IBM AIX Continuous Availability Features - IBM Redbooks

unique, each offered its own interface to manage and control the Electronic Service Agent
and its functions. Since networks can have different platforms with different operating
systems, administrators had to learn a different interface for each different platform and
operating system in their network. Multiple interfaces added to the burden of administering
the network and reporting problem service information to IBM support.
In contrast, Electronic Service Agent 6.1 installs on platforms running different operating
systems. ESA 6.1 offers a consistent interface to reduce the burden of administering a
network with different platforms and operating systems. Your network can have some clients
running the Electronic Service Agent 6.1 product and other clients running the previous
Electronic Service Agent product.
If you have a mixed network of clients running Electronic Service Agent 6.1 and previous
Electronic Service Agent products, you need to refer to the information specific to each
Electronic Service Agent product for instructions on installing and administering that product.
To access Electronic Service Agent user guides, go to the Electronic Services Web site and
select Electronic Service Agent from the left navigation. In the contents pane, select
Reference Guides > Select a platform > Select an Operating System or Software.
Alternatively, you can use the following SMIT fastpath:
smitty esa_main
Further information is available at the following site:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/eserver/v1r2/topic/eicbd/eicbd_aix.pdf
2.6.2 Other tools for monitoring a system
There are also other tools that are useful for system monitoring; here are a few examples:
► vmstat - Overall system statistics
► netstat - Network statistics
► no - Network tuning
► sar - Overall system statistics
► iostat - Disk and CPU statistics (needs to be enabled to collect statistics)
► lsconf - List and document the machine
► filemon - Find the busy filesystems and files
► fileplace - Check for scrambled files
► lparstat - Check on shared processor LPARs
► perfpmr - Report performance issues
► lvmstat - Check high-use disks
► ioo - Configures I/O tuning parameters
► tuncheck - Validates a tunable file with tunchange, tundefault,tunrestore, and tunsave
commands
You can write shell scripts to perform data reduction on the command output, warn of
performance problems, or record data on the status of a system when a problem is occurring.
For example, a shell script can test the CPU idle percentage for zero (0), a saturated
condition, and execute another shell script for when the CPU-saturated condition occurred.
2.6.3 The topas command
The topas command reports vital statistics about the activity on the local system, such as real
memory size and the number of write system calls. This command uses the curses library to
Chapter 2. AIX continuous availability features 49