Sun N1 Advanced Architecture for SAP Solutions 5.2.1 Installation Guide

Performance Collector


Note –

Installation has to be done on all N1 AA Clients.


Installation of perfcol

  1. Copy the SUNWn1aaperf.pkg package from installation media to a temporary installation directory and navigate to the directory.

  2. Install the SUNWn1aaperf.pkg package as superuser.

    # pkgadd -d SUNWn1aaperf.pkg

    This following occurs:

    • Installs /opt/SUNWn1aa/perfcol/sbin/perfcol

    • Activates extended accounting

    • Creates necessary service entry in /etc/inittab or installs a manifest on Solaris 10

    • Starts perfcol by initiating "init Q." This command wakes init to re-examine /etc/inittab immediately. On Solaris 10, it enables perfcol by using svcadm.

SRM projects

The Performance Collector measures the resource consumption, CPU and memory, of every running SRM project:

The operating concept is to start every application component, for example an SAP Application Sever, within a landscape-wide unique SRM project. In this way, the N1 AA Analyzer will interpret the resource consumption of an SRM project as consumption of an application component. For more information, see the Sun N1 Advanced Architecture for SAP Solutions 5.2.1 User’s Guide.

Create a landscape-wide unique SRM project for the application component you would like to measure.

Give a meaningful name to the SRM project. For example, D01_lhost17_17 for the SAP Application Instance #17 on host lhost17 of the D01 system . See Sun Management Center 3.5 System Reliability Manager User’s Guide on how to create and manage SRM projects.

There is no need, but also no limitation, to apply resource controls, like CPU shares, with the SRM project. The concept of the N1 AA Analyzer is independent of this.

Always start the application component within its dedicated SRM project using the newtask command. For example to start the SAP Application Instance #17:


# newtask -p D01_lhost17_17 startsap R3 DVEBGMS17

Note –

Define the SRM projects within a central LDAP server and configure the N1 AA clients to point to this LDAP server. This makes every SRM project available on every N1 AA client. This is required in a virtualized landscape, for example if you relocate the application-components from one server (N1 AA client) to another server (N1 AA client.)


Check for a Successful Installation

  1. Check to see if the perfcol daemon is running:

    # ps -ef | grep perfcol

    The output should show the running perfcol process. For example:


    root 26816 1 53 Dec 28 ? 46:15 /opt/SUNWn1aa/perfcol/sbin/perfcol -f
  2. Check to see if the perfcol daemon reports local data.

    At least 30 minutes after the perfcol daemon has been started, it should write resource consumption to the /var/opt/SUNWn1aa/n1data file. This includes the default SRM projects (default, system, user.root), the additional created SRM projects, and the total-load entries (= server load) for CPU and Memory. For example:


    # cat /var/opt/SUNWn1aa/n1data
    system,netra1,MEM,200512291000,105635840,31.48
    user.root,netra1,MEM,200512291000,15253504,4.55
    default,netra1,MEM,200512291000,3383296,1.01
    D01_lhost01_01,netra1,MEM,200512291000,703209472,209.57
    D01_lhost01_DB,netra1,MEM,200512291000,177610752,52.93
    system,netra1,CPU,200512291000,0.70,0.08
    user.root,netra1,CPU,200512291000,8.43,0.94
    D01_lhost01_01,netra1,CPU,200512291000,21.94,2.44
    D01_lhost01_DB,netra1,CPU,200512291000,4.62,0.51
    total,netra1,CPU,200512291000,69,7.67,1,UltraSPARC-IIi,360
    total,netra1,MEM,200512291000,1009573888,300.88,335544320

Note –

Note –

Once perfcol is installed and extended process accounting is activated, the following files are used for data management:

/var/adm/exacct/proc

This file contains raw extended–process accounting data and therefore grows quickly. The perfcol daemon extracts necessary data and reorganizes this file. In this way perfcol keeps the file size below 100 MB.

/var/opt/SUNWn1aa/n1data

This file contains the aggregated accounting information that is written by the perfcol daemon. It grows slowly. After N1 AA has imported the data successfully, log file rotation takes place if the file size has exceeded 5 MB. The OS administrator should manage the outdated files, n1data.n. For example, backup and remove.

If you have stopped the perfcol daemon for any reason, you have to manage the file size growth of /var/adm/exacct/proc yourself. You can either: