User Guide and Manual for Project Canary

used. Different applications have different requirements and examining the behavior of these applications
together paints a distinctive picture of the server's operation and is useful for capacity planning and tuning.
Ideally, a server should be able to run a mix of applications which utilize its resources to their maximum
without impacting performance. Examining the resource utilization patterns of various applications can help
maximize computing potential while minimizing cost. An analysis of application “signatures” on a server
might indicate that some applications “play well” together while others do not.
Balancing applications on a server or migrating some applications to different servers where the applications
utilize resources in complimentary manners as opposed to competing for the same resources constantly may
help reduce cost and complexity and maximize the return on investment in computing resources.
For example, if two applications appear to be CPU bound, and two others are found to be memory bound, it
may be useful to mix them so that resource utilization is maximized as opposed to adding additional hardware
resources to the server being monitored. This may allow for a cost savings, but really, that all depends on the
particular characteristics of the applications being used.
Additionally, identifying applications which utilize a significant amount of CPU time will be of help when
determining which server to place an application on. Since most computing environments contain a mixture of
CPU speeds, applications which spawn multiple threads are better placed on servers with multiple CPUs. With
most multithreaded applications, CPU speed is less important than the ability to run multiple threads
simultaneously. Conversely, monolithic applications which are not multithreaded should be placed on servers
with faster CPUs.
Each application has unique characteristics and only an analysis of the application's unique behavior will
permit a systems administrator to extract the maximum potential from the computing environment. Project
Canary software is uniquely equipped to assist with this task.
4.11: PRSTAT Histograms
4.11.1: Process Ids per User
The PRSTAT Histograms report displays multiple graphs selected from a drop-down menu and displays
statistics on a per-user basis. Specifically, the PRSTAT Histograms show memory utilization, number of
processes spawned, and CPU utilization.
Graphs available from this report profile “all” processes run and also separate out certain user processes, such
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