WebSphere eXtreme Scale Best Practices for Operation and Management

178 WebSphere eXtreme Scale Best Practices for Operation and Management

7.5.4 Monitoring with Tivoli Performance Viewer

The Tivoli Performance Viewer is a built-in monitoring tool that is available from the

WebSphere administrative console. Administrators typically use it to monitor Performance

Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) metrics. Many runtime components in WebSphere Application

Server can generate PMI metrics, for example, thread pools or Java Database Connectivity

(JDBC) data source connection pools.

WebSphere eXtreme Scale PMI metrics

WebSphere eXtreme Scale can generate PMI metrics, which provide an insight into the

server run time. The following types of information are available:

򐂰 Sizing: The number of entries in the map and the size of a map

򐂰 Cache statistics: Includes cache retrievals and hit rates

򐂰 Performance: Retrieval response times

Enabling ObjectGrid and ObjectMap PMI modules

You can use the Tivoli Performance Viewer to examine PMI statistics from only those modules

that are enabled. The modules for the WebSphere eXtreme Scale PMI statistics (ObjectGrid

and ObjectMap) are not enabled, by default.

Perform the following steps using the WebSphere administrative console to enable the PMI

modules ObjectGrid and ObjectMap. Repeat the steps for each of the grid cluster members

for which you want to view the PMI statistics:

1. In the left panel, click Servers WebSphere application servers.

2. Click one of the WebSphere Application Server cluster members hosting the grid, for

example, sa-w120lnx2_container1.

3. In the right panel under Performance, click Performance Monitoring Infrastructure

(PMI).

4. Click the Runtime tab.

5. Confirm that Enable Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) is enabled and click

Custom.

Production environments: The Tivoli Performance Viewer is well suited for monitoring in

a production environment; however, the user interface tends to slow down when monitoring

larger sets of data. Logging statistics over a longer period of time is also not possible. For

production environments, consider the use of separate monitoring tools (Tivoli or

third-party tools).

Monitoring stand-alone environments: You can use PMI to monitor your environment

only when you are using WebSphere eXtreme Scale with WebSphere Application Server. If

you have a stand-alone deployment of WebSphere eXtreme Scale, you need to use the

WebSphere eXtreme Scale web console (see 7.5.3, “WebSphere eXtreme Scale web

console” on page 171).

Runtime tab: The benefit of making the changes under the Runtime tab is that they

become effective immediately; however, these configuration changes are lost after a

restart of the WebSphere Application Server process. You can avoid losing the

configuration changes by making the changes under the Configuration tab, although

this action requires a restart.

Chapter 7. Operations and monitoring 179

6. Again, make sure to choose the Runtime tab.

7. Click ObjectGrid Maps from the list of PMI modules. Select all the ObjectGrid Map

counters that are listed in the panel on the right and click Enable. The counter status will

change to Enabled, as shown in Figure 7-6.

Figure 7-6 Enable counters for the ObjectGrid Maps PMI module

8. Now, click ObjectGrids from the list of PMI modules. Select the ObjectGrid counter (there

is only one) in the panel on the right and click Enable.

After the PMI modules for WebSphere eXtreme Scale have been enabled, you can monitor

the PMI statistics in Tivoli Performance Viewer. Perform the following steps using the

WebSphere administrative console to monitor the PMI statistics in Tivoli Performance Viewer:

1. In the right panel, click Monitoring and Tuning  Performance Viewer  Current

Activity.

2. Select the grid cluster servers that you want to monitor and click Start Monitoring.

3. Click a monitored server to open the Tivoli Performance Viewer for that server.

4. Expand Performance Modules on the left side. Select the modules under ObjectGrids

and ObjectGrid Maps that you want to view.

5. When the view refreshes, the performance statistics display, as shown in Figure 7-7 on

page 180.