Advanced Tools for AIX Performance Analysis

The audience for this training includes AIX technical support personnel, performance benchmark personnel, and AIX system administrators.

• Use the trace facility to collect data and create a trace report
• Use the kernel trace facilities to analyze CPU performance issues
• Describe causes and impacts of high context switching rates
• Identify what causes a thread to be blocked and later woken up
• Explain the relationship between the output of svmon -G, svmon -P, and svmon -S
• Calculate the amount of memory in use on the system
• Explain the relationship between svmon, vmstat, and ipcs output
• Categorize the memory in use on the system by segment type
• Identify which processes are using the most memory or paging space
• Describe the characteristics of asynchronous I/O, synchronous I/O, direct I/O, and concurrent I/O
• Identify if the expected type of I/O is being executed
• Tune asynchronous I/O

You are expected to have extensive AIX skills. These skills can be obtained by attending the following courses:

• AIX Power Systems for AIX IV: Performance Management (AN510) or have the equivalent extensive AIX skills

Day 1

• Welcome
• Unit 1: AIX trace facilities
• Exercise 1: AIX trace facilities
• Unit 2: Advanced memory topics – I
• Exercise 1: AIX trace facilities (Part 3)
• Exercise 2: Advanced memory topics – I

Day 2

• Unit 3: Advanced memory topics – II
• Exercise 3: Advanced memory tropics – II
• Unit 4: Advanced CPU topics – I
• Exercise 4: Advanced CPU topics – I
• (Optional) Exercise 4: Advanced CPU topics – I (Part 2)

Day 3

• Unit 5: Advanced CPU topics – II
• Exercise 5: Advanced CPU topics – II
• Unit 6: Advanced I/O topics – I
• Exercise 6: Advanced I/O topics – I (Part 1)
• (Optional) Exercise 5: Advanced CPU topics – II
• (Parts 2 and 3)

Day 4

• Exercise 6: Advanced I/O topics – I (Part 2)
• Unit 7: Advanced I/O topics – II
• Exercise 7: Advanced I/O topics – II
• (Optional) Exercise 7: Advanced I/O topics – II (Part 3)