System Performance Tuning and Capacity Planning

PARSEC has specialized in performance analysis since its inception in 1986. Our expertise in performance tuning is recognized worldwide. We have tuned hundreds of systems for some of HP's largest customers; including Colorado Department of Public Safety, Bank Austria, Ball Corporation, British Petroleum and many others.

Our experts use various system tools to monitor system performance to identify system bottlenecks such as disk I/O, memory, and CPU for various operating system platforms.

Data Collection

This analysis can be performed using data collected by a variety of available tools depending on the operating system and licensed products. Some of these are freely available, while others only come with specific configurations or at an additional cost. Whatever data collector you have available, PARSEC Group can provide the best analysis available for that data. Some of the tools commonly used to collect performance data include:

• T4 on OpenVMS
• CA's PolyCenter Data Collector on OpenVMS which is now part of Unicenter TNG
• Monitor data on VMS
• System Activity Reporter (SAR) on most UNIX systems
• GlancePlus on HP-UX
• TOPAS and Tivoli data on AIX
• Collect on Tru64 UNIX
• Performance Co-pilot data on IRIX
• Other available tools which create a single snapshot of your system include: vmstat, mpstat, iostat, netstat and prstat

Performance Analysis

This service is performed to optimize the performance of your IT systems, whether they are standalone or in a cluster. This service includes collecting performance data, analyzing it, and looking for bottlenecks in the existing system. This detailed system analysis may also be helpful in capacity planning and in identifying performance issues with layered software and applications. We focus on peak utilization periods in which system performance is critical.

Some of the areas we analyze include:

• CPU Utilization
• I/O and Disk Performance
• Network and Cluster Communication
• Memory Utilization and Process Working Sets
• Processes
• OpenVMS SYSGEN Parameter Settings
• OpenVMS Process Quota Settings
• File System Caches

In addition to the standard analysis, we can also be engaged to look at application and file system performance data.

Recommendations regarding the configuration of the operating system can be implemented by your staff or by PARSEC Group.

Performance Training

Would you benefit from some performance training for your operating systems? We offer the following operating system specific courses on performance analysis and tuning.

• OpenVMS System Performance Management (developed by PARSEC Group)
• HP Tru64 UNIX Performance Management