LPAR2RRD tool
It collects complete physical and logical configuration of all servers/LPAR's.
It is agent less (It gets everything from the HMC/SDMC or IVM).
It supports all kinds of logical partitions (AIX/AS400/Linux/VIOS).
This program is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Announcements in brief
- Live Partition Mobility support is already under beta testing, it is about to release for customers with support contract
- 3.10 brings Top10 and new "Physical and Logical configuration" : Summary and Detail examples
- 3.02 comes with yearly trend graphs
- 3.01 supports SDMC, it is available for customers with support contract only
- more details on LPAR2RRD announcements
Why use LPAR2RRD?
- 1st of all due to its unique web based GUI for graphical interpretation of physical CPU utilization in virtualized environment. You can on a click find total CPU utilization of any physical box in a simple graphical form understandable from technician to management level
- it is free for use, you do not need to invest into expensive commercial solutions. You can optionally buy support.
- it is agent less == there is not administration overhead if there is ANY change in your virtual environment
- it does not require ANY administration, you just put there SDMC/HMC/IVM names, allow ssh access there and that's it! Everything else is automatic.
- in comparison to commercial tools where you need to have dedicated and trained staff for administration of them
- you can on a click export internally stored data in cvs format for further analysis via 3rd party tools
- it collects physical and logical inventory of all attached servers
How it works
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- it is able to graph CPU usage prediction 1 year ahead yearly trend graphs
- it is no longer only an off-line tool. Since 2.59 you can do refresh (via a WEB link) whenever you want to get nearly "real-time" graphs
- intended only for micro-partitioned systems with shared CPU pools
- agent-less, no agents need to be installed on LPAR's. It gets all data via ssh-keys based access to HMC/SDMC/IVM servers
- support of all types of LPAR's and OS'es : AIX, VIOS, i5/OS (AS400), Linux on IBM Power Systems
- It collects "Physical and Logical configuration" : Summary and Detail examples
- showing total yeary memory usage for each managed system
- LAN income/outcome traffic of all IVE/HEA adapters
- simple to install, configure and use (initial install & configuration together with supporting tools like Apache/Perl/SSH should not take more than half an hour!)
- no additional management required when you change/add/remove/rename a LPAR or managed system/frame (the tool discovers everything automatically for all already configured HMC/SDMC/IVM)
- it can be hosted on any *NIX (theoretically even WIN) platform, it just needs a web server, SSH, Perl and RRDTool installed. (check prerequisites below)
- it is not intended to be main monitoring tool for everything (CPU/MEM/IO/...), it is rather an add-on tool for physical CPU monitoring which we hope does that particular thing better that the other tools. Typical usage is for capacity planning purposes, although it is possible to use it also in "real-time" mode.
- generally it is not intended to be a real-time monitoring tool
anyway since 2.59 LPAR2RRD can show nearly "real-time" utilization graphs, however refresh is not automatic, but manual - it is not a tool for partitions using dedicated CPUs, it always shows 100% CPU utilization for them (unfortunately HMC/IVM/SDMC do not provide detailed CPU stats usage for LPARs with dedicated CPUs)
Well, for POWER6/7 and "allowed processor sharing" mode LPAR2RRD shows CPU donation of those partitions to the CPU shared pool - it is not a complex tool with many features, options etc. It a simple tool which does mainly CPU utilization monitoring on micro-partitioned systems.
- it does not have a perfect and modern WEB front-end, no nice menus ... functionality and simplicity is main target.
- Alerting
- Support of AMS (Active Memory Sharing)
- Support of LPM (Live Partition Mobility)