part command

Purpose

Provides performance reports with suggestions for making configurational changes to the environment, and helps to identify areas for further investigation. The reports are based on the key performance metrics of various partition resources that are collected from the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) environment.

Syntax

part {-i interval | -i filename} [-t level] [-help | -?]

Description

You can use the part command to start the VIOS Performance Advisor tool.

By using the VIOS command-line interface, run the part command to start the VIOS Performance Advisor tool.

You can start the VIOS Performance Advisor tool in the following modes:

On-demand monitoring mode
Postprocessing mode

When you start the VIOS Performance Advisor tool in the on-demand monitoring mode, provide the duration for which the tool must monitor the system in minutes. The duration that you provide must be 10 - 60 minutes at the end of which the tool generates the reports.

When you start the VIOS Performance Advisor tool in the postprocessing mode, provide the command with an .nmon file as input (-f FILENAME). If the recordings do not have all the required data for the advisory tool to produce the reports, it adds Insufficient Data messages to the relevant fields.

Note: The size of the input provided to the part command by the .nmon file recording must be within 100 MB because postprocessing of huge data takes a long time to generate advisories. For example, a recording of 100 MB done on a VIOS that has 255 disks configured with 4000 samples take 2 minutes to complete the analysis in the postprocessing mode.

The output generated by the part command is saved in a .tar file created in the current working directory. The vios_advisor.xml report is present in the output .tar file along with other supporting files. To view the generated vios_advisor.xml report, perform the tasks as follows:

Transfer the generated .tar file to a server that has the browser and .tar file extractor installed.
Extract the .tar file.
Open the vios_advisor.xml file from the extracted directory in a browser.

The vios_advisor.xml file structure is based on an XML schema definition (XSD) located in the /usr/perf/analysis/vios_advisor.xsd file.

Note: The suggestions are done based on the behavior during the monitoring period; therefore, use the suggestions only as a guidance.

Flags

Flag name	Description
-?	Prints the usage.
-f filename	Specifies the nmon recording to be analyzed by the part command and generates advisory reports based on the recording. Note: The options -i and -f are mutually exclusive.
-help	Prints the usage.
-i Interval	Specifies the duration for which the part command must monitor the VIOS and generate advisories based on it. Note: The options -i and -f are mutually exclusive.
-t level	Specifies the trace level, which is either 1 or 2 for basic, detailed tracing, and logging facility respectively.

Exit Status

This command returns the following exit values:

Return code	Description
0	Successful completion.
>0	An error occurred.

Examples

To monitor the system for 30 minutes and generate an advisory report based on it, type the command as follows:
```
part -i 30
```
The system displays the output as follows:
```
Reports are successfully generated and placed in ic43_120408_18_52_42.tar
```
To generate an advisory report based on the data available with existing .nmon file recordings, type the command as follows:
```
part -f ic43_120206_1511.nmon
```
The system displays the following output:
```
Reports are successfully generated and placed in ic43_120206_1511.tar
```
To monitor the system for 30 minutes with maximum tracing enabled and to generate an advisory report based on it, type the command as follows:
```
part -i 30 -t 2
```
The system displays the following output:
```
Reports are successfully generated and placed in ic43_120408_18_52_42.tar
```
To get the usage for the part command, type the command as follows:
```
part -help
```
The system displays the following output:
```
Reports are successfully generated and placed in ic43_120408_18_52_42.tar
```

Related Information

The VIOS Performance Advisor and VIOS Performance Advisor reports topic.

Last updated: Wed, November 18, 2020