NA UserGuide v52 1

NMON_Analyser User Guide Version 3.
1 Last update 18-10-17 16:10
NMON_Analyser User Guide for V5.2.1

Preface
NMON_Analyser is designed to complement NMON (Nigels Monitor) in analysing and
reporting performance problems; it produces graphs for virtually all sections of output created
using the spreadsheet output mode of NMON as well as doing some additional analyses for
ESS, EMC and FAStT subsystems. It will also work with files produced by topasout and with
other tools that produce data in NMON format.
For Windows users: It is written using Excel 2016 and shoud work with Excel 2007 or later. It
may work also on Excel 2003 with the required Microsoft updates to support .xlsx files
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/924074?wa=wsignin1.0
For Mac users: It is tested using Excel for Mac 2016. It should work with earlier versions such
as Excel 2011 but has not been recently tested.
Please note: If you wish to collect very large nmon files (10+ MB) and attempt to use the
NMON Analyser against them, then you should install 64-bit Microsoft Excel 2013 or 2016.
Installing 64-bit Excel is critical or you will likely run out of memory and it will fail. You also
need to have 8 GB RAM and preferably more.
NMON was originally written by Nigel Griffiths (nag@uk.ibm.com) and is now (since AIX 5.3
TL09 and AIX 6.1 TL02) part of topas. NMON_Analyser was originally written by Stephen
Atkins with contributions from many people including Ralf Schmidt-Dannert and Markus
Fehling, both of IBM. Currently nmon Analyzer is maintained by Ron McCargar
(mccargar@us.ibm.com.)
Support for NMON_Analyser is provided on a best efforts basis. Please direct questions to the
User Forum (see below) rather than contact the author direct.
Links:
NMON_Analyser home page
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Power%20Systems/page/n
mon_analyser
User Forum
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/forum?id=11111111-
0000-0000-0000-000000000749&ps=25
New in V5.2.1
Tested on Excel 2016: Please note you may experience the following issue texttocolumns
method of range class failed a possible work around:
I installed Excel 2016 on my mac. I open excel , enable macros run the latest analyzer. It fails with
texttocolumns method of range class failed. Then i see in the background that the Sheet2 has no data
Page 1 of 32
NMON_Analyser User Guide Version 3.0 Last update 18-10-17 16:10
in column A, i.e. data didn't get copied into Excel from the .nmon file. I put in a 1 into first cell of column
A (could add any data really to avoid the error) and hit the button to continue. Then it fails like it should
saying "no valid nmon data".
I shut down Excel and I came back in again later rerun the analyzer and I did not get the problem it
seemed like a 1 time thing, it ran through it successfully. Tested it a few more times, it doesnt happen
anymore. Uncertain what caused this to fail the 1st time but FYI
New in V5.2
Add Merge support when running on a Mac.
New in V5.12
Fixed problems if running on Mac Excel 2016
New in V5.1
If Merge = Yes then the 1st file's data would appear twice incorrectly.
The Avg and Max CPU% on the SYS_SUMM column was being calculated incorrectly.
The default save format used on a Mac may not have been set correctly in some cases.
If importing multiple .nmon files that contain multiple "AAA,x86," records popup errors would be
shown to the user.
New in V5.0.2
Added support to run nmon Analyzer on a Mac with Excel 2011 or higher. Please note the
following limitations: Pivot charts don't work, Merge option doesn't work.
Fixed a problem when trying to import very large .nmon files it may fail.
On the AAA sheet renamed the "elapsed" value given to "Analysis time" (the elapsed time it took Excel to
analyze the nmon file)
Enabling PIVOT charts would crash the analyzer on Excel 2010 and higher and has been fixed.
(Analyser - PIVOT = YES)
On the Analyser's Settings - DELIM value the user can now specify any value desired.
In ProcessFile() added a check for EOF before doing the import to possibly avoid an error.
Graphs that show Avg/Wavg/Max will now show Avg/Wavg on the Y1 axis and Min/Max as lines
on the Y2 axis. Also if the Analyzer Output option SyncAxis is YES then the Y1 and Y2
Several graphs were not sorted previously based on the Analyser's Settings - SORTDEFAULT
value but are now.
Added On Error Resume Next in a few spots in order to be better able to analyze huge data sets
without failing prematurely.
Added new options SHOWMACPROGRESS and SHOWLINUXCPUUTIL
New in V4.7
Added a check for Power 8 and SMT mode 8. In previous versions no check exists which
defaults the number of CPUs shown to 2 on the CPU_SUMM sheet.
New in V4.6
If an INTERVAL range was specified the CPU_SUMM sheet would contain no data.
If the SORTDEFAULT setting was set to YES then sheets like NETPACKET would incorrectly
display a SortKey value on the graph.
If the LPAR sheet didn't exist, then SYS_SUMM graph would not display CPU% as expected.
Page 2 of 32
On the SYS_SUMM sheet if the LPAR sheet exists, the CPU% column will be now what it was
back with analyzer version 3.4a or Avg CPU% "=M4/LPAR!C2*100." and Max CPU% =
"=M4/LPAR!C2*100.".
If the nmon data contained ERROR tags, the resulting ERROR sheet would incorrectly list
thousands of columns at the end containing 'N/A'
New in V4.3
Added a new setting called SORTDEFAULT. This setting indicates if the 1st graph on 'default'
sheets (ones not handled else where by the Analyzer) are sorted. Note: If Yes, this will also
reorder the columns.
Added support for the CPU_ALL, CPUnnn Steal% column that is being added to nmon for Linux.
New in V4.2
On the LPAR sheet on the 1st graph the Unfolded VPs value was incorrectly removed.
Support for checking for EMC/PowerPath disks was broken. The EMC graphs are
available again.
The EMC check problem caused the disk graphs showing Avg, Wavg, Max to not be
sorted with the highest Avg + Wavg first.
Many additional sheets now have their Avg, Wavg, Max graphs sorted with the highest
Avg + Wavg first (FC*, etc)
New in V4.0
The elapsed time value produced on AAA was incorrect previously. It did not include
the time to open the file(s) and sort the data.
Added a new option on the Analyser sheet called BIGDATA. Use this if you have large
lines (up to 32K) or > 1048576 rows.
The analyzer would fail on Excel 2007 if > 1048576 rows were encountered. Use
BIGDATA=YES.
The maximum allowed rows per .nmon file is now unlimited (based on available
Excel/PC memory)
The SORTINP setting has been removed. Data is now always sorted.
On the SYS_SUMM sheet the CPU% values were wrong and have been changed to the
sum of users% + Sys% for each line.
On the SYS_SUMM sheet added the following additional fields from the LPAR tab (it it
exists): Virtual CPUs, Other LPARs, Pool CPUs, Entitled, Weight
On the LPAR tab the 1st and 3rd graphs showed incorrect values.
Updated nmon analyzer to check for either hdiskpower, emcpower or just power when
determining if EMC data is present.
Analysis supports any number of columns up to the Excel maximum of 16684. On large
data sets (> 10 MB) you most likely will require 64-bit Windows however and a
minimum of 8 GB of RAM.
NPIV header was incorrectly shown at the bottom of the sheet previously.
NPIV and SEALICTRAFFIC sheets will no longer show any graphs (due to potential
huge size.)
New in V3.5
Page 3 of 32
Added SCATTER option to include/exclude TOP CPU% by PID graph to avoid crash
with Excel 2013
New in V3.4
Improved support for Excel 2007 and 2010
Support for 64-bit Windows
Ability to specify time values instead of interval numbers
Wildcard support in LIST
Limit the overall number of CPU, PCPU and SCPU sheets generated
Add graphs for the PCPU and SCPU sheets
Correct handling of the DISKRXFER sheet
Fix a bug with the MERGE option
Automatically include CPU_SUMM, DISK_SUMM and SYS_SUMM in LIST
Page 4 of 32
Table of Contents
Preface ...........................................................................................................................................................................1
New in V3.4 ...............................................................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents...........................................................................................................................................................5
Collecting data using NMON ........................................................................................................................................7
Collecting data using topas (xmwlm) ............................................................................................................................8
Using NMON_Analyser ................................................................................................................................................8
Analyser options ........................................................................................................................................................9
National Language Settings ..................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Batch Processing Options ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Formatting Options .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Pivot Chart ............................................................................................................................................................... 11
Printing Options ....................................................................................................................................................... 11
Web Publishing Options .......................................................................................................................................... 12
Interpreting the output sections ................................................................................................................................... 12
Notes on the Weighted Average as used in the Analyser ..................................................................................... 12
SYS_SUMM ............................................................................................................................................................ 13
AAA ........................................................................................................................................................................ 13
BBBB ...................................................................................................................................................................... 14
BBBC ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBD ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBE....................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBG ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBL....................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBN ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBP ....................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBR ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15
BBBV ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15
CPUnnn ................................................................................................................................................................... 15
CPU_ALL................................................................................................................................................................ 16
CPU_SUMM ........................................................................................................................................................... 16
General notes for DISK, ESS, EMC, FASt and DG sheets ..................................................................................... 16
EMC/PowerPath subsystems ............................................................................................................................... 17
FAStT subsystems ............................................................................................................................................... 17
DGBUSY ................................................................................................................................................................. 17
DGREAD ................................................................................................................................................................ 17
DGSIZE ................................................................................................................................................................... 17
DGWRITE ............................................................................................................................................................... 18
DGXFER ................................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISKBSIZE ............................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISKBUSY ............................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISKREAD ............................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISKSERV.............................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISKWAIT ............................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISKWRITE ........................................................................................................................................................... 18
DISKXFER.............................................................................................................................................................. 18
DISK_SUMM .......................................................................................................................................................... 18
DONATE ................................................................................................................................................................. 19
EMCBSIZE/FAStBSIZE ......................................................................................................................................... 19
EMCBUSY/FAStBUSY .......................................................................................................................................... 19
EMCREAD/FAStREAD ......................................................................................................................................... 19
EMCWRITE/FAStWRITE ...................................................................................................................................... 19
EMCXFER/FAStXFER ........................................................................................................................................... 19
EMCSERV/FAStSERV ........................................................................................................................................... 19
Page 5 of 32
ERROR .................................................................................................................................................................... 19
ESSBSIZE ............................................................................................................................................................... 19
ESSBUSY................................................................................................................................................................ 19
ESSREAD ............................................................................................................................................................... 20
ESSWRITE.............................................................................................................................................................. 20
ESSXFER ................................................................................................................................................................ 20
FCREAD ................................................................................................................................................................. 20
FCWRITE................................................................................................................................................................ 20
FCXFERIN .............................................................................................................................................................. 20
FCXFEROUT .......................................................................................................................................................... 20
FILE ......................................................................................................................................................................... 20
FRCA....................................................................................................................................................................... 21
IOADAPT................................................................................................................................................................ 21
IP ............................................................................................................................................................................. 21
JFSFILE ................................................................................................................................................................... 21
JFSINODE ............................................................................................................................................................... 21
LAN ......................................................................................................................................................................... 21
LARGEPAGE ......................................................................................................................................................... 21
LPAR ....................................................................................................................................................................... 22
MEM........................................................................................................................................................................ 23
MEMUSE ................................................................................................................................................................ 23
MEMNEW .............................................................................................................................................................. 24
MEMPAGES4K/64K/16MB/16GB ........................................................................................................................ 24
MEMREAL ............................................................................................................................................................. 24
MEMVIRT .............................................................................................................................................................. 24
NET ......................................................................................................................................................................... 24
NETPACKET .......................................................................................................................................................... 25
NETSIZE ................................................................................................................................................................. 25
NFS sheets ............................................................................................................................................................... 25
PAGE ....................................................................................................................................................................... 25
POOLS .................................................................................................................................................................... 26
PROC ....................................................................................................................................................................... 26
PROCAIO................................................................................................................................................................ 27
RAWCPUTOTAL, RAWLPAR .............................................................................................................................. 27
TCPUDP .................................................................................................................................................................. 27
TOP.......................................................................................................................................................................... 27
Interpreting the %Processor by PID chart ........................................................................................................... 29
UARG ...................................................................................................................................................................... 29
VM........................................................................................................................................................................... 29
WPAR sheets ........................................................................................................................................................... 29
WLM sheets ............................................................................................................................................................. 29
ZZZZ ....................................................................................................................................................................... 30
Error Handling ............................................................................................................................................................. 30
Common problems .................................................................................................................................................. 30
Known bugs/problems (V3.4, topas_nmon) ............................................................................................................ 30
How to report a problem .............................................................................................................................................. 31
Excel/VBA Resources/Links ....................................................................................................................................... 31
Appendix: Notes on Batch Operation .......................................................................................................................... 32
Sample .bat files ...................................................................................................................................................... 32
getcsv.bat ............................................................................................................................................................. 32
analyser.bat .......................................................................................................................................................... 32
putxls.bat ............................................................................................................................................................. 32
Control.txt ............................................................................................................................................................ 32
NMON Analyser Batch.xls .................................................................................................................................. 32
Page 6 of 32
Collecting data using NMON

