UNIX Measurement

Mark Cohen Austrowiek
October 1996

Over the years MVS has acquired very good measurement tools and data structures (RMF monitor, SMF records) that are used by everyone involved in the capacity management area.

UNIX operating systems offer different software tools to measure program (process) and system activity but there are different opinions concerning their quality and usefulness. Particularly the lack of a standard UNIX system makes the measures you get very difficult to put together if you are working on a multi platform environment.

A primary step in computer measurement involves: • setting up software and parameters;
• setting up intervals;
• understanding the measures you get;
• collecting (only) useful data.

In this tutorial paper I will try to concentrate on what we have available and what we can do in order to get started in the measurement process using only standard utilities.

The following topics are covered:
• introduction to UNIX performance evaluation;
• a description of basic utilities needed for measurements;
• measurement interval and database collecting techniques;
• how much resources are measurement tools consuming.