SUMMARY: SunOS4.X system performance tools

From: Ian Johnston (IJohnston@cmutual.com.au)
Date: Sun May 16 1993 - 19:49:22 CDT


I apologise for the late summary.

Thanks for all the responses to my request for SunOS monitoring tools.
I received several replies.

Original question:

> Does anyone know of any tools to monitor SunOS 4.X based machines? I
> am looking for something similar to the sar utility of the System V world.
> How do others monitor machine performance? I currently use the *stat commands
> to view the machine at selected times. Anyone written any scripts to
> manipulate the output of the *stat into some useful reports?

Answers:

1) Several people mentioned using top, vmpage, nfswatch, mon, ethertop.
   All are freely available from ftp sites. Check archie for your
   nearest archive.

   I had a look at top3 and nfswatch. Both proved usefull for getting
   system performance data. However what I ended up doing is writing my
   own C program to get the data from the kernel and writing it to a
   data file. This meant I could produce graphs and reports easier.
   I plan to use GNUplot to produce graphs I need.

2) John Cieply suggested NETUSE (readme included below). Looks interesting
   I will have a look at this as well. I think this would be usefull at
   sites with a large number of hosts or a hetrogenous site.
3) SunNet manager software from Sun. Is an SNMP network monitor program
   that can be used to monitor Sun machines.
4) Dennis Bare (and others) listed the following commercial packages

   Netmetrix by Metrix Network Systems
   One Tara Boulevard
   Nashua, NH 03062

   EcoSystems Software Inc.
   10055 Miller Ave., Suite 201
   Cupertino CA 95014
   Scott Hammond
   1-408-252-3801 x109

           EcoSphere
            Provides system management; server, network and
           database (Oracle) performance monitoring. We have just
           began an in house evaluation.

   AIM Technology
   4699 Old Ironsides Dr. Suite 150
   Santa Clara, CA 95054
   1-800-848-UNIX
   Marta Inanchy (Regional Sales Manager)
   marta@aim.com

        SharpShooter
        Provides network and kernel performance monitoring. We
        evaluated SharpShooter 1.3. New version 2.0 will be available
        in June 1993. We will be looking at it when it is available.

   Landmark Systems Corp.
   8000 Towers Crescent Dr
   Vienna, VA 22182-2700
   1-800-333-8666

        ProbeX & ProbeNet
        Provides system and network performance monitoring. We
        looked at earlier versions not up-to-date with the latest
        releases.

   Hewlett Packard
   1-800-237-3990 (HP Direct)

        HP GlancePlus
        Provides system performance monitoring. We looked at this
        product latest year I have no current information

5) Kevin Sheehan also sent me some accounting programs that were also
   posted as a sun-managers summary last week.

Many thanks to all:

Andrew Watson <ajw@ansa.co.uk>
John W. Cieply" <JWC@icf.hrb.com>
barnes@sde.mdso.vf.ge.com (Barnes William)
David Lee <T.D.Lee@durham.ac.uk>
rwolf@dretor.dciem.dnd.ca
toddl@aria.smec.sony.com (Todd Lomaro)
shandelm@jpmorgan.com (Joel Shandelman)
jtcummi@sandia.gov
ups!kalli!kevin@fourx.aus.sun.com (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
From: Corvil Howells <corvilh@sa-cgy.valmet.com>
cameron@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Cameron Humphries)
dbare@baosc.com (Dennis Bare)
Rodney Campbell <rodney@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>

-------------------- README for NETUSE ----------------------

                NETUSE - A Network Host Usage Monitoring System

                        Lee Liming and Michael L. Neil
                      Computer Aided Engineering Network
                          The University of Michigan

NETUSE is a low-budget, high-output network service used for keeping track of
dynamic information about hosts on a TCP/IP network. It is not limited to
physical networks; i.e., it's monitoring crosses routers. It monitors and
updates load averages, number of login sessions, display use, free disk space
in /tmp, host names, and vendor and model types for a (potentially large)
number of hosts. All of these items are determined dynamically by the system.
One never needs to tell NETUSE anything (other than to run).

Rather than being based on broadcasts, which are limited to physical networks
and which require processing time from all hosts on the network, NETUSE takes
a client-server approach. Periodic reports are sent directly to a server via
UDP, and the server may subsequently be queried for near-instantaneous
information.

This service was originally developed for assistance with large-scale,
course-grained distributed processing (running jobs on lots and lots of
hosts!). It's strong points are low bandwidth requirements, speed of queries,
self-maintenance, and versatility.

NETUSE has been in wide use at CAEN for several years now, and we've been
adding features and making it more robust through most of that time. We now
feel that it's "good enough" (in terms of robustness and usefulness) to be
distributed more broadly.

The REAL documentation is in the ./doc directory, in several formats
(including plain old ASCII).

/******************************************************************************
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian Johnston email: IJohnston@cmutual.com.au
UNIX System Admin. fax : +61-3-6076198
Colonial Mutual Investment Management phone: +61-3-6418548



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