Version & Recent Enhancement Information

The current version of SarCheck for AIX is: 6.03.11

Enhancements to version 6.03.11 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Expect a 6 as well as 4 or 5 in the OS field of the sar report

Enhancements to version 6.03.10 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Expand the explanation preceding the memory statistics graph
• Simplify the y-axis scaling algorithm in the paging space activity graph
• Tweak wording of disk analysis if multiple %busy peaks are seen
• Change threshold for detecting memory leaks to be 1/2% mem/hr from 1-32gb
• If present, use clockhandrevs data in the cycle graph & text
• If > 3 clockhandrevs per interval, calculate mb/sec scanned
• Tweak scaling of clockhandrevs data on cycle graph
• Update algorithms in the cycle graph when multiday data is analyzed
• Change (TM) to (R) or ® at the start of the report
• Update dkbusy graph to shows peaks as well as averages
• Fix format of disk reporting with -ymd switch (yyyy/mm/dd format)
• Fix typo in -ptoo description of usage text
• Fix occasional bug if 5.2 system with pre520tune disabled

Enhancements to version 6.03.09 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Fix a rare bug in the activation key routine
• Add some code to speed the QA process

Enhancements to version 6.03.08 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Change vmsparse to collect numclust, j2_nPagesPerWriteBehindCluster, j2_nRandomCluster
• Change analyze to process numclust, j2_nPagesPerWriteBehindCluster, j2_nRandomCluster data
• Change vmsparse to collect maxrandwrt and numclust from vmtune as well as ioo
• Add recommendations for numclust, maxrandwrt, j2_nPagesPerWriteBehindCluster, j2_nRandomCluster, j2_maxRandomWrite
• Clean up the code to characterize I/O
• Don't consider device names starting with cd* for disk balancing
• Recommend changing maxfree and minfree together
• Improve wording for %wio analysis
• Add clockhandrevs to cycle graph if the data is present

Version 6.03.07 was a beta test version

Enhancements to version 6.03.06 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Correct the problem of providing an incorrect example (for example, vmstat vs. vmo) when making maxperm/maxclient/maxpin/minperm recommendations
• Fix a problem parsing the output of oslevel when "oslevel -s" is used.
• Fix the message that the values of maxperm and minperm were 0.
• Enhance the disk table to only use Queue and Service Time columns when valid data is present in sar -d
• Correctly distinguish between maxperm and maxperm% metrics on newer operating systems
• Enhance warnings of likely problems when a sar report from one system is analyzed on another

Enhancements to version 6.03.05 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Fix a capacity planning bug, always saying memory will be used up first
• Fix a bug causing nonsensical maxperm and maxclient recommendations
• Rework parsing of vmsparse data to allow for better data analysis
• Display maxclient, memused, etc on vmtune graph
• Fix gnuplot errors if total paging space size is zero
• Reduced further the y-axis scaling on the ioblk graph
• Change alt text on vmtune graph
• Change description of the on vmtune graph
• Add avg value of numclient to -t table
• Add avg pct of memory used for non-file pages to -t table
• Add avg pct of total memory used to -t table
• Give the memory bar in the cap plan graph a tapered end
• Fix a problem with the -Q and -html switches working together
• Move legend outside the vmtune graph
• Change data & gnuplot scripts for cp and disk bar graphs
• Use a table with vmtune graph to show VMM stats
• Fix a bug in the "ignore short intervals" logic for sar -d data

Enhancements to version 6.03.04 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• The vmsparse agent now reports on iostat reads vs. writes
• Add LPAR name to key algorithm
• Check to see if our jfs/jfs2, seq/random write io guesses agree with the sys admin's thoughts. This is a sanity check in preparation for better recommendations.
• Reduced minimum y-axis scaling on ioblk graph
• Rearrange pieces of the Resource Analysis section
• Fix a rare bug in the maxperm/minperm recommendations
• Fix a bug in printing informarion about the "2006 Tech University recommendations" if we're not actually recommending changes
• Add % to vmo parameter names maxperm, minperm, maxpin, maxclient
• Fix the formatting of total pg space used date
• Changed wording that reported the analysis of multiday ps
• Add text for group of new vmo recs to be implemented together

Enhancements to version 6.03.03 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Fix a case where we weren't using the latest algorithms in the recommendations
• Fix parsing of lrupollinterval value
• Improve the internal algorithms for deciding if there's JFS and/or JFS2 filesystem activity

