Compaq ProLiant 1000 I/O Performance Tuning of Compaq Servers - Page 22

I/O Performance Tuning of Compaq Servers 22 Fibre Channel Utilities casa_disks - used by the casa_menu utility to build a list of FC adapters to pass to the casadiag utility. casa_menu - allows you to probe FC Array Controllers for information, including: controller type, PCI slot, and board revision number. casadiag - the back end of the casa_menu utility. Casadiag is run with the name of all the FC Array Controllers as defined by casa_disks. casacfg - used to configure the loops on a FC adapter, the arrays on a FC loop, and remove the casa driver from the system. casautil - allows you to perform basic administrative functions like manually testing the LEDs on an array or taking an array on- or offline. Perhaps the most comprehensive tool for analyzing and recording performance data on SCO operating systems is sar, or systems activity report. sar allows for both real-time and logged data gathering of nearly every system in your server. sar can gather data which may highlight both kernel and non-kernel, such as disk I/O or CPU utilization, bottlenecks. Consult the man pages for sar for a complete listing and explanation of sar's functionality. sar's greatest weakness is the arcane method of reporting the data. rtpm, real-time performance monitor, can display the same data as sar in real-time in a dense format which is usually easier to follow. In addition, rtpm allows individual parameters to be displayed in a real-time graph. However, rtpm does not allow the same data logging capability as sar. Instead, only the screen is used for output of rtpm's tables of data. If sar's output files are too obtuse, you may consider third-party utilities such as SarCheck. SarCheck analyzes your sar data and generates a report, in a clear, easy to read format, indicating what performance problems are most evident in your server and offers possible solutions for common performance issues. Conclusion Hopefully, this paper has provided you with a firm understanding of hardware performance tuning and analysis. This information, combined with the introduction to the tools available to identify performance issues, should establish the basis for evaluating your server performance. From there, you can investigate what tools and parameters are available to make the most appropriate use of your hardware. Careful testing and investigation combined with accurate diagnosis and solutions can prolong the life and improve performance of any server. Since it would be nearly impossible for this paper to proceed to the next step of diagnosing application-dependent problems and recommending specific solutions, tuning the server is something for you to explore on your own. There are many books, websites, and magazines that provide volumes of information that may be specific enough to actually provide clear tuning instructions for your environment. As part of the ASE training courses, Compaq offers in-depth classes on Integration and Tuning for each of the supported operating systems. Information of these classes can be obtained via the Compaq website at http://www.compaq.com/resellers. ECG044.0399