Please make sure you have the latest versions of both NMON and NMON_Analyser before
starting a new engagement. If you want automatic notification of a new release of the Analyser
send a note to steve_atkins@uk.ibm.com and Ill add you to my distribution list. Nigel maintains a
similar list for NMON.
You will need to have root privileges in order to get a complete set of data on the BBBP sheet.
In order to collect data for the DISKBUSY sheets you need to make sure that iostat data
collection is enabled:
chdev -l sys0 -a iostat=true
For spreadsheet output mode (comma separated values) use the following flags when invoking
nmon:
-f spreadsheet output format [note: default -s300 -c288]
Output file is <hostname>_YYYYMMDD_HHMM.nmon
-F <filename> same as -f but user supplied filename
-c <number> number of snapshots
-d requests disk service and wait times (DISKSERV and DISKWAIT)
-i <percent> Ignore processes using less than this amount of CPU when generating
TOP section useful for reducing data volumes
-g <filename> file containing disk group definitions
-l <dpl> number of hdisks per sheet - defaults to 150, maximum 250. See notes
-m <dir> NMON changes to this directory before saving the file
-r <runname> goes into spreadsheet file [default hostname]
-s <seconds> interval between snap shots
-x capacity planning (15 mins for 1 day = -fdt -s900 -c96)
-t include top processes in the output
-T as t plus saves command line arguments in UARG section
-A include data for async I/O (PROCAIO) sections
-D prevents DISK sections being produced (useful when Disk Groups are
being used because there are too many hdisks to process)
-E stops ESS sections being produced (necessary when Disk Groups are
being used because there are too many vpaths to process)
-J prevents JFS sections being produced (prevents Excel errors when you
have more than 255 filesystems)
-L includes LARGEPAGE section
-N include NFS sections
-S include WLM sections with subclasses
-W include WLM sections without subclasses
-Y include SUMMARY section (very efficient alternative to t if PID level
data is not required)
example: nmon_aix51 -F asterix.nmon -r Test1 -s6 -c12
Notes:
1. The f (or F) flag must appear first.
Page 7 of 32
2. The value of the -l flag controls the number of hdisks per sheet on the DISK sheets and per
line on the BBBD sheet. There are two factors to consider when choosing this value. Excel
has a limit of 256 columns per sheet; however, both NMON and NMON_Analyser use some
columns, so the upper limit is really 250. The second factor is that Excel VBA has an upper
limit of 2048 bytes for input line length. This particularly affects users of EMC systems that
use long hdisk names (e.g. hdiskpower123). The default of 150 is safe for such systems.
Other users may set the value to 250 in order to reduce the number of output sheets.
3. Consider the value of the -s flag very carefully. The shorter the interval between snapshots,
the more variable the values for each resource will be. If you use an interval of 1 second,
dont be surprised to see many of your disks hitting 100% busy for short periods. For normal
monitoring, 10-minute intervals (-c 600) provide a good balance.
4. The graphs produced by NMON_Analyser look best when the number of snapshots
(specified by the -c flag) is 300 or less.
5. The TOP section (produced by specifying the -t flag) can generate large amounts of output
and the size of the output can grow exponentially if a large value is specified for the -c flag.
If you want the TOP section then specify no more than 250 snapshots - ideally less.
Collecting data using topas (xmwlm)