Enhancements to version 6.03.02 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Streamline some code
• Fix "Analysis not requested" msg if one of the -ps switches is picked and no ps data file os found
• Discard minfree of less than 8 pages, not 10. A recommended minfree change of 8 pages is not unlikely on systems without JFS2 filesystems.
• Fix a typo in the text of a recommendation to change the iostat attribute of device sys0
• Fix the precision used to display the value of "peak swap queue" in the summary table
• Do a better job of handling bad data which shows up in the sar -d report when sar's crontab entries have been set up incorrectly

Enhancements to version 6.03.01 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Change min/maxperm target (old pre-lru_file_repage algorithm) allowed from 10 to 20
• Only consider pgspace < memsize a problem if there's a memory bottleneck
• Remove "calculated entitled CPUs" from cpu2 graph
• If sys0 iostat=false, recommend setting it to true.
• Rewrite minfree recommendation algorithm for 5.3
• Discard minfree chgs of less than 10 pages instead of less than 2 pages
• For low minfree values, recommend up to 4x increase instead of limiting it to 2x

Enhancements to version 6.03.00 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• The following major changes came from our time at IBM's 2006 system p Technical University:
• Add the new recommendations or lru_file_repage, lru_poll_interval, minperm, maxperm, maxclient, strict_maxperm/maxclient
• Use fsioblked data to make better numfsbufs recommendations and add this data to the "ioblk" graph
• De-emphasize the importance of %wio
• Change PARMS warning/error thresholds for WIOAVG from 20/50 to 60/80%
• Report on IO pacing parameters
• Analyze lsps -a data, intelligently scale the y-axis of the "pgused" graph, and make recommendations for paging spaces
• Some other enhancements:
• Remove text in Recommendations section about cpu & disk if there are no recommendations for them
• Look for MB, GB, and TB in sys config line of sar data
• Fix an obsolete "Wrong OS" msg
• Print a note that %busy can be wrong if RAIDs are present
• Calculate average blks/IO to better characterize disk I/O
• Support the ever-changing blks/s, Kbs/s. and Kb/s column in sar -d
• Don't mention system tables in some rarely seen text in the Capacity Planning section

Enhancements to version 6.02.11 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Change text line which reported the minperm value as maxperm.
• Change the algorithms that detect a memory-poor condition to be less concerned about brief periods of memory pressure

Enhancements to version 6.02.10 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Report a problem if the average rate of pageouts from paging spaces is negative
• Increased the size of internal ps -elf tables for support of one customer's very large workload.

Enhancements to version 6.02.09 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Warn if the number of mempools can't be determined when making a minfree recommendation

Enhancements to version 6.02.08 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• The j2_dynamicBufferPreallocation and j2_nBufferPerPagerDevice recommendations now tell the user to use the ioo utility to make changes.

Enhancements to version 6.02.07 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Removed the last vestiges of recommending the obsolete cpu_state command
• Fixed a typo saying hd_pbuf_cnt and numfsbufs recommendations in 5.2 were part of vmo instead of ioo

Enhancements to version 6.02.06 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Improved algorithms for maxpgahead, minpgahead, j2_maxPageReadAhead, and j2_min_PageReadAhead
• Support for leap years through 2032 added to SarCheck script.

Enhancements to version 6.02.05 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Increased the size of internal ps -elf tables for support of one customer's very large workload.

Enhancements to version 6.02.04 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Don't create gnuplot script for the "disk busy" graph or run it if there's no disk (sar -d) data
• Improve reporting of missing sar report options like sar -d and -k

Enhancements to version 6.02.03 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Correctly report on AIX 5.3 output where a sar -u column exists but no %entc column is present.
• Don't make a graph of micropartitioned, virtualized CPU utilization if it's not a micropartitioned, virtualized environment

Enhancements to version 6.02.02 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Fix the <p> tag to add a </p>
• Properly handle maxfree recommendation if maxpgahead = 0
• Handle very large systems where hd_pbuf_cnt > 8K is likely
• Fix occasional problem with the collection of ioo -a data on some versions of AIX

