Communicator e3000 MPE/iX Release 7.0 Express 1 (Software Release C.70.01) (30216-90328)

Chapter 6 135
Technical Articles
PCS/iX (SCOPE) Enhanced with Expanded Limits
PCS/iX (SCOPE) Enhanced with Expanded Limits
By James Overman
Computer Systems Division
The Performance Collection Software (PCS/iX) product (also known as SCOPE/iX) HP
B1794B for MPE/iX has been enhanced to support a larger numbers of disks, CPU's, and
other system resources with the version B.13.53.00 shipped with MPE/iX 7.0 Express 1 as
patch SCOLXR6. This PCS/iX version produces new format Raw Logfiles (version D) and
also modifies the format of Extracted RX Logfiles that are analyzed by the PerfView
products. HP Perfview and Measureware products are now known as HP Vantage Point
Performance Manager and Agent, respectively.
This new version of PCS/iX supports the increased HP e3000 MPE/iX limits of 511 disks,
14 processors, and 16Gbyte memory sizes. Also, the data fields have been changed to
correctly process the much larger possible sizes of disk storage, number of pins, and other
system resources that have grown along with the more powerful HP e3000s. The
expanded and modified data items required the update of the MeasureWare Agent portion
of the HP PerfView software [HP Vantage Point Performance AGENT]. Older versions of
HP MeasureWare and the obsolete HP LaserRX software will not process the new
Extracted RX logfiles.
New releases of HP MeasureWare Agent that understand the new MPE/iX 7.0 Extracted
RX logfiles are available. Those releases should be acquired by customers through the
usual HP Support Channels. Generally, a Patch for your platform may be requested from
HP in the normal manner (download from the IT Resource Center, or request from the
Response Center). As of the writing of this article, the HP Vantage Point Performance
products have a problem with the expanded disk information but do process the other
extracted data. The difficulty is being corrected and new releases of the Monitor and the
Agent are expected by the end of July 2001.
Immediately after updating or installing PCS/iX B.13.53.00, it will be necessary to use the
UTILITY.SCOPE.SYS program to CONVERT the previous Raw Logfile formats (B or C) to
the new D version, if not previously converted. This one-time conversion should require
only a few minutes for even the largest Raw Logfiles. This conversion step must be
performed prior to attempting to restart the SCOPEJOB that collects the PCS/iX data.
The new format extracted RX logfiles are created by the EXTRACT.SCOPE.SYS program.
Old extracted RX logfiles may be used to create new RX files, but old RX log files may not
have data appended nor updated. Note that when extracting a period file (month, week,
year), the prior period file is examined and updated if needed, before the current period file
is addressed. The format version of a logfile may be determined by running
UTILITY.SCOPE.SYS and doing a LOG command and then giving the RX logfile name.
The program will display on the first line the Version. D is the new format, B or C are the
old formats.
The extracted logfiles are still limited to 65535 records. The new disk log records will
cause more records to be written per global data collection interval and so users may reach
the End-of-file condition more frequently during Extracts. The work-around is to extract
shorter intervals, reduce the amount of data being extracted by selecting fewer record
types, or using summarization rather than detail records.