You need AIX V5.3 TL5 Service pack 4 with APAR IY87993 or later. Note that only the
output using the a flag can be analysed. In particular, cross-partition statistics cannot be
analysed; if you wish to get a report for the entire machine, collect data from each LPAR
separately and then use NMON_Consolidator to merge the data. Commands like the following
are required to collect the data.
topasout -a /etc/perf/daily/xmwlm.yymmdd
:
cp /etc/perf/daily/xmwlm.yymmdd_01 hostname.ddmmyy.topasout.csv
Using NMON_Analyser
FTP the input file to your PC ideally using the ASCI or TEXT options to make sure that
lines are terminated with the CRLF characters required by Windows applications.
Open the NMON_Analyser spreadsheet and specify the options you want on the Analyser
and Settings sheets (see below). Save the spreadsheet if you want to make these options
your personal defaults.
Click on the "Analyse nmon data" button and find/select the .nmon file(s) to be processed.
You may select several files in the same directory. If you wish to process several files in
different directories you may wish to consider using the FILELIST option described below.
You may see the message SORT command failed for filename if the file has >65K
lines and the filename (or directory name) contains blanks or special characters. Either
rename the file/directory or just pre-sort the file before using the Analyser.
Page 8 of 32
Analyser options
GRAPHS The first option is

either ALL or LIST. If the value is LIST then only those sheets
which appear in the LIST on the Settings sheet will have graphs drawn for them.
This option is particularly useful if the graphs are to be printed/published or to
reduce the amount of memory/fonts/disk space required when analysing files from
large systems.
The second is either CHARTS, PICTURES, PRINT or WEB. The meaning of these are
as follows:
CHARTS produce Excel charts in-place on the
selected sheets
PICTURES graphs will be produced on a separate
Charts sheets as pictures. Selecting this option can reduce
the size of the output file by up to 90%.
PRINT implies PICTURES. Pictures will be printed to the
designated printer (see Printing Options below)
WEB implies PICTURES. Automated web publishing
(see Web Publishing below)
INTERVALS specifies the first and last time interval to be processed. Intervals outside this
range will be discarded after parsing. Note that these are numbers between 1-
999999 and are not time values. Setting a value of 2 for the first interval is useful
in discarding the very large numbers that often appear at the start of an NMON
collection run with AIX. If you have used a splitter program on the input file, or
if you are analysing data from a LINUX system, then you should leave this as 1.
TIMES specifies the first and last time/date to be processed. Samples outside this range
will be discarded after parsing. They can be specified in any form recognised by
Excel as time/date values; e.g.
14:00:10 16:15:30
4-Aug-12 6-Aug-12
18:00 28/6/12 04:00
Notes:
Specifying a date without a time is the same as specifying a time of 00:00.
If the second time is less than the first then Analyser will assume the
second time is in the next calendar day
If there are no qualifying intervals in the file a message will be issued:
Invalid values for FIRST/LAST - values reset to 1/999999
and the entire file will be processed.
MERGE Note: This option doesnt work on a Mac.
specifying YES here results in NMON_Analyser merging all of the input files to
form a single file. The input files must be unsorted. By default the Analyser will
delete the TOP and UARG sections during the merge process; specify TOP to
prevent this from happening but be aware that processing time will be increased
and that if the TOP section exceeds the maximum number of lines per sheet
(depending on the version of Excel) then data will be lost. Specify KEEP to stop
the merged file from being deleted at the end of the run. Specify ONLY if you
simply want to create a merged file for future analysis.
Page 9 of 32
PIVOT Note: This option doesnt work on a Mac.

specifying YES here results in NMON_Analyser creating a Pivot Chart from the
specified sheet after all other processing (including printing/publishing the other
charts) has completed. See additional parameters on the Settings sheet.
SCATTER Indicates if Scatter charts shall be included. Applies to TOP CPU% by PID chart only.
This option is to avoid a possible Excel 2013 crash.
BIGDATA Set to YES if your data has > 1048576 rows or large lines (up to 32K.) Set this to NO to
improve performance but the Analyzer will fail if a large line is encountered and data will
also be truncated at 1048576 rows.
ESS specifying NO here results in NMON_Analyser bypassing the additional analysis
performed for ESS subsystems. This will result in faster analysis and can allow
larger files to be analysed successfully when out of memory errors occur.
SYNCAXIS On graphs that show Avg/Wavg on Y1 and Min/Max on Y2 the Maximum scales will be
set to the same value.
SHOWMACPROGRESS Note: This option has no effect on Windows. On a MAC refreshing
the screen to show progress in status bar will make things 3 to 5 times slower!
SHOWLINUXCPUUTIL When analyzing Linux data a value of YES indicates that all of the
CPUUTILnnn sheets will be included. CPUUTIL_ALL will always be included (if it exists.)
FILELIST the name of a control file containing a list of nmon output files to be processed by
the Analyser. Leave this field blank for normal operation. The name must be
fully qualified (e.g. c:\nmon\testcases\filenames.txt). The names
specified in the text file must contain full path information. Wildcard characters
may be included in the filenames so long as they conform to Windows standards.
For example:
c:\nmon\testcases\*.nmon
NB: if you save the spreadsheet with a value in this field, the Analyser will
automatically begin execution the next time you open it. This is defined as batch
mode (see Appendix). You can stop the execution by pressing Ctrl+Break or by
deleting/renaming the Control File.
Batch Processing Options

The following fields can be found on the Settings sheet.
REPROC Change this to NO if you want to bypass processing of input files which may have
been processed in a previous run. This is useful if you make use of wildcards in
the batch control file. Note that the REPROC option only takes effect when you
have specified more than one input file.
OUTDIR the name of an existing directory in which output files will be saved by default.
This is primarily intended for batch operation (see FILELIST above) but also works
to set the default directory for interactive sessions. If the directory does not exist
(or OUTDIR is blank) then output files are saved back to the same directory as the
corresponding input files.
Example: C:\NMON\Analyser\Output\
Formatting Options
Page 10 of 32
BBBFont Enter the name of a fixed pitch font to be used for formatting the BBBC and
BBBP sheets. Courier provides acceptable results.
GWIDTH Change the values in this row to make the generated graphs bigger or smaller.
The default value of 0 means that the Analyser will dynamically size the graphs
according to your screen size, font settings or page size. Be careful not to set a
value larger than your page width when printing.
GHEIGHT Change the values in this row to make the generated graphs bigger or smaller. If
you specify a value here you must also specify a value for GWIDTH.
LIST A comma-separated list a sheets for which the Analyser is to draw graphs. Only
used if the GRAPHS option is set to LIST. The list can contain any valid wildcard
characters recognised by Excel, e.g. EMC*
Note: graphs are always drawn for SYS_SUMM, CPU_SUMM and
DISK_SUMM
NOLIST The default is KEEP. If you change this to DELETE then all sheets which do not
appear in LIST will be deleted after analysis. This can dramatically reduce the
size of files that are to be kept for long periods.
CPUmax Specifies the maximum number of CPUnnn, PCPUnnn and SCPUnnn sheets that
will be generated. The default value of 0 will choose all sheets for an LPAR
using dedicated processors and number equal to the SMT mode for an LPAR
using shared processors.
REORDER specifying YES here results in NMON_Analyser reordering the sheets to improve
navigation to more relevant information.
TOPDISKS the maximum number of hdisks/vpaths to include on disk graphs. A value of 0
produces graphs containing all the hdisks on a sheet (up to 250). Graphs
containing more than 50 hdisks will be automatically scaled to fit and may
therefore exceed the size of the screen.
xToD Format to be used for timestamps on Time of Day graphs. Anything acceptable to
Excel as a Number Format Code may be entered. Default is hh:mm. Note that
the date is also available within the timestamp and you may therefore use
something like dd-mmm-yy hh:mm if, for example, you have merged multiple
NMON files together. If you use something other than the default string you may
need to increase the value of GHEIGHT experiment with different values if you
dont see what you expect.
SORTDEFAULT This setting indicates if the 1st graph on 'default' sheets (ones not handled else
where by the Analyzer) are sorted. Note: If Yes, this will also reorder the
columns.
Pivot Chart
These parameters are used to construct a pivot chart. The required parameters are: Sheetname,
PageField, RowField, ColumnField, DataField and xlFunction (can be COUNT, SUM, MIN, AVG,
MAX). This is primarily useful for the TOP and SUMMARY sheets but might prove useful for
other, possibly user-supplied, data sheets.
Printing Options
The following fields can be found on the Settings sheet. Note - these only take effect if you
select PRINT for the OUTPUT option on the Analyser sheet.
Page 11 of 32
LSCAPE Change to YES if you want the Analyser to set the page orientation to Landscape.
By default the Analyser will fit one chart per page when printing landscape.
COPIES Set to the number of copies to be printed.
PRINTER The name of the printer. Specifying a value of PREVIEW will cause the Analyser
to invoke the Excel print preview function - useful for testing. You may also
specify DEFAULT to print to the system default printer or the name of network
printer.
The Analyser adds page headers and footers.
Web Publishing Options

