BVQ OS Agent for AIX
- Sabine Engel
- Thomas Sikora
Brief description
BVQ 2021.H2 supports a new platform which is actually an extension to the already existing PowerVM platform: A BVQ OS agent for AIX systems, VIOS and LPARs which collects performance and topology information that aren't available via HMC.
Licensing
Please review BVQ License Information Page or ask your sales contact for more information.
Information gathering
Unlike all other scanner types in BVQ, the BVQ OS Agent for AIX is the first one to receive data from the scanned systems rather than pulling the data from them. An RPM package including the agent has to be installed on each partition. This agent is responsible for collecting data, packaging the data and sending the package to the BVQ server using scp once a minute.
The data that is collected contains topology information coming from several AIX commands as well as performance data gathered with NJMON.
Which information is collected?
- Topology configuration information
- collected every minute (default) on each partition and sent to BVQ serve
- 16 object types containing a total of ~155 attributes
- Performance statistics
- collected every minute (default) on each partition and sent to BVQ server
- 12 objects types containing a total of ~300 performance statistics
Additional information:
- See Supported AIX systems (SW) for more information about which HW/SW versions are supported.
- See Scanner for more Information about BVQ Scanner configuration
- See BVQ Agent for AIX preparation for BVQ Agent for AIX installation instructions
- See /wiki/spaces/~557058f85a2b71be2d496e8e4575a825a92089/pages/13839463 about scanned information.
Object types
A bunch of new object types come along with the BVQ Agent for AIX. Several of them are closely related to objects in the PowerVM module and have the same meaning. The following table provides an overview of those new object types, their meaning and whether they offer performance information.
Grouping | BVQ Name | Description | AIX device | PVM OT | Performance OT? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| System | AIX Instance group | The AIX Instance group is the BVQ master grouping object. This means, all partitions running the BVQ OS Agent are grouped under this object |  | ||
| AIX Instance | OS instance running the BVQ Agent for AIX (either LPAR or VIOS) |  | |||
| AIX Managed system | Hardware that is hosting the AIX instance | PVM Managed system | | ||
| AIX Virtual CPU | Virtual processors in an AIX instance | procX | | ||
| AIX Logical CPU | Logical processors in an AIX instance | cpuX | | ||
| Storage | AIX Disk adapter | An AIX Disk adapter is either a FC adapter or a virtual SCSI adapter. This object type contains all adapters that have block storage attached. Adapters with tape connection are not included. | fcsX / vscsiX | PVM vFC client adapter / PVM vSCSI client adapter | |
| AIX FC adapter | Fibre Channel Adapter | fcsX | PVM vFC client adapter | | |
| AIX Disk | Storage volume | hdiskX | PVM VIOS PV / PVM VIOS LV | | |
| AIX Disk path | Path between AIX Disk adapter and AIX Disk | | |||
| LVM | AIX Volume group | Volume group | rootvg, etc. | | |
| AIX Logical volume | Logical volume in a volume group | | |||
| AIX Paging space | Paging space - typically a logical volume (hd6) | | |||
| AIX Filesystem | Filesystem on a logical vollume | | |||
| AIX LV2PV | describes the relation between logical volume and physical volume, for example on which disk resides a partition copy of a logical volume? | | |||
| Network | AIX Network adapter | Network adapter | entX | PVM Network client adapter | |
| AIX Network interface | Network interface | enX, lo0 | |
The following graphs show the AIX object types and their connections to existing platforms:
Predefined Alert Rules
Coming soon... Not yet available (2021.H2.1)
Predefined Web Dashboards
Coming soon... Not yet available (2021.H2.1)
Predefined reports
Coming soon... Not yet available (2021.H2.1)
BVQ Expert GUI representation
All objects, attributes and statistics of this platform can be interactively browsed within the BVQ Expert GUI.
Where to find IBM AIX objects?
Similar to all other objects, they show up in the Path browser inside the property panel of the BVQ Expert GUI or can be opened as a Table view from the Favorite browser. Several AIX objects can be combined in an end to end relation to objects of other platforms.
| AIX objects in Path browser | AIX object Table views in BVQ Favorites |
|---|---|
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Object attributes
BVQ displays a lot of interesting attributes provided by AIX. Please explore the BVQ AIX table view favorites to get an impression of the most important attributes.
Performance and error statistics
The BVQ Agent for AIX collects many performance statistics from a partition using njmon.
Typical questions around performance, load and utilization are answered by BVQ:
- Is the LPAR performance negatively affected by the SAN congestion or storage latencies?
- Which LPAR puts a heavy load on a storage volume?
- Does an latency peak have influence on the performance of an LPAR?
- Does LPAR load generate latency peaks in storage
- Is the LPAR or host performance affected by slow drainers in the SAN?
- How is the LPAR connected to the SAN?
To view performance statistics for one or multiple objects, simply select the object(s), right-click and select the performance object type you are interested in.
In the performance chart view, open the properties panel to select the metrics you are interested in:
