Subject: Create Web Pages from nmon Files Using nmon2rrd Tool - Part 1

Audience: All

Date: February 17, 2006

"nmon" is an IBM freeware tool for monitoring and collecting AIX/Linux performance data.

You can use the "nmon2rrd' tool to convert nmon data into web pages. This is the web alternative to the nmon_analyzer tool available for Excel spreadsheets. The benefit of nmon2rrd is that you can automate the creation of the web pages, whereas the nmon_analyzer is a manual process.

The nmon2rrd tool is simple to use. The syntax is:

nmon2rrd -f nmon_file -d output_directory -x

This creates the performance charts in the output_directory, as well as an index.htm file that displays everything as a web page. The nmon tools can be downloaded from the following URL.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/articles/analyze_aix /

The nmon2rrd tool is located in the tools package at the bottom of the page.

Update Feb 27, 2006: the nmon2rrd tool has moved to
http://www-941.haw.ibm.com/collaboration/wiki/display/WikiPtype/nmon
The current version is nmon2rrdv10.5.tar.gz download

The rrdtool is available on the Linux distribution CD. For AIX, you can download it from:
http://aixpdslib.seas.ucla.edu/categories/utilities.html

I've attached two files for automating the collection and creation of web pages for multiple hosts. The "nmon_charts.htm" is a front end web page for selecting charts by host and date. The "nmon2rrd.v1" shell script automates the creation of the web pages on the web server. The documentation is in the nmon2rrd.v1 shell script.
nmon_charts.tar.gz

Comments

March 1, 2006: Older versions of nmon2rrd may display empty charts. If you're having this problem, check the rrd_create file in the nmon2rrd output directory. The "GAUGE:nnn" should by larger than the "step" value. (The step value is the expected sampling interval in seconds. The "nnn" value is the maximum amount of time between samples. The the sample value is larger than "nnn", it will assume missing data and error out.)

For example the following entry will produce empty graphs.

create cpu_all.rrd --start 1141200061 --step 900 DS:User:GAUGE:90:U:U DS:Sys:GAUGE:90:U:U DS:Wait:GAUGE:90:U:U DS:Idle:GAUGE:90:U:U RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:94

This will work:

create cpu_all.rrd --start 1141200061 --step 900 DS:User:GAUGE:1800:U:U DS:Sys:GAUGE:1800:U:U DS:Wait:GAUGE:1800:U:U DS:Idle:GAUGE:1800:U:U RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:94