PNG Change to NO if your browser cant handle the PNG graphics format. Graphics
will be generated as GIF files.
SUBDIR If this is YES then all supporting files, such as background textures and graphics,
are organized in a separate folder. If this is NO then supporting files are saved in
the same folder as the Web page.
WEBDIR the name of an existing directory in which HTML files will be saved by default.
If the directory does not exist (or OUTDIR is blank) then output files are saved
back to the same directory as the corresponding input file.
Example: C:\NMON\Analyser\HTML\
Interpreting the output sections

Notes on the Weighted Average as used in the Analyser
Several graphs produced by the Analyser show average, weighted average and maximum values.
Although everyone understands averages and maximums, the concept of a weighted average is a
little more difficult to grasp.
One of the problems we are faced with in analysing sample data is that resources on the target
system may be idle for long periods during the collection. For example, the NMON data
collection may be started some time before the system reaches peak utilisation and may not be
stopped until the workload being monitored has long since finished. Although this does not
affect the maximums it can severely affect the accuracy of the averages.
The idea of a weighted average is to apply a weighting factor to each snapshot to indicate how
relevant that snapshot is to the average. In NMON_Analyser, we use the value of the
measurement itself as the weighting factor. In effect, this produces a figure that shows how
busy a resource is when it is active. For example: a database log disk is only active during the
middle part of a benchmark. We record the following figures for %tm_act (DISKBUSY):
Snapshot %tm_act
1 0
2 0
3 0
4 0
5 0
Page 12 of 32
6 6.1
7 6.3
8 6.5
9 9.1
10 5.9
11 0
12 0
13 0
14 0
15 0
The average for this set of data is 2.3 and the weighted average is 7.0. The weighted average
gives a better picture of how busy the disk is while logging is taking place. NMON_Analyser
uses the weighted average as a sort key when sorting the contents of disk sheets.
Note that, occasionally, NMON generates very large numbers for the first interval and this
heavily skews the weighted average values. If you see this problem occurring then change the
value for the FIRST parameter to 2 in order to exclude the first interval completely. This is only
a problem for AIX.
SYS_SUMM
This section is entirely generated by the Analyser and contains a useful summary of data taken
from other sheets. Note the the avg/max values for User%, Sys%, Wait% and Idle% are
independent and will not add up to 100%. The CPU% column shows avg/max values for the
sum of usr%+sys% during each interval. For micro-partitions, the values are shown as a
percentage of the Virtual Processors they do not relate to the CPU_ALL values.
For non-partitioned or dedicated CPU partitions the graph shows the total CPU Utilisation (%usr
+ %sys) together with the Disk I/O rate (taken from the DISKXFER sheet) by time of day. For
micro-partitions the graph shows the number of physical CPUs being used instead of CPU%.
The value Max:Avg is simply the maximum value divided by the average. If monitored over a
long period of time the value for CPU% can be useful in spotting a system reaching saturation
level (the ratio will steadily decrease). If you have historical data then the value can also be
useful in determining how much latent demand is present in a system running at saturation level.
AAA
The AAA section is generated by NMON at the start of the data collection and contains
information about the system and NMON itself contents vary by release, following is for 12e
AIX this is the release / maintenance level of AIX being used on the target system as
reported by the lslpp command.
build the particular build of nmon used to collect this data
command the command line used to invoke NMON and the date when it finished.
Page 13 of 32
cpus the number of CPUs in the system and the number active at the start of data
collection.
date date at the start of the collection.
disks_per_line the setting of the -l flag on the NMON command line or the default value.
hardware the processor technology used in the target system.
host the hostname of the target system.
Interval the time (in seconds) between snapshots.
kernel information from the kernel - useful in identifying the type of kernel (32-bit or 64-
bit) and whether this is an LPAR.
LPARNumberName the LPAR number followed by the name
MachineType machine type and model of the system
progname the name of the NMON executable.
runname taken from the NMON command line if specified using the -r parameter, else
defaults to hostname.
SerialNumber the machine serial number
snapshots the number of snapshots - this is used by the Analyser. The Analyser will modify
this value to match the number of snapshots actually found in the input file.
steal this value will be a 1 if running on Linux and Steal% CPU is provided in the CPUnnn and
CPU_ALL data.
subversion detailed information about the nmon version used to collect this data including
the date and time it was created.
time time as shown by the system clock at the start of the collection. Also see date
value.
timestampsize the number of characters used for timestamps in each record. The default is 5.
TL the Technology Level of the AIX release
user the name of the user executing the NMON command.
version the version of NMON used to collect this data.
VIOS the release/maintenance level if this is a VIOS LPAR.
analyser the version of NMON_Analyser used to generate the output file together with the
elapsed time (in seconds) for processing this file.
environment the version of Excel you are using.
parms the values of most of the user options specified on the Analyser sheet.
settings the values of most of the user options specified on the Settings sheet.
Analysis time the execution time of the Analyser. I use this for tuning.
NodeName the name of the LPARs node name
NMON_Analyser deletes the NOTES lines generated by NMON.
BBBB
The BBBB sheet lists all of the disks listed in the ODM together with the capacity (in Gbytes)
and the adapter type (SCSI/SSA/Fibre) as reported by lsdev. Note that some fibre-attached
devices do not report their capacity to AIX.
NMON_Analyser deletes the column containing the sort key generated by NMON on all BBB
sheets.
Page 14 of 32
BBBC
The BBBC sheet shows the output from the lspv command for all local disks at the start of the
data collection. The Analyser highlights the hdisk name using a bold font and sets the sheet to
use the fixed-pitch font specified on the NLS sheet (default Courier) in order to improve
readability.
BBBD
The BBBD sheet shows a list of all I/O adapters listed in the ODM together with the hdisks
addressed through that adapter.
BBBE
The BBBE sheet contains data extracted from the lsdev command and shows the mapping
between vpaths and hdisks. NMON_Analyser uses this information to construct the ESSBUSY,
ESSRSIZE and ESSWSIZE sheets.
BBBG
The BBBG sheet contains details of the NMON disk group mappings.
BBBL
The BBBL sheet is only produced if the operating system is running in a partitions and contains
details of the configuration of the LPAR at the start of the collection run.
BBBN
The BBBN describes each network adapter in the system and shows the name, speed and MTU
size.
BBBP
The BBBP sheet contains the un-interpreted output from the emstat and lsattr commands. Note
that to get output from these commands requires NMON to be running with root privileges.
The Analyser sets the sheet to use the fixed-pitch font specified on the NLS sheet (default
Courier) in order to improve readability.
BBBR
This sheet records dynamic LPAR reconfiguration events during the collection run.
BBBV
This sheet lists all of the volume groups present at the start of the collection run.
CPUnnn
These sheets show %usr, %sys, %wait and %idle by time of day for each logical processor. Note
that for micropartitions the Idle% and Wait% figures will include times when the physical
processor was ceded to the shared pool.
NMON_Analyser generates a graph and a column headed CPU% containing the sum of %usr
and %sys for use on the CPU_SUMM sheet. The Analyser also adds blank intervals for CPUs
Page 15 of 32
that are varied online during the collection interval so that the graphs cover the entire collection
period.
If REORDER is set to YES on the Control sheet the Analyser will move all CPUnn sheets to the
end of the file.
CPU_ALL
This sheet shows the average utilisation for all physical threads by time of day. Note that for
micro-partitions CPU% is a measure of utilisation vs the entitlement but is adjusted by
libperfstat so that it never exceeds 100%; this makes the numbers virtually useless for
analysis of uncapped partitions and you may choose to look at the charts on the LPAR
sheet instead. Note also that micro-partitions generally record very little Idle% or Wait% because
they will normally cede their timeslice to other LPARs rather than waste CPU time waiting for
work. If the CPUmax value is lower than the number of physical threads in use then the graph
title will show the number of threads excluded.
The second graph shows the number of active CPUs by time of day and is useful in determining
whether CPUs have been varied on/off during the collection period. If the system has SMT
enabled then the Analyser shows logical CPUs rather than physical CPUs and the legend reports
SMT=ON.
CPU_SUMM
The Analyser generates this sheet from data on the CPUnnn sheets. It gives a breakdown of
CPU Utilisation by thread (logical processor) and by core over the collection period. The chart
can be very useful in identifying situations in which the system is thread-starved (i.e. too few
threads to fully utilise the logical processors) or where the workload is dominated by a small
number of single-threaded processes.
Note that if CPUs have been dynamically reconfigured during the collection period, these figures
reflect only those intervals when the CPU was varied on.
General notes for DISK, ESS, EMC, FASt and DG sheets

