AIX

Here is my favourite book about Korn Shell scripting: "The Korn Shell Programming Tutorial" by Barry J. Rosenberg. It will teach you everything you need to know from the beginning up to a medium advanced level of scripting.

But, again: what you need is not a tool, what you really need is to clarify WHAT you want to monitor. Before you find out WHAT to do every discussion about HOW to do it is moot. I for my part will be glad to help you with this and i am sure the experts here will too, but until after there is a clear picture what you want to do i won't suggest any tools. There might be good or bad tools for your purpose but before we have to establish what this purpose is.

Furthermore: you have heard "topas" and "nmon" and some other tools here a lot. These are very good if you want to get a quick and thorough overview of a system. Often this view is already plotted in graphs without having to bother with plotting tools.

I prefer to use system tools instead ("vmstat", "iostat", "ps", ...) because these offer a lot more flexibility first and because they do not aggregate data second. Aggregation of data is good to get overviews, but when you have to analyse a problem you might need the underlying data to get meaningful results. In such a case it is good to have the source, not some arbitrary summation thereof.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Again, as Bakunin has clearly stated - it is about what you need to accomplish - and then learn the tools that will help you there.

A little known tool - that has been with AIX since roughly 2009 (AIX 6.1 TL4) is called AIX Runtime Expert.

Note: if you google AIX Runtime Expert you will also see many references to IBM System Director->Profile Manager. That "was" the gui that was developed to help work with this "engine".

In 50 words or less - AIX Runtime Expert (artex.base.rte and artex.base.samples) is a script/XML engine that can collect and compare AIX system configurations (aka profiles).

The key commands are: artexget and artexdiff (to get and compare results). There are other commands to list, merge profiles as well as to apply a profile to the local or a remote system.

Basic documentation is easily available in the AIX 7.1 differences guide (enhancements in AIX 6.1 TL6 and AIX 7.1 TL0 in 2010) at: https://books.google.nl/books?id=m6X...expert&f=false

Or the more classic information at: IBM Knowledge Center AIX Runtime Expert

Hey! Great to see you back, Michael!

True. In fact, out of disdain for that Systems Director IBM chose to pester everybody with for the last years i never looked into it until you mentioned it. From a first glance it looks like a possible valuable addition to my toolbox. Good catch!

bakunin

Youtube does have a few videos on scripting if you just search for "bash scripting" or "shell scripting" and you can find some 101 online classes. There is nothing that I've seen focused on system monitoring (I didn't see specified what you need to monitor so I assume system)

something I keep on me is a book called "pro bash scripting" just in case I get stuck and need a quick reference. (this book often goes missing because other people like it as well)

One thing to note, since your learning scripting, I personally wouldn't start with monitoring "performance"
- Reason: shell scripting can be a bit tricky at first, a small mistake and you can run into a loop, where the system resources are being consumed due to a bad code in the script. (maybe not the best example there but once you start making mistakes, you'll see what I mean)

I would suggest with using the commands manually and understanding what each one does first. iostat and vmstat are my preference as bakunin mentioned.

If they are just asking you for report summary's on the servers usage, lpar2rrd as mentioned, is a great way to give them just that.
- Check out their site. bit tricky at times to setup, but once you finish management teams love it. plus they can check it whenever they want without asking you for a report.

I also do run nmon reports as well since it is more detailed (no one other than myself reviews these).

One of my personal fav. I view once every 6 months (if I can) is "HMCViewer"


for learning AIX, there is a sticky on the AIX page:

AIX Links



Before monitoring "performance" understanding the system and how it works is the biggest key. without this its more like building a house from the roof down.

IBM red books are free and very useful.

Hope this helps.

If it is movies you want I recommend Nigel's collection of movies - at - https://www.youtube.com/user/nigelargriffiths

Thanks for all the help everyone.