Chapter 4. Disk 70 performance monitoring tools The following topics are discussed in this chapter: * Logical Volume Manager (LVM) performance analysis, using the 1s1v command, + Journaled File system (JFS) performance analysis tools, using the £itenan and fileplace commands. All topics and tools discussed in this chapter will provide you with a set of methods in determining logical volume manager, file system, and disk /O related performance issues. 4.1 Overview With the AIX operating system, the handling of disk related 1/0 is based upon different functional levels, as shown in Figure 13. Application Level JFs Raw Logical Level Logical Volume Manager Physical Level Disk Drive Adapter Figure 13. Disk, LYM and fe system levels The lowest level is the physical level, that consists of device drivers accessing the physical disks and using the corresponding adapters. The next level is the logical level, managed by the Logical Volume Manager (LVM), Which controls the physical disk resources. The LVM provides a logical mapping of disk resources to the application level. The application level can consist of either the Journaled File System (JFS) or raw access, for example, used by relational database systems. ‘The performance analysis tools discussed in the following section focus on the logical level (LVM) and on the application level (JFS). The monitoring of the physical level is primarily done by using the iostat command, which is described in Section 4.2, "The iostat command’ on page 108. (© Copyright 18M Corp. 2000 107Covering the entire subject of the AIX Logical Volume Manager is beyond the scope of this publication. For more background information on the AIX Logical Volume Manager, refer to AIX Logical Volume Manager, from A to Z: Introduction and Concepts, SG24-5432, as well as the AIX Version 4.3 System Management Guide: Operating System and Devices, SC23-2525, 4.2 The iostat command The Lostat command is a useful tool that provides a first indication of VO related performance problems. The iostat command is capable of reporting CPU statistics, terminal I/O statistics, and disk I/O statistics, that help identity the /O load on individual components, such as hard disks. The information from osvat reports can be used to modify system configurations to improve I/O load distribution between physical disks. The iostat command extracts data from AIX kernel I/O counters in the kernel address space, which are updated at every clock tick (1/100 second) for TTY as well as CPU and I/O subsystem activity. The syntax of the iostar command is as follows: icotat ot nysicalvelime ...] [interval | come] The commonly used flags are provided in Table 8. Tablo 8 Commonly used fags ofthe jostat command Description This flag displays only the disk utlization report. The -< flag is, exclusive of the -t flag. This flag displays only the TTY and CPU usage. The -tflag is exclusive of the -d fag, By using the physicalVolume parameter (by specifying the physical volume (PV) name of the individual disk or CD-ROM), soseat generates an /O report only for the specified PVs. If no PVs are specified, the sostat command generates a report for all drives. The interval parameter specifies the amount of time in seconds between each report. The count parameter specifies the number of I/O reports generated. If the interval parameter is specified without the count parameter, the sostat command generates reports continuously. 108 15M Certficaton Study Guide AIK Pertormance and System TuningAn example of the sostat command is as follows: tty: tin cout avg-cpu: tuser faye F idle ¥ iowait ane el. ot 38.9 0.0 Semact ps tes Kh read Kort, 9.0 0.3 0.0 258032224266, dike on aa 0.0 2sa0ge 1658678, ndiaco 9.0 0.9 8 aeis2 725871 disk on Ls 0.0 974788 1660027 2.0 0.2 0.0 32308040480 tty: tin cout avg-cpur ¥user faye Fidle ¥ jowait 603.5 ss as 0.0 0.0 Simact Kbps read Kb_wetn 6.0 8.0 2e16 o ndiake2 26.0 2.8 2876 a ndisko 92.8 9.0 © ato ndieicl 21.9 0.8 2028 0 edo 9.0 0.0 ° a dike 0.0 2.0 ° ° This example shows the output of an sostat command run that is updated every second (interval=1) and generated only two reports (count = 2). Each report is a combination of a TTY and CPU utilization report and a disk Utilization report. This example shows a system with five hard disks (hdisk0-hdisk4) and one CD-ROM drive. The first report shows the summary statistics since system startup, providing the collective summary of /O operations on each drive. From the previous example, you can determine that, hdisk1 has been the most actively used drive. The second report provided is the actual drive usage during a one second interval, During the report, there was a copy command started to provide disk VO activity. Chapter 4. Disk VO performance monitoring tools 109