MPG’s PerfNav Gains New Summary Report
November 27, 2007 Alex Woodie
Midrange Performance Group this month launched a new release of Performance Navigator, a Windows-based tool used to analyze the performance of System i servers over time, and for sizing hardware against workloads. With PerfNav version 13, MPG has added a new executive-level report that is viewable through a Web browser, and supports the latest release of the WebSphere Application Server. Since it was introduced in 1998, PerfNav has been helping business partners and large System i shops align their growing application workloads with the latest in midrange hardware. The Windows-based software uses IBM‘s PM/400 data collection facility to gather performance data at regular intervals. As the base of System i performance data grows over the weeks, months, and years, a portrait of the user’s hardware needs starts to emerge, and PerfNav’s suite of tools can be used to accurately predict how growing workloads will perform against any combination of hardware from IBM. With PerfNav version 13, MPG has included the new “management summary reporting” suite, which provides a single Web-based view into key System i performance metrics for the last month. This report should be helpful for systems administrators and other technical people to impress upon executives and other decision-makers the state of their business critical server, and whether or not upgrades are necessary to keep the server’s performance within their comfort zone. Another new report shows a single “all LPAR” view of all performance data collected across i5/OS, AIX, and Linux partitions on the System i server. Other new reports show the history of IFS object usage, the system’s “rack config,” the server’s CPU upgrade history, and the number of unique and maximum concurrent users ever to have logged onto the server. Several new historical graphs (as opposed to day-to-day graphs) have also been added, including 14 new graphs measuring various WebSphere Application Server version 6.1 performance metrics, such as the number of servlet and JSP sessions created and requested, the historical response time of servlets and JSP, and the number of JSP and servlet errors. Nine other historical graphs were added, dealing with various aspects of CPU and memory usage, jobs and subsystems, library objects, and ODBC connections. The daily graphs have also been enhanced, with four new graphs charting various aspects of the usage of CPU, disk, memory, and jobs. Performance Navigator version 13 is available now. Licenses start at $3,995. For more information or free trial downloads, go to www.mpginc.com. RELATED STORIES MPG Helps to Size Boxes in a User-Based Pricing World MPG Unveils i5/OS V5R4 Support with PerfNav 12.0 MPG’s Capacity Planning Tool Is Ready for i5 MPG Updates iSeries Performance Utility for On Demand Computing
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