P9000Watch and P9000Sketch Reference guide for HP StorageWorks P9000 Performance Advisor v5.2 (T1789-96319, May 2011)

1 Introduction to P9000Watch

This chapter describes the features of P9000Watch (previously called XPWatch) and the environment

required to run it.

Overview

P9000Watch is a command-line interface utility provided with HP StorageWorks P9000 Performance

Advisor. It is designed for focused troubleshooting and can capture data as frequently as every five

seconds.

P9000Watch monitors the performance of the following:

• Host groups

• Ports

• Client-Host Interface Processor (CHIP) or Channel Adapter (CHA)

• Array Control Processors (ACPs) or Disk Adapters (DKAs)

• RAID groups

• Logical Devices (LDEVs) of the XP and the P9000 disk arrays

P9000Watch can be used to troubleshoot performance issues, such as:

• Hot spots within the XP or P9500 disk arrays (hard disk drives or RAID groups that are over utilized

compared to the rest of the array)

• Front-end congestion (micro processors (mp) ports)

• Back-end issues

• Cache/Shared Memory issues, usage, contention and so on

• Determining true I/O throughput (from the mp port to the hard disk drive)

• Port I/O spikes

• Poor application response

The performance metrics are displayed on the console of the host system. The output data is stored

in six comma separated files (.csv) that are generated, one file for each component. The .csv file

generated by P9000Watch in the Interactive mode can be loaded in P9000Sketch to obtain a visual

representation of the output data.

P9000Watch offers the following features:

• Focused troubleshooting

• Real-time performance data monitoring and collection for time intervals as low as five seconds

• In the CLI mode (Command Line Interface), the output screen has the timestamp when the data is

retrieved.

• Ability to split data in desired intervals and store them in different files

• Customizable menu size

• Nicknames can be provided to the host groups for easy identification

• Command-line tool with easy-to-use selection menu

P9000Watch and P9000Sketch Reference Guide 9