hughes@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (larry hughes) (10/08/89)
Can anyone recommend a generic equation that can be used to instantaneously determine how busy (i.e. _percent_ busy) a UNIX machine is? I would expect that such an equation would include variables such as current number of interactive logins, current number of computable processes (or perhaps using the 1-minute average from the kernel), and a relative "cpu rating" to indicate the horsepower of the machine. DEC has published such an equation in the release notes of VMS 5.2 that they use in conjunction with their LAT terminal servers, which perform dynamic load balancing. It turns out, however, that the numbers from that equation, when scaled to form a percentage, do somewhat accurately determine how busy a VMS machine is (especially when averaged over a short period of time). Thanks in advance for any information... //=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\\ || Larry J. Hughes, Senior Programmer || hughes@silver.bacs.indiana.edu || || Indiana University || || || University Computing Services || "The person who knows everything || || 750 N. State Road 46 Bypass || has a lot to learn." || || Bloomington, IN 47405 || || || (812) 855-9255 || Disclaimer: See quote above. || \\=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=//
larry@macom1 (Larry Taborek) (10/27/89)
> Can anyone recommend a generic equation that can be used to > instantaneously determine how busy (i.e. _percent_ busy) a UNIX > machine is? Larry, On Syst V systems this sort of data can be gotten from 'sar'. On BSD sytstems you will have to deal with the more cryptic iostat, vmstat and so on. You not only want to look at CPU percent busy, but the amount of swap you are using, (Once you hit swap, performance dives), and also the business of your io ports and file system disks. Hope this helps...