Collecting the Sample of Data on Solaris

VRAdvisor can be used to collect and analyze a sample of data. You can collect data using the VRAdvisor wizard or the vxstat or iostat commands. To use VRAdvisor to collect data, you must install VRAdvisor on your system. If you do not plan to install VRAdvisor on your system, and VxVM is installed, you can use the vxstat command to collect data. If you do not have VRAdvisor or VxVM installed, you can use the iostat command to collect data.

Before collecting data, be sure the locale for your system is set to one of the supported locales. For details, see Supported Locales.

On Solaris, collect the sample of data using one of the following methods:

• Collecting Data Using the VRAdvisor Wizard
• Collecting Data Using the vxstat Command
• Collecting Data Using the iostat Command

You can also collect the sample of data using the command line interface provided by VRAdvisor. For more information, see Command-Line Interface.

Supported Locales

VRAdvisor requires the data to be collected in a supported locale. Before using any of the methods for collecting data, set the locale to a supported locale. For Solaris, VRAdvisor supports the following locales:

English:

C

en_US.UTF-8

ios_8859_1

Japanese:

ja

ja_JP.PCK

ja_JP.UTF-8

ja_JP.eucJP

Any of the methods of data collection include a date stamp with each sample of data. When you use VRAdvisor to analyze the sample data file, VRAdvisor uses the date stamp to determine the data collection interval. To enable VRAdvisor to automatically determine the data collection interval, the date must be displayed in one of the following formats.

Date formats for English locales:

Fri Oct 1 14:37:13 2004

Fri Oct 1 14:37:13 PDT 2004

Friday October 1 17:37:13 PDT 2004

Date formats for Japanese locales:

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If VRAdvisor cannot determine the data collection interval, it prompts you to specify the data interval.

Collecting Data Using the VRAdvisor Wizard

  To collect data using the VRAdvisor wizard

1. Set the locale to a supported locale. For example:
      # export LC_ALL=C
2. Change directory as follows:
     # cd /opt/VRTSvradv/bin
3. Launch the VRAdvisor wizard on Solaris, using the following command:
           # ./vradvgui

   The Welcome page appears.

4. Select Data Collection. Click Next.

   The Data Collection page appears.

   

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5. Complete the Data Collection page as follows:

   Sample Data File Name	Enter the name of the file where the data write samples will be collected. Make sure the name is not being used by another application. If a file already exists with that filename, or if the path is incorrect, a message is displayed.
   Duration for which the data is to be collected	Enter the duration in days or hours. The default value is 14 days. The maximum duration is 30 days.
   Interval	Enter a value, in seconds, to indicate the frequency at which you want the data to be collected. The default value is 120 seconds.
   Details	If you have VxVM installed, enter the appropriate disk group in Dynamic Disk Group. Select the required volumes individually, or click Select All to select all of the available volumes in the selected disk group. If you do not have VxVM installed, the Details field is not available.

6. Click Next. The Confirmation page appears.
7. To start the data collection process immediately, click Yes. To go back and make any changes, click No.
8. The Data Collection Summary page indicates that the data collection has started. It also displays a summary of the specifications you entered for the data collection.
9. Click Finish. VRAdvisor continues to collect data for the specified duration, although the wizard window closes.

After the data collection completes, the file specified by Sample Data File Name contains the sample of data in a format that can be used for analysis by VRAdvisor. To proceed, see Analyzing the Sample of Data.

Collecting Data Using the vxstat Command

If you do not want to install VRAdvisor and VxVM is installed on your system, use the vxstat command to collect data.

  To collect data using vxstat

1. Set the locale to a supported locale. For example:
      # export LC_ALL=C
2. To collect the data in the format required for analysis, use the following command with exactly the parameters shown:
      # vxstat -g dgname -i interval -c count volumes > filename

   where:

   interval is the data collection interval in seconds.

   count is the number of samples to collect.

   volumes is a list of volume names separated by spaces.

   For example, use the following command to collect a sample of data every 120 seconds and to collect 5040 samples. The volumes are the data volumes hr_dv01 and hr_dv02 in the disk group hrdg. The results are collected in the file vra_in.

   
      # vxstat -g hrdg -i 120 -c 5040 hr_dv01 hr_dv02 > vra_in

After the data collection completes, the file filename (for example, vra_in) contains the sample of data in the vxstat format, which can be used for analysis by VRAdvisor. To proceed, see Analyzing the Sample of Data.

Collecting Data Using the iostat Command

  To collect data using iostat

1. Set the locale to a supported locale. For example:
      # export LC_ALL=C
2. To collect the data in the format required for analysis, use the following command with exactly the parameters shown:
      # iostat -x -n -Td interval count > filename

   where:

   interval is the data collection interval in seconds.

   count is the number of samples to collect.

   For example, use the following command to collect a sample of data every 120 seconds and to collect 5040 samples. The results are collected in the file vra_in.

   
      # iostat -x -n -Td 120 5040 > vra_in

After the data collection completes, the file filename (for example, vra_in) contains the sample of data in the iostat format, which can be used for analysis by VRAdvisor. To proceed, see Analyzing the Sample of Data.