Technical Blog Post
Abstract
50 DB2 Nuggets #18 : Tech Tip - Monitoring memory usage on AIX server
Body
I am quite sure that most of you are using 'svmon' utility with various option to monitor the memory utilisation on AIX box. The most useful option I found is 'P'. It quickly shows you the approximate memory consumption at process level:
$ svmon -G
size inuse free pin virtual mmode
memory 1572864 1454069 118795 639255 2062594 Ded
pg space 1572864 884144
work pers clnt other
pin 522668 0 907 115680
in use 1337170 8 116891
PageSize PoolSize inuse pgsp pin virtual
s 4 KB - 514725 135472 284935 500658
m 64 KB - 58709 46792 22145 97621
$
How to read this output?
- All values are in terms of number of pages. First section contains the number of pages with 4K pagesize. So 1572864 * 4K comes to 6GB.
- It shows that you have 6GB main (or real) memory allocated on this server and 6GB is configured as page swapping space.
- Main memory is almost 100% utilized (please see 'inuse' column). Thereafter your system will start using paging space.
- The last section contains the detailed page level information. Pagesize 's' stands for small page of size 4K. Pagesize 'm' stands for medium page of size 64K.
This output displays memory utilisation at OS level. Please note that If the user is not a root user, the view will be limited to user's own processes.
Now we will determine the memory consumers at process level:
$ svmon -P | head -3 | tail -1;svmon -P | grep -p Pid | grep -v -- ^- | grep -v Pid | grep -v ^$
Pid Command Inuse Pin Pgsp Virtual 64-bit Mthrd 16MB
33226854 svmon 274756 9760 474338 627309 Y N N
8257536 sshd 20618 13748 1968 26084 N N N
14155982 sshd 20610 13748 1968 26076 N N N
29687824 ksh 20539 13748 1968 26082 N N N
24969310 ksh 20537 13748 1968 26080 N N N
33095906 grep 20396 13748 1968 26002 N N N
17694832 grep 20395 13748 1968 26001 N N N
24379472 grep 20395 13748 1968 26001 N N N
22806752 grep 20395 13748 1968 26001 N N N
Please look at the 'inuse' column in the output above. It shows the number of pages (of 4K size) in use by a particular process.
HTH.
Thank you,
Yogesh.
UID
ibm11141600