eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by LparStatsTest

When applications executing on one/more LPARs experience sudden or sporadic slowdowns, administrators need to know how each of these LPARs is utilizing the processing capacity (i.e., CPU resources) assigned to it so that, they can accurately isolate that LPAR that is responsible for the processing bottleneck. By periodically reporting the CPU consumption of each LPAR on a pSeries server, the LparStatsTest facilitates such an analysis. Besides turning the spot light on resource-hungry LPARs, the test also reveals where such LPARs spend maximum time - whether on user-level processing, system-level processing, by being idle, or by being in waiting. In addition, you can optionally configure this test to report the number of hypervisor calls and the time spent by the LPAR's processor on these calls so that, the CPU-efficiency of such calls can also be determined.

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Entiled_Proc_capcity The number of processing units this LPAR is entitled to receive - i.e., the number of processing units reseved for usage by this LPAR Number For dedicated partitions, the entitled processing capacity is the number of physical processors.
Proc_capcity_used_user The percentage of the entitled processing capacity used by this LPAR while executing at the user level Percent A high value for this measure indicates that the user is executing CPU-intensive processes/applications on the LPAR. Comparing the value of this measure with the Proc_capcity_used_kernal, Proc_capcity_idle, and Proc_capcity_wait measures will reveal where the LPAR spent the maximum time.
Proc_capcity_used_kernel The percentage of the entitled processing capacity used by this LPAR while executing system-level processes Percent A high value for this measure indicates that system-level processing is CPU-intensive. Comparing the value of this measure with the Proc_capcity_used_user, Proc_capcity_idle, and Proc_capcity_wait measures will reveal where the LPAR spent the maximum time.
Proc_capcity_idle The percentage of the entitled processing capacity unused while this partition was idle and did not have any outstanding disk I/O request(s) Percent Idle processing capacity in the shared resources pool can be used by any shared LPAR that requires additional processing power. While capped partitions can utilize as much processing capacity from the pool as allowed by their maximum processing capacity configuration, the uncapped partitions can draw beyond this maximum threshold, but not beyond the total idle processing capacity in the pool. Comparing the value of this measure with the Proc_capcity_used_user, Proc_capcity_kernel, and Proc_capcity_wait measures will reveal where the LPAR spent the maximum time.
Proc_capcity_waiting The percentage of the entitled processing capacity unused while this partition was idle and had outstanding disk I/O request(s). Percent A high value for this measure could indicate a processing bottleneck. Comparing the value of this measure with the Proc_capcity_used_user, Proc_capcity_kernel, and Proc_capcity_idle measures will reveal where the LPAR spent the maximum time.
Physical_proc_consume The number of physical processing units, of the total entitled processing capacity, that were consumed by this LPAR Number CPU usage measured in absolute terms (i.e., processing units) helps administrators to effectively assess the resource impact of migrating an LPAR to another server. Note that this measure is displayed only when the partition type is "shared" or "dedicated-donating".
Entiled_proc_consume Indicates the percentage of the entitled capacity consumed. Percent Because the time base over which this data is computed can vary, the entitled capacity percentage can sometimes exceed 100%. This excess is noticeable only with small sampling intervals. Note that this measure is displayed only when the partition type is "shared".
Logical_proc_util Indicates the percentage of logical processor(s) that was utilized by this LPAR while executing at the user and system level. Percent A very high value is indicative of excessive logical processor utilization by the LPAR. Note that this measure is displayed only when the partition type is "shared".
Avail_phy_proc_shredPool The number of physical processors available in the shared resource pool that is used by this LPAR Number Note that this measure is displayed only when the partition type is "shared".
Virtual_contextSwitch The number of virtual context switches that are virtual-processor hardware preemptions Number Note that this measure is displayed only when the partition type is "shared" or "dedicated-donating".
Phantom_intrep_rec Indicates the number of phantom (targeted to another shared partition in this pool) interruptions received MB A phantom interrupt is an interrupt targeted to another partition that shares the same physical processor. For example, one partition starts an I/O operation. While the partition is waiting for the I/O to complete, it cedes the physical processor to another partition. The I/O operation completes and the controller sends an interrupt to the requesting processor, but as the interrupted partition running is not the intended destination, the partition says “not for me” and the interrupt is queued by the Power hypervisor. They do not have a a big impact on performance.
Time_spend_hyp The percentage of physical processor capacity spent making hypervisor calls Percent A high value for this measure is indicative of too much time and CPU resources spent on hypervisor calls. Note that this measure will be available only if the HYPER CALLS flag is set to Yes for this test, and the ADMIN USER configured for this test is either a 'root user' or a 'root equivalent user'.
Hyper_calls_exe The average number of hypervisor calls that were started Number Note that this measure will be available only if the HYPER CALLS flag is set to Yes for this test, and the ADMIN USER configured for this test is either a 'root user' or a 'root equivalent user'.