The DISK sheets record device statistics for each hdisk in the system. If there are more than
<dpl> hdisks in the system (see "Collecting data using NMON" above) NMON generates multiple
output sections. DISKBUSY will therefore contain device busy statistics for the first group of
hdisks, DISKBUSY1 for the next, DISKBUSY2 for the next and so on.
The Analyser will normally sort the contents of the sheet in ascending sequence using the
weighted average values as a sort key. However, if a storage subsystem is detected then sorting
of the DISK sheets is disabled and the ESS/EMC/FASt/DG sheet contents are sorted instead.
If the number of hdisks (or vpaths) on the sheet exceeds the value specified for TOPDISKS (see
Analyser options above), the graph will only show information for the specified number of
disks and a warning will appear in the graph title.
Page 16 of 32
If REORDER is set to YES on the Control sheet the Analyser will move all but the DISKBUSY,
DISK_SUMM and DISKSERV sheets to the end of the file when a storage subsystem or Disk
Group is detected. The rationale behind this being that the ESS/EMC/FASt/DG sheets contain
the most useful data and that the DISK sheets merely replicate it. However, the DISKBUSY
sheet is useful for checking the activity on system disks (normally local) and the DISK_SUMM
sheet gives total data rates for the system (local + subsystem disks).
Note that NMON and NMON_Analyser can only handle a maximum of 250 vpaths in a system.
If you have more than this then you need to use the Disk Groups feature of NMON to select the
vpaths that are of primary interest.
EMC/PowerPath subsystems
NMON_Analyser detects the presence of an EMC/PowerPath subsystem by scanning the input
file for the string hdiskpower before starting the analysis. EMC PowerPath creates devices
called hdiskpowern which each map to multiple hdisks. They are therefore comparable to the
vpaths generated by ESS/SDD. However, unlike vpaths, hdiskpower devices appear to AIX
(and, therefore NMON) as real disks and NMON therefore records their activity on the DISK
sheets.
NMON_Analyser removes all hdiskpower entries from DISK sheets and moves them to new
sheets beginning with the letters EMC. For example, hdiskpower entries found on DISKBUSY1
are simply moved to a new sheet called EMCBUSY1. If a DISK sheet contains only hdiskpower
devices, that sheet is simply renamed.
All device statistics reported by the Analyser (e.g. System I/O rates) are correct and as NMON
excludes hdiskpower activity from the IOADAPT statistics these figures are also correct.
FAStT subsystems
NMON_Analyser detects the presence of a FAStT subsystem by scanning the input file for the
string dac before starting the analysis. They are handled in the same way as EMC/PowerPath
subsystems except that the dac devices are moved to sheets with names beginning "FASt".
Note that the Analyser is not able to correctly handle systems having both EMC and FASt
subsystems.
DGBUSY
This sheet records the average value of device busy for each hdisk in the NMON Disk Group.
DGREAD
This sheet records the average data rate (Kbytes/sec) for read operations to each NMON Disk
Group.
DGSIZE
This sheet records the average data transfer size (block size), in Kbytes, for read/write operations
to each NMON Disk Group.
Page 17 of 32
DGWRITE
This sheet records the average data rate (Kbytes/sec) for write operations to each NMON Disk
Group.
DGXFER
This sheet records the total I/O operations per second to each NMON Disk Group.
DISKBSIZE
These sheets record the average data transfer size (block size), in Kbytes, for read/write
operations on each hdisk in the system. If this number is not very close to the stripe size for the
device there may be a problem that could be solved by increasing the value of numclust.
DISKBUSY
These sheets record device busy for each hdisk in the system. This is the same as the %tm_act
value recorded by iostat. Note that if this sheet contains all zero values then it means you forgot
to enable iostat collection before starting nmon:
chdev -l sys0 -a iostat=true
DISKREAD
These sheets record the data rate (Kbytes/sec) for read operations on each hdisk in the system.
DISKSERV
These sheets record the service times (in milliseconds) for read/write transfers to each hdisk in
the system.
DISKWAIT
These sheets record the queue times (in milliseconds) for read/write transfers to each hdisk in the
system.
DISKWRITE
These sheets record the data rate (Kbytes/sec) for write operations on each hdisk in the system.
DISKXFER
These sheets record the I/O operations per second for each hdisk in the system. This is the same
as the tps value recorded by iostat.
DISK_SUMM
The Analyser creates this sheet. It shows the total data rates (reads and writes) in Kbytes/sec
plus total I/O rates for all hdisks in the system. The figures on this sheet are accurate for all
systems including ESS, EMC, FASt and HDS configurations.
These data are displayed on the chart; the IO/sec data are also graphically displayed on the AAA
sheet.
Page 18 of 32
DONATE
This sheet records physical processor usage and donation to the shared pool. Only present for
dedicated LPARs running on POWER6 systems.
EMCBSIZE/FAStBSIZE
This sheet records the average data transfer size (blocksize), in Kbytes, for read/write operations
to each esoteric device in a system using EMC/PowerPath or FAStT.
EMCBUSY/FAStBUSY
These sheets record device busy for each esoteric device in a system using EMC/PowerPath or
FAStT.
EMCREAD/FAStREAD
These sheets record the data rate (Kbytes/sec) for read operations to each esoteric device in a
system using EMC/PowerPath or FAStT.
EMCWRITE/FAStWRITE
This sheet records the data rate (Kbytes/sec) for write operations to each esoteric device in a
system using EMC/PowerPath or FAStT.
EMCXFER/FAStXFER
These sheets record the I/O operations per second to each esoteric device in a system using
EMC/PowerPath or FAStT.
EMCSERV/FAStSERV
The Analyser creates this sheet. It shows estimated services times (not response times) for each
esoteric device over the collection interval. The service time is derived from the device busy
and the transfer rate taken from the corresponding BUSY and XFER sheets. Intervals where the
transfer rate is below SVCXLIM are ignored in order to improve the accuracy of the estimate.
ERROR
This sheet shows all errors reported by nmon during the collection run. FIRST/LAST intervals
are ignored for this sheet. Timestamps are not converted to time values.
ESSBSIZE
This sheet is only present if ESS is set to YES and records the average data transfer size
(blocksize), in Kbytes, for read/write operations on each vpath in the system. The data on this
sheet are calculated by NMON_Analyser as the average of the DISKBSIZE values for
component hdisks as recorded on the BBBE sheet.
ESSBUSY
This sheet is only present if ESS is set to YES and records device busy for each vpath in a system
using ESS. The data on this sheet are calculated by NMON_Analyser as the average of the
DISKBUSY values for component hdisks as recorded on the BBBE sheet.
Page 19 of 32
ESSREAD
This sheet records the data rate (Kbytes/sec) for read operations on each vpath in the system.
This information is provided by NMON.
ESSWRITE
This sheet records the data rate (Kbytes/sec) for write operations on each vpath in the system.
This information is provided by NMON.
ESSXFER
These sheets record the I/O operations per second for each vpath in the system. This
information is provided by NMON.
FCREAD
This sheet records the data rate (MBytes/sec) for read operations on each Fibre Channel adapter
in the system.
FCWRITE
This sheet records the data rate (MBytes/sec) for write operations on each Fibre Channel adapter
in the system.
FCXFERIN
This sheet records the read operations per second for each Fibre Channel adapter in the system.
FCXFEROUT
This sheet records the write operations per second for each Fibre Channel adapter in the system.
FILE
This sheet contains a subset of the fields reported by NMON on the Kernel Internal Statistics
panel. These are the same values as reported by the sar command.
All fields are rates/sec.

