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Midrange Performance Group®
Leaders in System i Performance Management, Capacity Planning, and Problem Determination
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Performance Navigator
®
for System i
from Midrange Performance Group
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Performance Navigator FAQ's:
- Question: Will this product hurt the performance of my System i?
Answer: You will not even notice that the product is working. The data gathering software is already part of OS/400, PM/400(tm). If it is not already running, use the System i command CFGPM400
to activate PM/400.
- Question: I currently have a subscription to IBM's PM/400 service. How is
Performance Navigator compared to PM/400?
Answer: Glad you asked... Performance Navigator uses exactly the same data that is gathered and supplied to PM/400. Performance Navigator simply accesses the PM/400 data which is resident on your System i. All the graphing of
data is done by Performance Navigator on your workstation. Viewing and printing graphs and tabulations is done from your workstation. It is kind of like having your own PM/400 on your own machine, that you can run any
time you want to.
- Question: What are the specs for the PC workstation to run Performance Navigator?
Answer: You need a Windows 95/98/NT workstation with a minimum of 15 MB of free hard disk space. In addition,
you also need to have an ODBC connection with the System i (for example CA/400).
- Question: What is the difference between Performance Navigator and products like Best 1?
Answer: Performance Navigator is a tool to help you manage your computer system,
plan its capacities as your workload grows, and to help you tune and adjust
storage pools, set job priorities, etc. Best 1 is, in comparison, a modeling tool. One of the first
inputs to any modeling tool is the growth rate. Performance Navigator will provide the
input for any modeling process. The new Professional Edition of Performance Navigator now has modeling capabilities, including workload consolidation of multiple System i products.
- Question: How often can I run Performance Navigator?
Answer: You can run
Performance Navigator as often as you like. However, the data collection process from PM/400
is updated once a day. The more likely condition is that if you have a recurring period where
performance is a regular problem, like end-of-day, or end-of month, or during long
backups, you may want to use the analytical capabilities of Performance Navigator to 'drill down'
into those specific time slices to 'put your system under a magnifying glass'.
- Question: How do I uninstall PN/400?
Answer: Before uninstalling PN/400 from your System i, read the following reasons for uninstalling, and some things to think about.
REASON #1 "I didn't know there was anything useful."
We hear this frequently, but not only is there useful stuff, there is free
useful stuff. Since Performance Navigator is useful to different people
for different things, sometimes the business partners (who use it for
capacity planning) neglect to mention the end-user features. The reason
the business partners don't make this clear to you is usually just a matter
of focus. They are focused on a hardware upgrade. If you'd like to see
the free stuff, run Performance Navigator on your PC, and click
'Graphs/CPU/Priority'. If you'd like to learn more about what you can do,
there is a built-in tour, just click 'Help/Tour', or call us and we'll walk
you through the product.
REASON #2 "We don't have any performance problems."
or "We just upgraded so we don't have performance problems."
or "It's just a development machine, so we'll never use it."
Now is the perfect time to have PN/400 installed and collecting data. Some
day, something will happen, and instead of searching for the problem, the
answers will be at your fingertips. I can't tell you how many times we've
seen people do something as simple as installing a new release of software,
or maybe just applying a PTF, and performance takes a nose dive. Think of
it like a fire extinguisher. If the need arises, you'll be glad you have
it.
REASON #3 "We do it ourselves."
Believe me, I know working with System i performance is one of the fun jobs
in the shop, and no one wants to give up their performance methodology, but
I guarantee there is no home-grown application does even a fraction of what
Performance Navigator does. You don't have to replace your methodology
with ours, we'll coexist. Think of it as another tool in your belt.
REASON #4 "It uses too much CPU and/or too much disk space."
These are common misconceptions. The truth is that the overhead is
minuscule, less than one tenth of one percent of the CPU and a couple
hundred megabytes of disk. Furthermore, Collection Services may be running
even without PN/400 in which case there is virtually no additional
overhead. And to top it off, since PN/400 collects data on every job and
every library, we can prove the overhead is insignificant.
Before you uninstall PN/400, consider the following, it's free, it's
useful, the overhead is minuscule, and the benefits are potentially
invaluable.
I'll hop off the soapbox now. The commands:
DLTLIB MPGLIB
DLTLIB MPGLIBDST
DLTLIB MPGLIBOBS
DLTSAVF QGPL/MPGLIBDST
and
RMVJOBSCDE PERFNAV*
will completely remove PN/400 from your System i.
Note: After removing PN/400, Collection Services (part of OS/400) may still
be collecting data. If this data is collected, and not managed, your
system will fill up. If necessary, to end Collection Services:
CALL QYPSENDC ('*PFR ' X'00000000')
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