RE: Screen include for CPU percentage -- MIDRANGE-L

I would argue in favor of light/medium/heavy in green/yellow/red over a
percentage.  Someone sees a percentage of 85 and thinks there's still
room for their jobs while in fact the system could be bogged by disk
access or some other non-CPU task.

Which raises my second comment.  You might want your indicator to be
built from a snapshot of disk % busy, memory faulting, and CPU %.  CPU %
alone isn't going to provide a complete picture.

Do as Art mentioned with a simple monitor job.  Extend it to have it
retrieve each status (CPU, disk, faulting) and assign them a rank,
light, medium, heavy.  What you display is the worst of the three
indicators.  If disk and faulting are light but CPU is heavy, display
heavy.  If CPU is light but faulting is severe, display the heavy
faulting.  That way it is a more balanced picture and accounts for other
major areas of system performance.

The monitor job could, to reduce its own impact on the system, go for
longer delays between checking busy status when something is heavy.  Say
check every 30 seconds under light load, every minute under medium load,
and every 3 to 5 minutes under heavy load.  

The best thing is you control the metrics as to what constitutes light,
medium, and heavy.  Examples:

Resource Light Medium  Heavy
Disk     0-9%  10%-19% 20%+
CPU      0-50% 51%-75% 76%+
Faulting Too system dependent

If you really wanted to, you could extend it to also account for disk
IOP utilization, network adapter utilization, etc.

Now I'm thinking of a Net.Data macro to add an indicator for this to our
web site.  Maybe a separate pop-up that auto-updates every few minutes.

- John

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Kincer [mailto:w2kprofessional@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 8:17 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Screen include for CPU percentage


Often during a single day my homely 9406 170 processes jobs that run the
CPU hard n' heavy with usage up to 100% for up to an hour at a time.
During this time my phone rings ff the hook from users who want to know
"why the network is so slow." I explain to them that the machine is
processing a labor-intensive job and that things should be back to
normal soon (which it does).

For some reason though I get the same calls over and over again. No
matter how many times I explain it the explanation never seems to stick.
Since not everyone has line access I do not want to explain WRKACTJOB
CPU:% lookups every time this happens (they would probably forget that
too anyway :)

So here's what I would like to do...

In the upper left-hand corner of all screens I would like to insert the
current percentage so the users can see for themselves what's going on.
Instead of CPU I would relabel it something like "Usage:" or "Load:")

If at all possible I would like to put descriptions instead of the
percentage number (Light/Heavy/Maximum or something like that) in colors
that correspond to the level, but really the percentage is great if I
can get even that.

Some time ago someone did something similar to this that shows the
environment the user is logged into so I'm pretty sure this is possible.
Can someone tell me how?

Thanks!
Alan Kincer - MCSE, A+
IT Section Manager - KI(USA)
501 Mayde Rd.
Berea, Ky. 40403

859.986.1420 ext 231
859.986.1485 (fax)

"Sometimes it seems the only way to fit in is to stand out." -- Robert
Bianco




_______________________________________________
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing
list To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe,
unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.

This email is for the use of the intended recipient(s) only.  If you have 
received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and then 
delete it.  If you are not the intended recipient, you must not keep, use, 
disclose, copy or distribute this email without the author's prior permission.  
We have taken precautions to minimize the risk of transmitting software 
viruses, but we advise you to carry out your own virus checks on any attachment 
to this message.  We cannot accept liability for any loss or damage caused by 
software viruses.  The information contained in this communication may be 
confidential and may be subject to the attorney-client privilege.