iget translations of i-node numbers to pointers to the i-node structure of a file or
device. This is reported as iget/s by the sar -a command. Calls to iget occur when a
call to to namei has failed to find a pointer in the i-node cache. This figure should
therefore be as close to 0 as possible.
namei calls to the directory search routine that finds the address of a v-node given a path
name. This is reported as lookuppn/s by the sar -a command.
dirblk number of 512-byte blocks read by the directory search routine to locate a
directory entry for a specific file. This is reported as dirblk/s by the sar -a
command.
readch characters transferred by read system call. This is reported as rchar/s by the sar -c
command
writech characters transferred by write system call. This is reported as wchar/s by the sar -c
command.
ttyrawch tty input queue characters. This is reported as rawch/s by the sar -y command.
Page 20 of 32
ttycanch tty canonical input queue characters. This field is always 0 (zero) for AIX Version
4 and later versions.
ttyoutch tty output queue characters. This is reported as outch/s by the sar -y command
NMON_Analyser produces two graphs - one showing rates/sec for readch and writech by time of
day and one showing rates/sec for iget, namei and dirblk.
FRCA
This sheet is only generated if FRCA is loaded on the target system. NMON_Analyser produces
a graph showing the cache hit ratio (as a percentage). If FRCA is not loaded, NMON generates
no data and the Analyser consigns the redundant header record to the StrayLines sheet.
IOADAPT
For each I/O adapter listed on the BBBC sheet, contains the data rates for both read and write
operations (Kbytes/sec) and total number of I/O operations performed. On AIX 5.1 and later, this
information is reported by the iostat -A command. NMON_Analyser reorders the columns on the
sheet for easier graphing.
The Analyser generates three graphs. Note the charts can be easily converted to line charts if
required. Simply right click on the white space within the chart area, then select Chart
Type>Line>OK.
IP
This sheet only appears for topasout.
JFSFILE
For each file system, this sheet shows what percentage of the space allocation is being used
during each interval. These figures are the same as the %Used value reported by the df
command. The column headings show the mount point; sheet BBBC can be used to cross-
reference to the file system/LV.
JFSINODE
For each file system, this sheet shows what percentage of the Inode allocation is being used
during each interval. These figures are the same as the %Iused value reported by the df
command. The column headings show the mount point; sheet BBBC can be used to cross-
reference to the file system/LV.
LAN
LARGEPAGE
The graph shows Usedpages and Freepages over time.
Columns on the sheet are as follows:
Freepages the number of large pages on the free list.
Page 21 of 32
Usedpages the number of large pages currently in use.

Pages the number of large pages in the pool.
HighWater the maximum number of pages used since the last reboot.
SizeMB the size of a large page in Mbytes.
LPAR
The first graph shows the number of physical processors used by this partition vs the
entitlement. For an uncapped partition the number of physical processors may exceed the
entitlement but can never exceed the number of virtual processors allocated to the partition. For
AIX the graph also shows the number of unfolded virtual processors (AIX will fold - stop
dispatching work to - excess processors in order to minimise scheduling costs).
Note that the ratio of physical processor to entitlement (shown as %entc in the output of the
lparstat command) will generally be higher than CPU% on the CPU_ALL sheet. The reason
for this is that a partition that is within its entitlement may wait for a short period of time before
ceding a processor that enters an I/O wait or becomes idle. This can eliminate unnecessary
context switches.
The second graph shows CPU utilisation as a percentage of virtual processors for AIX this is
broken down in to usr%, sys% and wait%. This level of detail is not available for Linux or
releases of NMON prior to version 12.
The third graph is only present for AIX systems and shows cpu utilisation of the shared pool by
this and other partitions. The area marked UsedPoolCPU% represents the percentage of the
shared pool that has been used by this partition, while the area marked other% represents the
percentage used by all other partitions. Note that if the partition is not authorised to see
utilisation of the shared pool then the pool will appear to be 100% utilised.
Columns on the sheet are as follows:

PhysicalCPU physical cores consumed by AIX
VirtualCPUs number of Virtual CPUs allocated to the LPAR
logicalCPUs number of threads (i.e. Virtual CPUs multiplied by SMT mode)
poolCPUs number of cores in the pool that this LPAR occupies
entitled the number of cores guaranteed to be available to this LPAR
weight the priority of this LPAR when competing for unused CPU cycles
PoolIdle the number of unused cores in the Pool
usedAllCPU% percentage of active cores in the machine that this LPAR is using
usedPoolCPU percentage of cores in the pool that this LPAR is using
SharedCPU 1 if the LPAR is not a dedicated CPU
Capped 1 if the LPAR is capped
EC_User% percentage of Entitlement used in User mode
EC_Sys% percentage of Entitlement used in System mode
EC_Wait% percentage of Entitlement waiting for I/O
EC_Idle% percentage of Entitlement used in Idle mode
VP_User% percentage of Virtual CPU used in User mode
Page 22 of 32
VP_Sys% percentage of Virtual CPU used in System mode

VP_Wait% percentage of Virtual CPU waiting for I/O
VP_Idle% percentage of Virtual CPU spent in Idle mode
Folded no. of Virtual CPUs unused for efficiency reasons
CPU_Pool_id the Id of the CPU pool, useful if there are multiple pools
MEM
The main graph on this sheet shows the amount of Real Free memory in Mbytes by time of day.
This would be the same as dividing the fre values reported by vmstat over the same interval by
256. The small graph shows the amount of real memory. This is useful in determining if dynamic
reconfiguration has been used during the collection period.
For AIX, other columns on the sheet are as follows:
Real Free the percentage of real pages on the free list.

Virtual Free the percentage of unallocated virtual slots on the paging spaces.
Real Free (MB) the amount of memory on the free list in Mbytes.
Virtual Free (MB) the amount of unallocated space on the paging spaces.
Real Total (MB) the total amount of memory available to AIX.
Virtual Total (MB) the total amount of space allocated for paging spaces.
Note: you can calculate the amount of memory used during an interval simply by subtracting the
Real Free (MB) value from the Real Total (MB) value. This will, however, include file pages.
The graph on the MEMUSE sheet gives a more accurate assessment of memory used by
programs (computational pages).
MEMUSE
Except for %comp, the values on this sheet are the same as would be reported by the vmtune
command.
%numperm the percentage of real memory allocated to file pages.

%minperm value specified on the vmtune command or system default of 20%. This will
normally be constant for the run unless the vmtune or rmss commands are used
during collection.
%maxperm value specified on the vmtune command or system default of 80%. This will
normally be constant for the run unless the vmtune or rmss commands are used
during collection.
minfree the minimum number of pages AIX is to keep on the free list. Specified on the
vmtune command or system default of maxfree - 8.
maxfree the maximum number of pages AIX is steal in order to replenish the free list.
Specified on the vmtune command or system default.
%comp The percentage of real memory allocated to computational pages.
NMON_Analyser calculates this value. Computational pages are those backed by
page space and include working storage and program text segments. They
exclude data, executable and shared library files.
Page 23 of 32
The Analyser generates two graphs. The first shows the split between computational and file
pages by time of day. The second plots the values of %numperm, %minperm, %maxperm and
%comp.
If %numperm falls below %minperm then computational pages will be stolen. If %numperm
rises above %maxperm then computational pages cannot be stolen. Low values for both
%minperm and %maxperm indicate that the system has been tuned for a database server. You
may also want to check the setting of STRICT_MAXPERM on the BBBP sheet (if present).
MEMNEW
The graph shows the allocation of memory split into the three major categories: pages used by
user processes, file system cache, and pages used by the system (kernel).
Process% the percentage of real memory allocated to user processes

FSCache% the percentage of real memory allocated to file system cache
System% the percentage of real memory used by system segments
Free% the percentage of unallocated real memory
User% the percentage of real memory used by non-system segments
MEMPAGES4K/64K/16MB/16GB
These sheets are only present for AIX. They show various statistics for different page sizes in
use within the system. The Analyser will delete the sheets for pages sizes not currently in use.
For the MEMPAGES64KB sheet a graph is drawn showing the use of both 4KB and 64KB
pages within the system starting with AIX V6.1 (and supporting hardware) these page sizes are
selected dynamically based on memory access patterns.
MEMREAL
This sheet only appears for topasout. The Analyser adds a column showing Real Free memory in
Mbytes.
MEMVIRT
NET
This sheet shows the data rates, in Kbytes/sec, for each network adapter in the system (including
SP switch if present). This is the same as produced by the netpmon O dd command.
NMON_Analyser adds one column for each adapter showing the total data rate (read + write)
and two columns showing Total Read and Total Write. Note that the Total Write is calculated as
a negative number for graphing.
The Analyser generates three graphs. The first graph shows total network traffic broken down
as Total-Read and Total-Write. The writes are shown below the X-Axis.
Note the area chart can be easily converted to a line chart if required. Simply right click on the
white space within the chart area, then select Chart Type>Line>OK.
Page 24 of 32
NETPACKET
This sheet shows the number of read/write network packets for each adapter. This is the same as
produced by the netpmon O dd command.
NETSIZE
This sheet shows the average packet size in bytes for each network adapter in the system.
NFS sheets
There are separate sheets for NFS2, NFS3 and NF4 client/server. The Analyser will delete
empty sheets.
PAGE
This sheet has the paging statistics as recorded by NMON.
faults the number of page faults per second. This is not a count of page faults that
generate I/O, because some page faults can be resolved without I/O.
pgin the total rate/sec of page-in operations to both paging space and file systems
during the interval.
pgout the total rate/sec of page-out operations to both paging space and file systems
during the interval.
pgsin the rate/sec of page-in operations from paging space during the interval. This is
the same as the pi value reported by vmstat. If pgsin is consistently higher than
pgsout this may indicate thrashing.
pgsout the rate/sec of page-out operations to paging space during the interval. This is the
same as the po value reported by vmstat.
reclaims from NMON 10 onwards this field is the same as the fr value reported by vmstat
and represents the number of pages/sec freed by the page-replacement routine.
scans the number of pages/sec examined by the page replacement routine. This is the
same as the sr value reported by vmstat. Page replacement is initiated when the
number of free pages falls below minfree and stops when the number of free pages
exceeds maxfree.
cycles the number of times/sec the page replacement routine had to scan the entire Page
Frame Table in order to replenish the free list. This is the same as the cy value
reported by vmstat but note that vmstat reports this number as an integer whereas
nmon reports it as a real number.
fsin calculated by the Analyser as pgin-pgsin for graphing
fsout calculated by the Analyser as pgout-pgsout for graphing
sr/fr calculated by the Analyser as scans/reclaims for graphing
NMON_Analyser produces two graphs. The first shows paging operations to/from paging
space. The ideal here would be no more than 5 operations/sec per page space (see the BBBC
sheet for details). The second graph shows the scan:free rate. Memory may be over-committed
when this figure is >4 although you also need to examine the MEM and PAGE sheets as well.
Page 25 of 32
POOLS
This sheet contains information about the shared pool in which the LPAR is running. Most of
the data will only be present if Allow performance information collection. is set in the LPAR
properties.
shcpus_in_sys the number of cores allocated to the global shared pool

max_pool_capacity the maximum number of VPs defined for this pool
entitled_pool_capacity the entitlement for this pool (includes reserve entitlement)
pool_max_time same as max_pool_capacity but may vary in value if the pool definition is
changed during the collection run.
pool_busy_time the average number of cores in use by this shared pool during the interval
shcpu_tot_time the average number of cores available to the global shared pool (including
shared dedicated resources?) during the interval
shcpu_busy_time the average number of core in use within the global shared pool
pool_id this identifier of this pool
entitled the entitlement of this LPAR
PROC
This sheet contains a subset of the fields reported by NMON on the Kernel Internal Statistics
panel. The RunQueue and Swap-in fields are average values for the interval. All other fields are
rates/sec:
RunQueue the average number of kernel threads in the run queue. This is reported as runq-sz
by the sar -q command and is reported as RunQueue on the nmon Kernel Internal
Statistics panel. A value that exceeds 3x the number of CPUs may indicate CPU
constraint.
Swap-in the average number of kernel threads waiting to be paged in. This is reported as
swpq-sz by the sar -q command.
pswitch the number of context switches. This is reported as pswch/s by the sar -w
command.
syscall the total number of system calls. This is reported as scall/s by the sar -c command.
read the number of read system calls. This is reported as sread/s reported by the sar -c
command.
write the number of write system calls. This is reported as swrit/s by the sar -c
command.
fork the number of fork system calls. This is reported as fork/s by the sar -c command.
exec the number of exec system calls. This is reported as exec/s by the sar -c command.
rcvint the number of tty receive interrupts. This is reported as revin/s by the sar -y
command.
xmtint the number of tty transmit interrupts. This is reported as xmtin/s by the sar -y
command.
sem the number of IPC semaphore primitives (creating, using and destroying). This is
reported as sema/s by the sar -m command.
msg the number of IPC message primitives (sending and receiving). This is reported as
msg/s by the sar -m command.
Page 26 of 32
NMON_Analyser produces three graphs - one showing the average length of the RunQueue and
the number of swap-ins by time of day, another showing rates/sec for pswitch and syscalls by
time of day and a third showing rates/sec for forks and execs.
The graph for forks/execs can be useful when monitoring web server systems.
PROCAIO
This sheet contains information about the number of asynchronous I/O processes available and
active (i.e. using more than 0.1% of the CPU) . It also shows the amount of CPU being used
by the AIO processes during the collection interval.
Two graphs are produced. The second uses two y-axes. The number of running aio processes
is shown against the first axis and the amount of cpu used is shown against the second.
RAWCPUTOTAL, RAWLPAR
These sheets contain a dump of various counters such as context switches and phantom
interrupts.
TCPUDP
TOP
This sheet is only generated if you specify the -t flag on the NMON command line. The output
is similar to that produced using the ps v command. Note that, because of the limitation of
having only 65,000 lines on a single sheet, some data may be omitted for very large files and this
may mean that entire PIDs or even commands may be missing from the analysis.
Note that data are only present for processes that consumed a significant amount of CPU during
an interval. The TOP sheet does not represent a complete view of the system.
NMON_Analyser does the following:

reorders the columns for easier processing.
Sorts the data on the sheet into COMMAND name order - using TIME as a minor sort key.
Creates a table at the end of the sheet summarising the data by command name and used for
graphing.
You can see the detail section by scrolling to the top of the sheet. The summary table is largely
obscured by the graphs and so you will need to move (or delete) them for easier viewing.
PID in the detail section this is the process ID of a specific invocation of a command.
In the summary table this is the command name.
%CPU in the detail section this is the utilisation of a single processor (rather than of the
system) by that PID during the interval. In the summary table this is the average
amount of CPU used by all invocations of the command during the collection
period.
Page 27 of 32
%Usr in the detail section this is the average amount of User-mode CPU used by that
PID during the interval.
%Sys in the detail section this is the average amount of Kernel-mode CPU used by that
PID during the interval.
Threads the number of (software) threads being used by this command.
Size the average amount of paging space (in Kbytes) allocated for the data section
(private segment + shared library data pages) for one invocation of this command.
This is the same as the SIZE figure on the ps v command. Note that if Size is
greater than ResData it means some working segment pages are currently paged
out.
ResText the average amount of real memory (in Kbytes) used for the code segments of one
invocation of this command. Note that multiple concurrent invocations will
normally share these pages.
ResData the average amount of real memory (in Kbytes) used for the data segments of one
invocation of this command. A method of calculating real memory usage for a
command is ResText + (ResData * N).
CharIO this is the count of bytes/sec being passed via the read and write system calls. The
bulk of this is reading and writing to disks but also includes data to/from
terminals, sockets and pipes. Use this to work out which processes are doing the
I/O.
%RAM this is an indication of what percentage of real memory this command is using.
This is (ResText + ResData) / Real Mem; it is the same as the %MEM value on the
ps v command. Due to rounding/truncation, and the large amounts of memory in
modern systems, this is usually 0.
Paging sum of all page faults for this process. Use this to identify which process is
causing paging but note that the figure includes asynchronous I/O and can be
misleading.
Command name of the command
WLMClass name of the Workload Partition or Workload Manager superclass to which this
command has been allocated (64-bit kernel only).
IntervalCPU generated by the Analyser. In the detail section this shows the total amount of
CPU used by all invocations of a command in the time interval. It is calculated as
the sum of CPU used by all PIDS running the same command divided by the
number of active processors (physical cores) available during the interval. In the
summary section this is broken down as Average, Weighted Average and
Maximum and is used to generate the graph.
WSet generated by the Analyser. In the detail section this shows the total amount of
memory used by all invocations of a command recorded in the time interval. It is
calculated as ResText + (ResData * N) (where N is the number of copies of this
command running concurrently during the interval). In the summary section this
is broken down as Minimum, Average and Maximum and is used to generate the
graph.
User generated by the Analyser if a UARG sheet is present. This contains the name of
the user running the process.
Arg generated by the Analyser if a UARG sheet is present. This contains the complete
argument string entered for the command.
Page 28 of 32
The Analyser generates four graphs using data in the generated table:
A graph showing Average, Weighted Average and Maximum CPU Utilisation by command
A graph showing Minimum, Average and Maximum Memory Utilisation by command
A graph showing Average, Weighted Average and Maximum CHARIO by command
A graph showing the CPU utilisation for each PID for each interval as a scatter chart. Note
that this chart is only produced if there are fewer than 32,000 lines on the TOP sheet. See below
for notes on interpreting this chart.
Interpreting the %Processor by PID chart

