System Analysis Suggestions

Hi All,

I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a course of action to help determine out bottlenecks in our AS400 and a plan to improve performance?

A few years ago we upgraded to a 520-9406 machine. However, I have noticed over the past two years that our CPU usage has slowly been creeping up as new programs have been added. As it stands right now, whenever I check CPU usage I hardly ever see it below 80%. Usually it is in the 90%+ range. I know it is frustrating to our users, and I can't blame them - I would hate to wait for jobs to finish for long stretches at a time.

I would like to determine where the bottlenecks are occurring, and I wonder if the group has any suggestions? Looking at the active jobs, I suspect it may have something to do with all of the web pages that hit the 400 on a regular basis - I see an awful lot of QZDASOINIT jobs occupying a fair chunk of CPU usage. There are other jobs that run regularly that consume a fair amount of usage as well.

Are there any free / built-in programs I can use to analyze the 400 to see where and when these bottlenecks occur? I do have a HW/SW contract on the 400, so could I have IBM come in and perform an analysis on the system to determine our problems? I'd hate to throw a bunch of money upgrading the main storage/DASD/CPU to P20+ if that isn't really the problem (and I'm sure our senior management group would be less than happy as well).

Any ideas would be most appreciated!

Thanks!

Brian.

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Brian Piotrowski
Assistant Mgr. - I.T.
Simcoe Parts Service, Inc.
Ph: 705-435-7814 x343
Fx: 705-435-6746
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http://www.simcoeparts.com