OMEGAMON XE for IMS Historical Performance Analysis Options and Best Practices
from CCR2, Issue 10 - 2006
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By Ed Woods
Consulting IT Specialist
IBM Corporation |
IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for IMS provides powerful historical monitoring and analysis facilities, each with its own strengths and capabilities. While the first installment of this article focused on the architecture and functionality of Historical Component (EPILOG) and Transaction Reporting Facility (TRF), this conclusion will look in more detail at the historical capabilities of the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP).
IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP) displays real time and historical information for performance and availability management in a consistent user interface for a broad array of operating systems, hardware platforms, databases, middleware, and transactional subsystems. It can display real time and historical performance metrics side by side on the same workspace to allow you to see the current status of a monitored resource and usage trends. The TEP also provides a common interface for other activities, such as network management, scheduling, automation and business application management.
IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON monitoring technologies deliver a wealth of information to the TEP. For example, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for IMS provides details about IMS transactions, databases, regions, subsystem statistics, IMS work pools, buffer pools, logging, locking, transaction response time, Transaction Reporting Facility (TRF), IMS Connect, network performance, message queues, shared message queues, devices, Fast Path databases and Open Transaction Manager Access (OTMA).
Take historical snapshots
The Tivoli Enterprise Portal uses snapshots of historical data. Real time performance information from OMEGAMON XE may be captured and stored in the Persistent Data Store (PDS) files at specified periodic time intervals. You can select a schedule for data collection – such as every 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes – and store the data where you want.
Figure 1 shows the retention and flow of OMEGAMON XE history data collection. There are three options for data storage shown in red:
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In PDS files at the level of the Tivoli OMEGAMON monitoring agent address (TEMA) space |
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In the PDS files of the Tivoli Enterprise Management Server (TEMS) |
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In the IBM Tivoli Data Warehouse for long term retention. |
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Any information displayed in real time within the Tivoli Enterprise Portal can be stored as history and retained for later recall.
Figure 1 – OMEGAMON XE for IMS Architecture
Data collection options
Figure 2 shows the TEP configuration options display for history collection. You can get to this panel by clicking the history icon on the TEP tool bar. From the history collection configuration panel, you may select a group of related history items, then specify the collection interval, collection location, and if the data is to be sent to the data warehouse. From this dialog you also can start or stop history collection for each attribute group.
If you have installed OMEGAMON XE for IMS V4.1, summarization and pruning are also enabled. These capabilities allow the data warehouse infrastructure to automatically summarize history data at regular intervals and purge older records. For example, you could choose to summarize data daily and prune monthly.
Figure 2 – History collection options
Using OMEGAMON XE history
You can access OMEGAMON XE for IMS snapshot history from within the TEP interface. Figure 3 shows an example of how you may request history data from the monitoring infrastructure. For workspaces where history has been enabled, click on the history icon to display the request dialog shown in Figure 3. The monitoring infrastructure will then determine where the desired data resides -- the TEMA, TEMS or data warehouse -- and return the data back to the TEP for display.
In the example shown in Figure 3, a user requested the last two hours of history on IMS address spaces. The figure shows that dependent region history is being stored at 15 minute intervals. When the information request is fulfilled, the user will see a line of information for each of the IMS address spaces for each interval.
Figure 3 – History data request
Figure 4 – History data request output
Figure 4 shows the result of the history data request. The example shows CPU and paging information sorted by address space over a period of time.
Convenient capability for understanding trends
OMEGAMON XE history is often valuable, such as supplying trending data for performance analysis. Real-time data can be stored for historical analysis. Once recalled via the TEP, the data appears with the relevant time stamp, and you can sort it by any relevant field.
In addition, OMEGAMON XE history data is convenient to use:
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It's easy to initiate history data collection from within the TEP, and you can control what data is gathered. For example, as shown in Figure 2, you could gather history for IMS region activity and address space utilization but choose not to collect history for I/O, buffers, logging or other IMS resources. This saves resources and space for collecting the most important information. |
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It's also easy to start and stop history collection from a single dialog, as shown in Figure 2. |
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Another benefit of OMEGAMON XE history is the ease with which you can integrate history data within real time analysis displays. The TEP architecture enables this capability, since it built upon the concept of workspaces, with each workspace typically composed of multiple query requests for performance information.
Since snapshots form OMEGAMON XE history, the data works best for trending and timeline analysis and can identify peaks and valleys in system and resource utilization. In addition, gathering and retaining examples of typical performance and utilization numbers enables you to compare a typical number to current statistics.
In the context of IMS performance and availability management, you may find that OMEGAMON XE snapshot history is most useful for certain types of performance analysis, such as for trends in IMS address space CPU and paging activity, IMS log activity, IMS IRLM locking and lock contention rates, OSAM and VSAM buffer pool activity, IMS system data set activity or IMS Fast Path region activity.
Three history collectors
Since OMEGAMON XE for IMS collects snapshots, it offers a different level of granularity, detail and content than the other OMEGAMON IMS history collectors, Transaction Reporting Facility (TRF) and EPILOG.
TRF provides the most detailed history collector in OMEGAMON XE for IMS, gathering detailed records for individual transactions. With this granularity comes setup, collection, retention and reporting considerations. But, when using the TEP interface, you may use the online TRF facility to view summary TRF information interactively.
At first glance, EPILOG more closely resembles OMEGAMON XE snapshot history than does TRF, because EPILOG is a time interval-based history collector; however, there is a qualitative difference. For example, in EPILOG the Response Time Analyzer (RTA) history for a given time interval will reflect all the transactions that ran within the time interval. OMEGAMON XE snapshot history, on the other hand, will only show the activity at the time of the snapshot and miss activity between snapshots. EPILOG provides the more detailed and inclusive collection mechanism.
Other OMEGAMON XE history considerations
Response Time Analyzer and online TRF information can be viewed within the TEP interface, and the product-provided workspaces offer some interesting views of transaction performance and trends. Figure 5 shows an example of the product-provided TRF DL/I summary workspace. This workspace includes a plot chart of DL/I time over a five-minute interval that you can change by right-clicking on the plot chart and selecting the properties view.
Figure 5 – TRF DL/I trend example
Another example is the product-provided Response Time Analyzer (RTA) group summary workspace, shown in Figure 6, which displays response time by RTA group plotted over time. As with the TRF workspace, you can alter the time line of the RTA plot chart via the workspace properties dialog.
Figure 6 – RTA tend information example
A complementary trio
IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for IMS and the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal provide powerful and easy to use historical analysis capabilities. TEP history facilities offer:
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Ease of set up for defining history collection |
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Convenient automation for collection, summarization and retention of history data |
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Ease of access to history data |
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The capability to integrate history quickly and easily with real time performance information. |
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TEP snapshot history works well in the context of historical trend analysis.
The OMEGAMON XE for IMS history capability complements the other OMEGAMON historical collection facilities, TRF and EPILOG, but does not replace them – each has its respective functions and uses, and offers different granularities, meanings and depth of data.
For more information
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