The new VIOS performance advisor tool

Updated  VIOS to the latest fix pack (V2.2.2.1) this week and thought I’d try the new VIOS part command. This new command is an improved version of the existing vios_advisor tool. The major difference between the two is the fact that the new tool is now included with VIOS code and will be updated via new VIOS fix packs. The following link has some information on using the command:

part command link 

This new tool “Provides performance reports with suggestions for making configurational changes to the environment, and helps to identify areas for further investigation. The reports are based on the key performance metrics of various partition resources that are collected from the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) environment.” Just like the old VIOS advisor.

I ran the tool for 10 minutes on my idle VIOS, just to see how the new XML report looked.

$ whoami
padmin
$ ioslevel
2.2.2.1
$ part -?
usage: part {-i INTERVAL | -f FILENAME} [-t LEVEL] [--help|-?]
       -i <minutes>    interval can range between 10-60
       -f <file>       any nmon recording
       -t <level>      1 - Basic logging, 2 - Detailed logging
       -?              usage message
$ part -i 10
part: Reports are successfully generated in vioslab2_130118_11_26_49.tar

When the command finished, I found the following tar file in padmin’s home directory. The tar file contained a number of files but the most interesting files were the XML and nmon files.

$ ls -ltr

total 1352

drwxrwxr--    2 padmin   staff           256 Aug 07 2010  config

drwxr-xr-x    3 padmin   staff           256 Aug 11 2010  tivoli

drwxr-xr-x    2 538804364 staff           256 Oct 08 16:29 mnt

-rwxr-xr-x    1 padmin   staff          3141 Jan 16 15:05 ck_sum.bff

drwxr-x---    2 padmin   staff         32768 Jan 16 15:10 update

-rw-r--r--    1 root     staff        409139 Jan 16 15:56 install.log

-rw-r--r--    1 root     staff          3828 Jan 18 11:26 ioscli.log

-rw-r--r--    1 padmin   staff        204800 Jan 18 11:37 vioslab2_130118_11_26_49.tar

$ tar -tvf vioslab2_130118_11_26_49.tar

drwxr-xr-x 10  1        0 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/

drwxr-xr-x 10  1        0 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/

-r--r--r-- 10  1      902 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/Warning_icon.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1      125 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/bg.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1      614 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/close.jpg

-r--r--r-- 10  1     1336 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/correct.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1      316 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/headerLogo.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1     1241 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/investigate.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1      853 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/readonly.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1     1019 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/images/red-error.png

-r--r--r-- 10  1     5692 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/popup.js

-r--r--r-- 10  1     2869 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/style.css

-r--r--r-- 10  1    16869 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/vios_advisor.xsl

-rw-r--r-- 10  1    21158 Jan 18 11:37:07 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/vios_advisor_report.xml

-rw-r--r-- 10  1 136969 Jan 18 11:36:57 2013 ./vioslab2_130118_11_26_49/vioslab2_130118_1126.nmon

I then scp’ed the tar file to my laptop, extracted it and opened the vios_advisor_report.xml file. This is what the report looked like:

I was also able to open the nmon file using the nmon analyser tool. It produced typical nmon performance graphs as you’d expect.

So, not only does the new part tool run the VIOS advisor it also captures nmon performance data at the same time.

This is rather impressive and a great move by IBM. The original VIOS advisor tool was free and of course not officially supported by IBM (although the development team were very responsive to requests from users of the tool). The new tool is fully supported by the IBM team and as a result will only get better and better as time goes by. I’m not a fan of the new command name, part (good luck trying to google it!), I still prefervios_advisor but hey, what’s in a name, right?