CCSS Cracks Down on IBM i Jobs with Excessive I/O

September 7, 2010 Alex Woodie

It’s an embarrassing but common problem in the IBM i world: jobs consuming excessive amounts of I/O. The solution is often to wait for the job to end, which puts the operator in an awkward spot when the president expects her report. But thanks to a recent enhancement in the QSystem Monitor (QSM) product from CCSS, gluttonous jobs can be dealt with automatically, before they get out of hand.

QSM has long been able to identify batch or interactive jobs that consume more than their fair share of IBM i resources, including DASD, CPU, and network bandwidth. With the recent enhancement to its existing MONCHKJCP command, the company now provides a way for operators to instantly identify and work with jobs consuming too much I/O.

Just identifying the problem jobs for the operator is a big plus, according to CCSS, which says manually identifying jobs that consume too much I/O can be a time-consuming task. But it’s a necessary task, as a job consuming too much I/O can have a big impact on the performance of other I/O-intensive jobs, such as interactive applications.

QSM can be configured to automatically take action against a job that it identifies as consuming too much I/O. The software can automatically hold the job, lower its priority, or send a message to an operator. A red warning light will also flash in QSM’s Windows-based console when a job is exceeding preset limits on I/O consumption.

It’s important to make a distinction between jobs that consume too much I/O from those consuming too much CPU, as they do not always occur in the same job. CCSS says SQL and database queries will often consume lots of I/O but not necessarily register high CPU ratings. QSM also provides filters that look for jobs that consume excessive amounts of both I/O and CPU.

Product manager Paul Ratchford says the I/O enhancements in QSM show how CCSS works to refine the product. “The more configurable the solution is, the more value and relevance it brings to a customer’s systems environment,” he says in a press release.