18 - OpenVMS Performance Management

Abstract

This chapter focuses on OpenVMS performance management. An OpenVMS system consists of three major resources—CPU, memory, and disk. Every application uses each of these resources to varying degrees. Some performance-management approaches focus solely on monitoring each system resource, detecting when they become saturated, and tuning or load-balancing them until utilization seems acceptable. Objectives are the most important input to the performance-management process. Reasonable objectives should be developed by consulting with users and management. Performance objectives should indicate how quickly the system should process and respond to particular user requests or activities. Application objectives should also include an estimated number of concurrent uses. After identifying performance objectives, a system manager should regularly monitor whether application performance goals are being satisfied. On a weekly or monthly basis system manager should summarize response times and publish the results to users or management. Such a report also becomes a historical record of response times, which is immensely helpful in analyzing performance over a longer term.