wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) (02/05/91)
i just got a flier from HP about their LaserRX product, and i have a
few questions that i hope someone can answer...
1) why is it called LaserRX? it doesnt seem to have anything to do
with lasers (or cdroms or read/write optical disks which use
lasers).
2) i have a nice hp9000/370 sitting on my desk. why am i supposed to
buy a pc in order to run LaserRX? (and, of course, i would have
to buy another desk to put it on, and maybe a bigger office,
and...) can a pc really do something that my HP-UX box cant? if
so, does that mean i really should be junking all my HP-UX systems
and start developing for the pc instead?
3) what does LaserRX give me that the hp monitor, uptime, iostat,
vmstat and unix accounting doesnt already give me? the only think i
can think of that they show is pretty color graphs... gee, you
would think X windows could do that, but...
having come from a mainframe background, i have always been _real_
disappointed with the primitive system performance analysis tools that
unix has.
the most important one that is missing is some way of figure out how
much i/o is going a given file or directory structures so you can
figure out how you should split your file system over a series of disk
and spread the i/o around. sure, it is _easy_ to balance the disk
usage across a bunch of disks, but i want to balance the i/o load
across a bunch of disks. will LaserRX help me do this?
-waynejfk@ais.org (Jim Knight) (02/05/91)
In article <WAYNE.91Feb4144409@dsndata.uucp> wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes: > >i just got a flier from HP about their LaserRX product, and i have a >few questions that i hope someone can answer... I assume you are addressing LaserRX/UX the unix product, all the observations below are for the MPE/XL Box (Hp3000 9xx series). Btw, I am familiar with operation on a HP9000 series 855 > >1) why is it called LaserRX? it doesnt seem to have anything to do > with lasers (or cdroms or read/write optical disks which use > lasers). The software comes on CDROM, sort of like LaserRom Which is HP's manual sets on Laser disk (cdrom) :) >2) i have a nice hp9000/370 sitting on my desk. why am i supposed to > buy a pc in order to run LaserRX? (and, of course, i would have > to buy another desk to put it on, and maybe a bigger office, > and...) can a pc really do something that my HP-UX box cant? if > so, does that mean i really should be junking all my HP-UX systems > and start developing for the pc instead? For a 370, all you probably really want is Glance which I'm not sure is available for the 9000's yet. >3) what does LaserRX give me that the hp monitor, uptime, iostat, > vmstat and unix accounting doesnt already give me? the only think i > can think of that they show is pretty color graphs... gee, you > would think X windows could do that, but... LaserRX provides very detailed information on what is happening on your system without running monitor, iostat etc. all the time. There is a collector process that runs. All the analysis of the data is then done on a PC. You can graph by day, hour, or even 5 minute intervals, and get detailed information by process. >having come from a mainframe background, i have always been _real_ >disappointed with the primitive system performance analysis tools that >unix has. > I agree here, the HP 3000's have always had nice tools... >the most important one that is missing is some way of figure out how >much i/o is going a given file or directory structures so you can >figure out how you should split your file system over a series of disk >and spread the i/o around. sure, it is _easy_ to balance the disk >usage across a bunch of disks, but i want to balance the i/o load >across a bunch of disks. will LaserRX help me do this? > Specifically, I doubt that LaserRX is going to give you this information. I use it to see what the bottlenecks are, and to predict when and where I might need more CPU / memory / etc. We also use it to determine CPU utilization. It's amazing how little our computer is used during non prime time hours. It's a good tool, I'm just not sure it fits your situation. Jim -- ================================================================= Come Visit M-net. Michigan's Public Access Unix and Conferencing (313) 994-6333 jfk@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us jfk@ais.org
paul@actrix.gen.nz (Paul Gillingwater) (02/06/91)
In article <WAYNE.91Feb4144409@dsndata.uucp> wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes: > i just got a flier from HP about their LaserRX product, and i have a > few questions that i hope someone can answer... Your questions are reasonable. > 1) why is it called LaserRX? it doesnt seem to have anything to do > with lasers (or cdroms or read/write optical disks which use > lasers). It does require a CD-ROM player on a PC to operate. I don't know why they packaged it like this, but that's the way it is. It's also not a new product, at least in the sense that it has been around for MPE, HP's proprietary O/S, for a while. I guess they've just ported it to HP-UX. > > 2) i have a nice hp9000/370 sitting on my desk. why am i supposed to > buy a pc in order to run LaserRX? (and, of course, i would have Your PC can do something that your 9000 can't do very well: run MS-Windows, which is what LaserRX requires. > 3) what does LaserRX give me that the hp monitor, uptime, iostat, > vmstat and unix accounting doesnt already give me? the only think i > can think of that they show is pretty color graphs... gee, you > would think X windows could do that, but... HP have at least three new performance tools for HP-UX. Glance Plus/UX is for "snapshots", and replaces the unsupported monitor(1M). It's a lot more user friendly than the other utilities, such as sar(1M-800only), iostat and vmstat. Laser RX/UX reads the same info as Glance Plus/UX, but saves it in a log file. It also can be configured to watch particular applications. Its main function is to log system activity over a period of time, which monitor and the other tools won't do (unless you put them in shell wrappers). The third tool is ForecastRX, which uses the information collected by LaserRX to forecast trends and make recommendations. I agree that I'd like to see the graphs under X. I think HP were leveraging off the fact they'd written most of that stuff already for MS-Windows on the MPE version. > having come from a mainframe background, i have always been _real_ > disappointed with the primitive system performance analysis tools that > unix has. I think you'll find that the three new tools address exactly that concern. They're the best I've seen from *any* vendor. > the most important one that is missing is some way of figure out how > much i/o is going a given file or directory structures so you can > figure out how you should split your file system over a series of disk ... > across a bunch of disks. will LaserRX help me do this? No, I think you want Glance Plus/UX for that. -- Paul Gillingwater, paul@actrix.gen.nz