System Monitor

System Monitoring support in IBM Navigator for i

For full documentation, see System Monitoring in IBM Docs under IBM i,

or this Article under IBM Navigator for i: System & Message Monitors Overview.  This location also has subpages with topics such as:

• System Monitor Best Practices
• System Monitor Replacement Variables
• System Monitor Interval - Manual Reconfiguration
• And others

See also:

• Visualize Monitor Data 
• System Monitor Metrics vs Collection Service System Monitor Categories

Different components of Monitors function and where to find:

• Configure Collection Services GUI support
  • In Performance menu
  • 
• Configure and Manage Monitors
  • In Monitors menu
    • Systems subtask
    • Messages subtask
• Display System Monitor Metrics
  • In Performance -> Investigate Data brings you to Performance Data Investigator (PDI)

System Monitor Metrics Available:

• Communications Line Utilization (Average, Maximum)
• LAN Utilization (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Response Time (Read, Write)
• Disk Arm Utilization (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Storage Utilization (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Arm Utilization for System ASP (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Arm Utilization for User ASP (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Storage Utilization for User ASP (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Arm Utilization for Independent ASP (Average, Maximum)
• Disk Storage Utilization for Independent ASP (Average, Maximum)
• HTTP Requests Received Rate 
• HTTP Requests Received (Maximum) 
• HTTP Responses Sent Rate 
• HTTP Responses Sent (Maximum) 
• HTTP Non-Cached Requests Processed (Average, Maximum) 
• HTTP Error Responses Sent (Average, Maximum) 
• HTTP Non_Cached Requests Processing Time 
• HTTP Non_Cached Requests Processing Time (Highest Average)
• HTTP Cached Requests Processing Time
• HTTP Cached Requests Processing Time (Highest Average)
• CPU Utilization (Interactive Jobs)
• Batch Logical Database I/O Rate
• Interactive Response Time (Average, Maximum)
• Transaction Rate (Interactive)
• Spool File Creation Rate
• Machine Pool Faults Rate
• User Pool Faults Rate (Average, Maximum)
• CPU Utilization (Average)
• CPU Utilization (SQL)
• Shared Processor Pool Utilization (Physical, VIrtual)
• Temporary Storage Utilization
• CPU Utilization (Uncapped)

System Monitor GUI through IBM Navigator for i

• Select what you want to monitor
• Set monitoring interval
• Set thresholds and actions to take when a trigger or reset value is reached
• Manage event logs history

List of System Monitor metrics to be monitored matches the list of System Monitor Perspectives listed next.

Adding a Metric to a Monitor

• Select a metric from the left list of "Available Metrics" that you want to add to the monitored metrics.
• Click middle arrow to right to move selected metric to the right-side list of "Metrics to Monitor".
• Set the collection interval.  We recommend you set the Collection Interval to one minute (or longer) to keep the collections from getting too large.
• To set thresholds, select the threshold checkbox, then click Threshold to set trigger and reset values.

Configure Metric Threshold:

• Set the trigger value, duration, and command to execute (may be left blank).

• Set the reset value, duration, and command to execute (may be left blank).

System Monitor Package in PDI

Lightweight chart and table views over system-related metrics from System Monitor performance data.  Select the "Monitor" package to view all available perspectives leveraging Monitor collections.

Launch to charts from System Monitor or from Investigate Data:

Refresh button

Refresh button is visible for all charts on the new Navigator.  Refresh is available when you display the currently active collected monitor data for heritage version.

The current chart is refreshed with the latest monitored data from the active real-time CS collection

What about Management Central Monitors...

Management Central monitors (that use the System i Navigator client) still work and run against a 7.2 system.  However, how MC gets and stores the monitor data is different than the System Monitoring support in L1C in 7.2.  MC and System Monitoring are two separate functions.

Both MC system monitor and the 7.2 IBM Navigator for i System Monitor function have dependencies on Collection Services.  They both need to control what data is collected and at what interval.  The CS collector function already provides this support. 

Management Central uses application override support, which can be used to allow any of the CS data categories to be collected more frequently than is configured for the profile collection.  

For IBM Navigator for i monitors, changes were made to Collection Services to support exporting the data to Db2 files (file name starting with QAPMSM**).  With the QAPMSM* files, we can use the power of SQL for working with the data and also for PDI to be able to access it.  These changes are only supported in 7.2 and later versions.  Therefore, the new Monitors function does not work against pre-v7r2 systems when a target system is specified for a release before 7.2.

Reset Monitor collection interval

On turning off monitors, read this section on Monitors in IBM Documentation.

When monitors override the settings of Collection Services to gather performance data more frequently, the settings are not undone when a monitor stops. You must manually change the Collection Services settings to no longer to collect the data as often.

See Manual Reconfiguration under IBM Navigator for i for the steps on setting the Interval for Collection Services back to a larger value after Monitors are used with a shorted interval causing too much data to be saved and stored.

Debug files for System Monitors:

If you report any problems related to system monitors, collect these files before you make any changes to your system to preserve the debug information.  See, Log file information