depth analysis of problems in key resource areas, and supports server cluster management. The product enables monitoring of multiple System i machines from a single console.
bmc.com

CPUScope
Raz—Lee Security
CPUScope is a performance—enhancement utility that monitors CPU and I/O activity and automatically adjusts process parameters or sends warning messages. CPUScope identifies jobs that cause system performance degradation and lets users define rules for automatic handling of certain situations. It applies processing rules according to time and dates, generates reports, and can modify processing priorities, delay jobs in process, end jobs, and takes other actions in response to performance problems.
razlee.com

Enterprise Problemsolver
VISUAL Control LPAR Tuner
VISUAL Control Performance Planner
VISUAL Control Center
Tango/04 Computing Group
Enterprise Problemsolver is an automated troubleshooting utility for the System i that rapidly diagnoses a wide range of problems. It automatically links to error—handling procedures in response to problems, inspects running source code for problems, and helps users navigate programs, applications, and data structures graphically.

VISUAL Control LPAR Tuner helps managers track and control partition activities, helps users balance workloads between partitions more efficiently, and automatically adjusts resources to help respond to performance difficulties.

VISUAL Control Performance Planner generates graphs that help managers and operators analyze and forecast systems performance and use. It lets users view system performance history and provides drill—down details on such system attributes as status, active jobs, disk status, and user activity.

VISUAL Control Center is a centralized performance manager for all System i, Linux, and Windows servers in a network. It helps users provide maximum service levels via trend analysis and includes diagnostic, alerting, problem—solving, and self—optimizing features.
tango04.com

Global iSeries Applications Performance Analyzer (GiAPA)
iPerformance ApS
GiAPA collects detailed performance data for all jobs and tasks in 15 seconds while using only 0.1 percent of CPU cycles. GiAPA uses the data to pinpoint applications that are causing performance problems, what the problems are, and which programs and statements are causing difficulties.
www.giapa.com

GoFaster
Kisco Information Systems
GoFaster is an application that works with i5/OS to achieve maximum interactive performance for machines in which interactive capacity has been artificially limited, without requiring hardware or OS upgrades.
kisco.com

MAX400
Fax*Star, a division of SEPE, Inc.
MAX400 is a software utility that tunes and maximizes interactive CPW for System i servers. It makes adjustments to memory areas being used by jobs and removes constraints on interactive CPW resources to get maximum interactive performance from each system.
max400.net

NetIQ Analysis Center
NetIQ AppManager Performance Profiler
NetIQ Corporation
NETIQ Analysis Center is an application that helps users monitor and diagnose service levels and resolve capacity—management problems. It analyzes and reports on system availability, service—level metrics, root—cause analyses, and security activities via a unified console. It also provides trending and predictive analyses that can help users anticipate service—level needs and requirements.

NetIQ AppManager Performance Profiler is designed to manage your systems in a dynamic environment that is constantly adjusting itself to better suite ever—changing systems. This product can help improve IT service levels by adapting to the system's performance and generating trusted alerts when something irregular arises.
netiq.com

Performance Analyser
Macro4, Inc.
Performance Analyser is a realtime and historical diagnostic tool for System i machines that collects performance data, uses Windows—based data—display and graphing tools to model the data, and generates recommendations for resolving problems. It provides a PC—based console for single machines or networks of multiple servers, from which users can set thresholds for any networked processor, alerts users when thresholds are exceeded, and drills down to more detailed data to troubleshoot problems.
macro4.com

Performance Manager
Halcyon Software, Ltd.
Performance Manager provides realtime performance statistic and trends with minimal impact on the system's resources. It monitors an unlimited number of System i servers, watches jobs and pools, takes multiple user—modified actions automatically in reaction to threshold violations, and generates reports that users can save as text or HTML documents.
halcyonsoftware.com

Performance Navigator
Midrange Performance Group, Inc.
The Performance Navigator presents solutions to everyday IT challenges. With its ability to graphically represent historical data for the System i's performance, it helps users troubleshoot current problems, analyze current trends, and predict future hardware and software needs. It also helps users plan their system capacity as the workload grows, set up job priorities, and adjust storage pools.
mpginc.com

QSystem Monitor
CCSS, Ltd.
QSystem Monitor is a graphical, networked, realtime performance monitor for the System i. It measures and tracks response times, system overheads, CPU and output queue status, transactions per hour, and other metrics. It monitors all jobs to be sure they are running correctly, provides historical analysis and forecasting, monitors disk space and usage, and automatically generates regular reports.
ccssltd.com

Robot/AUTOTUNE
Robot/LPAR
Help/Systems, Inc.
Robot/AUTOTUNE uses artificial intelligence to constantly monitor and tune System i server performance via such methods as job queue management, dynamic pools, and subsystem tuning. It can monitor a system at specific intervals, and at each interval, adjust the system's memory to improve efficiency of the System i. It also offers a performance monitor with which users can check on their system's performance in realtime or via a daily report.

Robot/LPAR analyzes partition use among System i LPARs to help operators more efficiently move resources between partitions, maintain service levels, and schedule jobs and batch executions. Robot/LPAR also interfaces with Robot/AUTOTUNE to tune moved memory.
helpsystems.com

TeamQuest Performance Software for i5/OS
TeamQuest Software
TeamQuest Performance Software for i5/OS combines three software products that have been customized for the System i and are integrated via TeamQuest Manager. The suite collects performance data, helps users process and analyze it, and helps identify trends and cycles in resource usage. It facilitates capacity planning, models multiple tiers, configures system functions, and can let managers set policies on a hierarchy of servers using different OSs in multiplatform environments.
teamquest.com

Workload Performance Series
MB Software and Consulting, Inc.
Workload Performance Series is an integrated suite of modules that watches nearly every aspect of System i application—processing environments. It supports performance monitoring in AIX, Linux, and Windows as well as i5/OS V6R1. Workload Performance Series monitors and measures ongoing performance issues, watches workloads, optimizes database queries, analyzes and optimizes application source code, and streamlines journal operations.
mb-software.com

Vision Director
Vision Solutions, Inc.
Vision Director is an integrated set of applications that proactively monitors, manages, and optimizes System i servers, databases, and application environments. It surveys, audits, cross—references, and reports on the use, growth, and rate of growth of objects and files, as well as physical and logical file dependencies. Vision Director can forecast future needs and manage and enforce rules policies.
visionsolutions.com

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