Enhancements to version 6.02.01 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Limit minperm recommendations to double or half the current value
• Improve the calculations used for minfree and maxfree recommendations
• Fix sched_R recommendation text
• Change orderform to show actvcpus, not numcpus which can be misleading on LPARs
• Add maxpin graph & add comments about maxpin to memory-poor messages
• Analyze rate of I/Os blocked for lack of pbuf and fsbuf
• Add 2nd title line to "disk busy" graph if unsorted
• Get numfsbufs & hd_pbuf_cnt tunables
• Add rate of pbuf/fsbuf blocking to -t table if > 0
• Add I/O blocking rate graph if rate > 0
• If the system is memory-poor, move mem rec ahead of parameter recs
• Add comments on I/O blocking graph
• Change default memory leak threshold from 200 kb/hr to 5000 kb/hr
• Fix typos (stray numclust text and awk recommendation)
• Use j2_maxPageReadAhead as well as maxpgahead for maxfree recommendation
• Enhance the reporting of peak number of processes
• Enhance the reporting of peak number of swapped out processes
• Update minperm wording in resource analysis section
• Move freepages record in vmsparse to be w/minfree
• Calculate minimum value of freepages
• Recommend reducing maxclient if it would be greater than the maxperm recommendation
• Tighten some of the gnuplot script generation code
• Report on 5.3 sar -u fields physc and %entc, text, graphs, and summary table
• Use %entc data to calculate CPU bottleneck
• Collect "system config" data: lcpu, mem, ent
• Add notes in the usr/sys/wio/runq paragraphs if %entc data found in sar -u
• Enable the sched_R recommendation for foreground/background separation
• Fix format of dates in -diag messages (was always mm/dd/yy)
• Fix format of peak disk busy in -t table
• Add numperm average to -t table
• Collect lparstat -i data w/vmsparse agent
• Collect # of mempools data w/vmsparse agent
• Adjust y-axis scaling in CPU Utilization graph if %entc max > 100%
• Parse additional data collected in vmsparse and stored in ps -elf data file
• Use last # of mempools seen to improve calculation of minfree recommendation
• Add support for gnuplot 4.0
• Collect minfree/maxfree data w/vmsparse agent
• Report memory usage by processes in megabytes, not kilobytes
• Parse freepages, minfree, and maxfree from ps -elf data
• Added GNUPLOT keyword to parms file 3.7 or 4.0
• Report data used for minfree/maxfree recommendations along with the recommendation
• Set maxperm target correctly if low average numperm
• Report the average value of numperm
• Improve wording about changes to max/minperm relative to numperm

Enhancements to version 6.01.09 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Suggest the cpu_state utility only on pre-5.2 operating systems
• On LPAR partitions, don't assume that there's a problem when sysconf reports that the number of active CPUs is less than the number of configured CPUs
• Fix an occasional problem with the y-axis scaling of the page ops graph
• Tweak the maxfree recommendation to correct a situation where maxfree is less than the sum of the minfree and maxpgahead recommendations

Enhancements to version 6.01.08 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Fix a bug in the calculation of paging space pageouts & pageins when graphs were not requested.
• Tweak the algorithm for finding a memory bottleneck, assigning less weight to sar -q statistics when statistics for paging space pageouts & pageins are available.
• Correct a few spelling and grammar mistakes in the output.

Enhancements to version 6.01.07 include:
(Subscription holders: If you'd like this version, ask your sales rep)

• Fix a bug where SarCheck would occasionally look for schedtune and vmtune instead of schedo, vmo, and ioo on some versions of AIX 5
• Fix a calculation which calculated minfree and maxfree values based on the number of CPUs on a system instead of the number of CPUs in an LPAR/DLPAR.

Enhancements to version 6.01.05 include:
(This version will not be automatically shipped to subscription holders)

• Fix a rare bug in versions 5.02.03 - 6.01.03.

Enhancements to version 6.01.03 include:
(This version will not be automatically shipped to subscription holders)

• make minfree/maxfree recommendations
• make minperm/maxperm recommendations
• fix pgin/pgout graph image from displaying chg to > 0.0
• add a graph of numperm activity over time
• comment on minperm/maxperm/numperm in analysis section
• fix -st help text
• put vmtune/vmo recs & analysis before schedtune/schedo

Enhancements to version 6.01.00 include:
(This version will not be automatically shipped to subscription holders)

• Report on %usr and %sys averages, and the ration of %usr to %sys utilization
• Add the ability to change the sys/usr threshold with the keyword SYSUSR
• Add -wide switch for graphs
• Add HSIZE keyword to parms file
• Select the starting and ending times of the analysis with the -st and -en switches
• Report on the average number of processes
• Add -normss switch to disable the running of the rmss utility
• Add NORMSS keyword to disable the running of the rmss utility
• Fix a bug in the reporting of dates when more than one day of ps -elf data is analyzed

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Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
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This information is correct as of April 8, 2008 and is subject to change without notice.