Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

CCSS is working to enhance its iSeries performance monitor with additional logical partitioning (LPAR) capabilities that will give administrators more insight into the state of their LPAR-enabled OS/400 server. The British OS/400 systems management software developer announced last week that these new LPAR capabilities will be delivered with the Version 11 release of its flagship product, QSystem Monitor, later this year.

IBM has been very successful in selling LPAR-enabled machines, particularly at the high end of the iSeries Model 8XX spectrum, and it is making LPAR a key component of its "e-business on-demand" initiative for the iSeries, along with the capacity upgrade on-demand feature that comes standard with new Model 825, 870, and 890 servers. According to IBM, almost 50 percent of Model 840 customers and 70 percent of Model 890 customers are taking advantage of the capability to allocate resources at a finer level through LPAR, bringing the number of active iSeries LPARs to 10,000 worldwide. This is of particular importance to CCSS and other systems management software vendors because they tend to sell their operations automation solutions to the larger OS/400 shops.

CCSS has supported LPAR monitoring since it shipped QSystem Monitor Version 10 in August 2001. The release of that product allowed OS/400 systems administrators to monitor the performance of OS/400 LPARs according to several performance metrics, including CPU, response time, and disk capacity. This information augments other information already available to administrators, including the number of logical partitions, their logical serial number, and the minimum, maximum, and currently available amount of memory and interactive capacity. This existing LPAR capability extends to CCSS's message management and escalation utility, QMessage Monitor, which can receive messages from logical partitions regarding performance problems and other issues.

CCSS plans to deliver more advanced LPAR management capabilities in QSystem Monitor Version 11 to help companies manage increasingly complex LPAR environments. These new LPAR capabilities will be delivered in the QSystem Monitor's core Online Monitor module, a Windows-based program that uses a series of color-coded bars to visually communicate the real-time status of certain OS/400 server performance characteristics.

With QSystem Monitor 11.0, CCSS will include three dedicated performance bars in the Online Monitor that gauge certain LPAR performance attributes. The first performance bar will monitor the number of processors currently assigned to the partition. The second bar will monitor the amount of memory currently allocated to the partition, while the third bar will monitor the current interactive percentage allocated to the partition.

In addition to these bars, the Online Monitor will feature a new LPAR information window that provides instant confirmation of essential LPAR data, such as processor limits for interactive and database; ratio values for memory; percentage of interactive used; and information about shared processors. CCSS will also give users the option of obtaining a summary view of all logical partitions within a physical system, which, CCSS says, will be a particularly useful feature for operators who need to keep track of resources when working in an environment with many logical partitions.

CCSS managing director Ray Wright says users shouldn't consider LPAR as the final piece in their resource management puzzle. "Since their introduction into the marketplace, LPAR servers have been seen as a fast-track solution to resource management, but that's not the whole story," he says. "In reality, how well an LPAR environment is managed ultimately determines how beneficial it will be," and QSystem Monitor 11.0 should go far in helping administrators manage their LPAR systems more effectively, he says.

CCSS expects to deliver these new LPAR capabilities later this year as part of the QSystem Monitor 11.0 rollout. For users needing immediate LPAR capabilities, the company recommends QSystem Monitor 10. CCSS is headquartered in Gillingham, United Kingdom, and has a sales and support office in Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, go to www.ccssltd.com.