The purpose of the chart is to provide a link to the UARG sheet so that you can discover
precisely which invocation of a command was responsible for using the CPU. It shows the
processor utilisation (utilisation of a single CPU) by each PID captured on the TOP sheet. Note
that a process can use more than 100% of a single CPU if it is multi-threaded.
Active PIDs will create a cluster of points on the chart. The highest point will show the
maximum amount of CPU used during any one snapshot. To find out which PID a point refers
to, move the mouse to position the cursor above it and Excel will display a coordinate pair. The
first coordinate is the PID use this to refer to the UARG sheet to find precisely which
command was being executed.
UARG
This sheet has the first 1,000 commands executed during the collection period. The commands
are listed in time order. Note that commands appearing in the first interval may have been
executing prior to the start of the collection.
PID the process ID of a specific invocation of a command

PPID the parent process ID
COMM the command being executed
THCOUNT the number of threads started by this process
USER the name of the user running this process
GROUP the name of the group to which the user belongs
FullCommand the full command string entered by the user
VM
This sheet is only present for Linux systems and contains a dump of the /proc/vmstat file values.
The two graphs shows file-backed paging (pgpgin/pgpgout) and swap space activity.
WPAR sheets
These sheets are only present for AIX V6 and record data for each Workload Partition in the
system. They are not currently generated by the topas version of nmon.
WLM sheets
Contain details of CPU, Memory and I/O bandwidth used by each Superclass/Subclass defined to
WLM during the collection run. The Analyser will extract subclasss data and create a new set
Page 29 of 32
of sheets for each class with more than one subclass. These sheets will be named
WLMCPU.class etc.
If this is a Micro-partition then the Analyser will also create a set of WLMPCPU sheets which
will show the physical processor utilisation rather than %CPU utilisation.
ZZZZ
The Analyser uses the information on this sheet to automatically convert all NMON time stamps
to actual time of day for easier analysis. For NMON10 or later a column is added which contains
the date and time as a single value and this is used for the conversions. The number of rows on
this sheet is used by the Analyser to reset the snapshots value on the AAA sheet in case the
nmon run was terminated with SIGUSR2.
Error Handling
Error handling in NMON_Analyser is rudimentary. The Analyser can handle many input file
errors, but occasionally the analysis will halt leaving you staring at a dialog box. Should this
happen, please accept my apologies. However, before sending me a copy of the input file, please
read the following:
Common problems
The most commonly reported problems arise from invalid input files. We also get problems
reported where, for whatever reason, lines have been truncated, split or even duplicated.
NMON_Analyser attempts to trap these errors and will report them on the StrayLines sheet.
Check this sheet if the run stops unexpectedly.
'No valid input! NMON run may have failed.'
The most common cause of this message is that the NMON run failed and there really is no valid
input. NMON initialises the output file by writing all of the section headings. If it
subsequently fails, you will get an output file that consists purely of headings - with no data.
Check the file by loading it into a word processor or, indeed, a spreadsheet (as a .csv file) before
you send it to me.
'Unexpected end of file.'
This is only reported when processing files containing more lines than can be stored on one
sheet and when SORTINP is set to NO. It is usually caused by the fact that lines are being
terminated with a CR character instead of CRLF. Change your FTP option to ASCII or TEXT
when sending the file to your PC. This problem only shows up with large files because the
Analyser uses a different technique to read them than that used to read smaller files.
Strangely, one of the most common problems I get is caused by the fact that the Analyser cant
handle files with a single data interval very well. If you want to test the package just let NMON
run for a few minutes to get a reasonable data sample!
Known bugs/problems (V3.4, topas_nmon)
Page 30 of 32
When analysing systems with a very large number of disks, Excel can stop with error No
more fonts can be added or Insufficient Resources. Set GRAPHS to LIST and select only
those sheets you are interested in using the LIST option on the Settings sheet.
The data can be sorted incorrectly with some versions of nmon (notably 14g) which generate
variable length timestamps. Process each file separately and specify MERGE=YES to get the
data sorted correctly.
The PIVOT option does not seem to work with Excel 2007 or later
The Analyser will crash if you edit the .csv file using Excel prior to the run and the file
contains a TOP section. If you need to edit the input file, use a word processor.
There are some issues with processing files from systems having both ESS and EMC
subsystems attached.
When analysing ESS subsystems with more than 253 vpaths some vpath data will be missing
from the output. Use NMON Disk Groups to combine several vpaths into a single unit for
reporting and use the E flag to prevent the ESS sections from being produced.
Alternatively, set ESS to NO on the Control sheet and ignore warning messages about data
truncation only the first 253 vpaths will appear in the output.
How to report a problem

Post the relevant information on the nmon forum (see the link in the introduction). It can help to
include a copy of the original, unmodified .nmon input file, plus the incomplete output
spreadsheet, as a compressed (zipped) file but please consider your system security before doing
so.
If you have the ability to capture a screenshot then a copy of any dialog boxes also proves useful
on occasion.
Note: Development is currently done on Microsoft Excel 2003 (11.8320.8221) SP3. It may not
be possible to fix problems arising from the use of different releases.
Excel/VBA Resources/Links
This is a good source for Excel tips and it has some VBA examples as well:
http://exceltips.vitalnews.com/
This is the home of an excellent reference book:

http://www.exceltip.com/
And of course
http://www.microsoft.com
Page 31 of 32
Appendix: Notes on Batch Operation

If you regularly process large numbers of files, the operation of NMON_Analyser can be
completely automated. Simply create a text file containing a list of nmon file names (using
wild card characters as appropriate) and enter the name of this file into the FILELIST field of the
Analyser control sheet. Specify the name of an existing directory in the OUTDIR field if you
want all of the output files to end up in one place. Save the NMON_Analyser spreadsheet under
a new name (this is recommended so that you can still use NMON_Analyser for interactive
sessions).
Now create Windows .bat files to invoke Excel (see the samples below).
After processing the last input file, the Analyser will automatically close down Excel. Note,
however, that this only happens if you load a copy of the Analyser that has a saved FILELIST
name and if there are no other open spreadsheets. This allows you to use the FILELIST option
safely during an interactive session.
Sample .bat files

These sample batch control files are designed to use the pscp file from the PuTTY suite written
and maintained by Simon Tatham at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
My thanks to Jamie Dennis for providing them.
getcsv.bat
cd \NMON\RawData
del *.csv
d:\progra~1\putty\pscp -p -r -l userid host://Performance/NMON/Rawdata/*.csv
.
analyser.bat
D:
cd \NMON\FinishedData
del d:\NMON\FinishedData\*.xls
"D:\NMON\nmon analyser batch.xls"
putxls.bat
D:
cd \NMON\FinishedData
d:\progra~1\putty\pscp -p -r -l userid *.xls host:/Performance/NMON/
Control.txt
d:\NMON\RawData\*.csv
NMON Analyser Batch.xls

OUTDIR d:\NMON\FinishedData\
FILELIST d:\NMON\FinishedData\Control.txt
Page 32 of 32

NA UserGuide v52 1

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

NA UserGuide v52 1

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

NA UserGuide v52 1

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

NMON_Analyser User Guide Version 3.

1 Last update 18-10-17 16:10

NMON_Analyser User Guide for V5.2.1

Collecting data using NMON

example: nmon_aix51 -F asterix.nmon -r Test1 -s6 -c12

Collecting data using topas (xmwlm)

GRAPHS The first option is

PIVOT Note: This option doesnt work on a Mac.

Batch Processing Options

Web Publishing Options

Interpreting the output sections

NMON_Analyser deletes the NOTES lines generated by NMON.

General notes for DISK, ESS, EMC, FASt and DG sheets

All fields are rates/sec.

Columns on the sheet are as follows:

Freepages the number of large pages on the free list.

Usedpages the number of large pages currently in use.

Columns on the sheet are as follows:

VP_Sys% percentage of Virtual CPU used in System mode

For AIX, other columns on the sheet are as follows:

Real Free the percentage of real pages on the free list.

%numperm the percentage of real memory allocated to file pages.

Process% the percentage of real memory allocated to user processes

shcpus_in_sys the number of cores allocated to the global shared pool

NMON_Analyser does the following:

Interpreting the %Processor by PID chart

PID the process ID of a specific invocation of a command

'No valid input! NMON run may have failed.'

'Unexpected end of file.'

Known bugs/problems (V3.4, topas_nmon)

How to report a problem

This is the home of an excellent reference book:

Appendix: Notes on Batch Operation

Sample .bat files

NMON Analyser Batch.xls

You might also like