SMF records for the channel initiator

The channel initiator (CHINIT) can produce SMF statistics records and accounting records with information on tasks and channels.

The CHINIT can produce SMF statistics records and accounting records with the following types of information:
  • The tasks: dispatcher, adapter, Domain Name Server (DNS), and SSL. These tasks form what is called CHINIT statistics.
  • Channels: provides accounting information similar to that available with the DIS CHSTATUS command. This is called channel accounting.

IBM® MQ, on platforms other than z/OS®, provides similar information by writing PCF messages to the SYSTEM.ADMIN.STATISTICS.QUEUE. See Channel statistics message data for further information on how statistics information is recorded on platforms other than z/OS.

Statistics data

You can use this information to find out the following information:
  • Whether you need more of the CHINIT tasks, such as number of SSL TCBs and how much CPU is used by these tasks.
  • The average time for requests on these tasks.
  • The longest duration request in the interval, and the time of day this occurred, for DNS and SSL tasks. You can correlate this time of day with problems you may experience with the channel.

Accounting data

You can use this information to monitor channel usage and find out the following information:
  • The channels with the highest throughput.
  • The rate at which messages were sent, and the rate of sending data in MB/second.
  • The achieved batch size. If the achieved batch size is close to the batch size specified for the channel, the channel might be close to its limit for sending messages.
You use the START TRACE and STOP TRACE commands to control the collection of the accounting trace and the statistics trace. You can use the STATCHL and STATACLS options on the channel and queue manager to control whether channels produce SMF data.
Note: You do not have to set OPMODE to NEWFUNC in order to enable the collection of SMF records for the channel initiator.