Welcome to:

Tivoli Performance Viewer

Unit Objectives
After completing this unit, you should be able to:
•Describe how performance data is collected in WebSphere
Application Server using the PMI
•Describe the features of Tivoli Performance Viewer
•Set data collection levels on started and stopped resources
•Describe the performance data collected by Tivoli
Performance Viewer and the PMI
•Use the logging function for viewing and storing data
•Be aware of other tools to assist in tuning efforts
Performance Monitoring Overview
•Basic Performance Monitoring Tasks:
–Enable Performance Monitoring Services.
–Collect the data. The monitoring levels that determine which
data counters are enabled can be set dynamically, without
restarting the server. This can be done in one of three
ways:
•Enable data collection through the administrative console.
•Enable performance monitoring services through Tivoli Performance
Viewer.
•Enable performance monitoring services using the command line.
–Monitor and analyze performance data. You can monitor
and analyze data with several tools:
•Monitor performance data with Tivoli Performance Viewer.
• This tool is included with WebSphere Application Server.
•Monitor performance data with other Tivoli monitoring tools.
•Monitor performance data with user-developed monitoring tools.
•Write your own applications to monitor performance data.
•Monitor performance with third-party monitoring tools.
Enable Performance Monitoring Services

Restart the server after enabling.

Performance Monitoring Infrastructure
•Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) provides server-
side monitoring and a client-side API to retrieve performance
data.
•PMI maintains statistical data within the entire WebSphere
Application Server domain, including multiple nodes and
servers.
–Each server organizes PMI data into modules and
submodules.
Performance Data Terminology
•Performance Data Classifications
–Numeric: Simple values such as counts and sizes.
–Stat: Data on a sample space. (Avg. response time)
–Load: Values as a function of time. (Number of threads)
•Performance Data Hierarchy
–Node: A physical machine.
–Server: A functional unit that provides a service.
–Module: A resource category for collected data.
–Submodule: A finer granularity of a module.
–Instance: An instantiation of an object of a class
–Method: A specified operation within a class

–Counters - Data type used to hold performance data

Impact of Collecting PMI Data
•The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
–Measuring something, changes it, even if only slightly
–Overhead of measurement must be taken into account
•Impact ratings - Low, Medium, and High
–Low: usually a single addition or subtraction
•Number of times a bean instance is passivated
–Medium: a few relatively simple calculations
•Average response time of all a bean's methods
–High: many calculations including multiplication/division
•Average number methods being processed concurrently
•InfoCenter contains descriptions of data counters
–Name, granularity, impact ratings and data classification
•Impact ratings and data classifications are related due to the
calculations required for certain classifications.
Data Collection Modules
•Enterprise Beans
•Database Connection Pools
•J2Connectors
•JVM Runtime
•JVMPI Runtime
•Session Manager
•Transaction Manager
•JDBC Times
•Thread Pools
•ORB
•Web Modules
•System Data
•WLM
•Web Services
•Dynamic Cache
Performance Monitoring Architecure

Web HTTP
PerfServlet
Client

JMX Java App Server

Client
PerfMBean

PmiClient
Java JMX Performance data
Client Connector collected for each node
PMI and application server
Client Cell Manager
Wrapper
RMI/IIOP or
SOAP PerfMBean
Tivoli J2EE client
Performance
Viewer App Server
Tivoli Performance Viewer Overview
•Tivoli Performance Viewer is a Java client which retrieves the
Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) data from an application
server and displays it in a variety of formats.
•You can do the following tasks with the Tivoli Performance Viewer:
– View data in real time
– Record current data in a log, and replay the log later
– View data in chart form, allowing visual comparison of multiple
counters. Each counter can be scaled independently to enable
meaningful graphs.
– View data in tabular form
– Compare data for single resources to aggregate data across a node
•To minimize the performance impact, Tivoli Performance Viewer polls
the server at an interval set by the user. All data manipulations are
done in the Tivoli Performance Viewer client, which can be run on a
separate machine, further reducing the impact.
Starting Tivoli Performance Viewer
•Windows Start Menu
•Command line using tperfviewer
tperfviewer.bat(sh) host_name port_number connector_type
–Connector type can be SOAP or RMI
Tivoli Performance Viewer - Console

Menu bar
Toolbar icons

Resource Selection panel Data Monitoring panel

Status bar
Start Performance Data Monitoring
•Prestarted at server start up – not suggested
•Using Data Collection console Current Activity Settings
•Double Clicking on resource.
Performance Monitoring Settings
Setting Performance Monitoring at Runtime
•Standard – All modules set to high.
•Custom allowing the module and level to be selected
manually.
•If already started double clicking on module displays Data
Monitoring panel.
Data Monitoring

Viewing Counter Panel

Counter Selection Panel

View Chart
Summary Reports
Logging
•All data reported by the Performance Viewer can be saved to
a log file.
•Data is written as either binary objects (.perf format) or as an
XML document.
–Both log formats can be replayed by the Performance
Viewer.
–Log files saved as XML documents can be replayed by
third-party tools.
•Log files can be saved in XML format for long-term trend analysis
outside of Performance Viewer.
•Log files can be rewound and replayed.
–Replay at normal speed or Fast Forward.
Request Metrics
•Measure the amount of time it takes for data requests to travel through
each WebSphere Application Server component in the system
– Provides measurements across multiple processes and services
– Tracks requests that enter through HTTP or Enterprise Bean remote
requests
– Capture response time information for the initiating request, the
downstream enterprise bean invocations, and related JDBC calls
– Time spent at these points are written to the SystemOut.log to be
accessed by either Application Response Measurement (ARM)
agents or other third party tools
•High level view of application performance allows users to quickly track
down which application components are involved in bottlenecks and fix
them
•Request metric settings to keep in mind
– Define filters for the requests that should be tracked
• Incoming HTTP requests can be filtered by IP address, URI or both
• Incoming Enterprise Bean requests can be filtered by method name
– Set the Request Metrics trace level to a value greater than NONE
•Access through Administrative Console
– Troubleshooting > PMI Request Metric
•An ARM agent does not ship with WebSphere Application Server for
analyzing the output placed in the SystemOut.log.
Other Tivoli Tools
•IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Web Infrastructure (ITMfWI)
–Best practices monitoring of key elements of WebSphere
Application Server
–Identifies potential problems
–Notifies appropriate personnel
–Suggests solution
–Real-time console
•IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance (ITMTP)
–Best practices monitoring from end-user perspective
–Monitors:
•Round trip response time
•Network latency
•Back-end response time provided by Application Response
Measurement
•Page render time.
•Not included with WebSphere Application Server Packaging
Tuning Hints
•Tuning should be done BEFORE deployment not after
•Basic Performance Tuning Methodology
–Create a stable environment
–Measure and document environment
–Select an object to tune
–Tune one parameter
–Re-measure in same stable environment
–Evaluate
–Repeat
•Load Generation Tools help create stable environment and
help to ensure no surprises at deployment.
•80-20 Rule – find big performance problems first
–80% of performance gain with 20% effort
–20% of additional gain requires 80% effort
Unit Summary
–Described how performance data is collected in WebSphere
Application Server using the PMI
–Described the features of Tivoli Performance Viewer
–Showed how to set data collection levels on started and
stopped resources
–Described the performance data collected by Tivoli
Performance Viewer and the PMI
–Explained the logging function for viewing and storing data
–Introduced other tools to assist in tuning efforts