nmon performance: A free tool to analyze AIX and Linux performance

ainux

Level: Introductory

04 Nov 2003
Updated 27 Feb 2006

This free tool gives you a huge amount of information all on one screen. Even though IBM doesn't officially support the tool and you must use it at your own risk, you can get a wealth of performance statistics. Why use five or six tools when one free tool can give you everything you need?

   


The nmon tool runs on:

• AIX® 4.1.5, 4.2.0 , 4.3.2, and 4.3.3 (nmon Version 9a: This version is functionally established and will not be developed further.)
• AIX 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 (nmon Version 10: This version now supports AIX 5.3 and POWER5? processor-based machines, with SMT and shared CPU micro-partitions.)
• Linux® SUSE SLES 9, Red Hat EL 3 and 4, Debian on pSeries® p5, and OpenPower?
• Linux SUSE, Red Hat, and many recent distributions on x86 (Intel and AMD in 32-bit mode)
• Linux SUSE and Red Hat on zSeries® or mainframe
  

The nmon tool is updated roughly every six months, or when new operating system releases are available. To place your name on the e-mail list for updates, contact Nigel Griffiths.
Figure 1 below is a sample of the screen output. It shows the opening screen for AIX 5, with lots of useful information.

Figure 2 illustrates the details for CPU (this is a 4 CPU POWER5 machine with SMT switched on), memory use, kernel internal statistics, and disks statistics. Note: This logical partition (LPAR) is using six times its entitlement in half a CPU.

Figure 3 shows the details of the network, NFS statistics, and journal filesystem use.

Figure 4 below.

Figure 5 illustrates the details of the Linux version of nmon, showing the CPU (this is a 2 CPU POWER5 machine with SMT switched on), LPAR statistics, memory use, network statistics, file system use, and disks statistics. Note: The physical CPU of this LPAR is only available with SUSE SLES9 Service Pack 1 and Red Hat EL 4 Update 1.

Figure 6 shows the OS details of the machine, disk statistics (detailed mode), and the top processes.

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