Importing and Characterizing Server Data Using SCE with Windows Perfmon Overview

Transcription

1 Importing and Characterizing Server Data Using SCE with Windows Perfmon Overview This tutorial is intended to help in collecting data from a server in order to perform advanced server modeling. This tutorial requires the server to be modeled to use Microsoft Windows as its operating system. The tool that would be used in this tutorial as a data source is Windows Perfmon, which is available only on the Windows operating system. Windows Perfmon is a performance-monitoring tool that is useful for collecting server metrics. The following concepts are covered in this tutorial: Configuring server data collection scripts in Windows Perfmon Increasing the load on the server Exporting system data to a text file Importing the collected data into SCE (Server Characterization Editor) Creating a new server characterization using the imported data 1

2 Configuring Perfmon scripts using server data collection templates OPNET provides an XML template for use with Windows Perfmon, as part of the standard installation. This template contains information about the metrics that are to be collected by Perfmon in order to be imported into SCE (Server Characterization Editor) for further analysis. 1 Click on the Windows Start button and click Run 2 In the dialog box that pops up, type perfmon and click OK 3 In the Perfmon window that appears, we need to create a new counter log. Click on Performance logs and Alerts and then right click on the 2

3 Counter Logs option on the right side of the window. In the menu that comes up, choose New Log Settings From 4 Counter logs in Perfmon are usually created to log certain statistics pertaining to the server over a particular duration of time. The statistics to be recorded may also be chosen, as we will see in the next step. 5 In the file Open dialog box that shows up, browse to <install_dir>\<release>\models\std\servers\ag 3

4 ents\perfmon\ directory, where <install_dir> is where the software is installed (for example, C:\Program Files\<install_dir>). 6 Specify the file type to Web Page, then open the file sce_perfmon_metrics_template.htm. In this step, you used a Perfmon template file to specify settings for your new counter log. The provided standard Perfmon template file contains information such as the server statistics to collect, which is useful in configuring your counter log. The template file provided is just a standard HTML page, which may be viewed in any web browser. 4

5 7 Upon choosing the template file, you would see a dialog box asking for the Name for your new counter log. Type the name as Sce_Perfmon_Import_Binary and click OK. 5

6 8 In the new dialog box that comes up, change the sampling interval to 10 seconds. 9 Note that in the above dialog box, the displayed log file name is the file where all the information is stored at the end of the duration of data collection. By default, all Perfmon log files are stored in the C:\Perflogs directory, and are of the format SCE_PERFMON_<YYYYMMDDHH>.blg, 6

7 where YYYY represents the 4 digit year, MM represents the month, DD represents the day and HH represents the hour in a 24 hour format. 10 Click OK in the Sce_Perfmon_Import_Binary dialog box, then expand the Performance Logs and Alerts branch and click Counter Logs. 11 Note the Sce_Perfmon_Import_Binary log that was just created. You would use this counter log to collect server statistics by starting and stopping the data collection. 7

8 12 Right-click the Sce_Perfmon_Import_Binary log and choose Start. Note how the icon for this log turns green, indicating that the collection of data has begun. Now, leave the Perfmon window open. Now, you are going to increase the load on the server, and observe the effects of the load increase once the data collection is complete. Note Leave the Perfmon Window open. 8

9 Increasing the load on the server In this step, you will increase the workload on the server. After this is done, you can quickly study the effect of the increased workload on the server when the data collected from Perfmon is imported into SCE. 1 Wait at least10 seconds after the previous step, and then click Start button and then click Run 2 In the dialog box, click Browse and browse to the models\tutorial_ref\module directory under your standard installation directory (for example, C:\Program Files\<install_dir>\<release>). Then choose serv_tut.bat and click OK in the Run dialog box. 3 serv_tut.bat starts a sample simulation run using the op_runsim_dev process. This would increase the load on the server in terms of resources used. 9

10 If you are unable to run the simulation by using the Run dialog, try starting a console from Start > Programs > Modeler > Console and type the location of serv_tut.bat in the console. 4 Now click Start > Run 5 In the Run dialog box that comes up, type chkdsk and click OK. 6 Wait for 2 minutes, and then close the window running chkdsk. The chkdsk utility is basically an additional load on the server. We shall see the impact of running chkdsk at a later point of time, when we import all the server data into Server Characterization Editor. 10

11 Note To run the chkdsk utility as a non-administrator user, consult your local system administrator. A system administrator can grant sufficient rights for non-administrators to start and stop the chkdsk utility by using a utility called SUBINACL.exe. For specific information, consult the operating system documentation. 1 Wait for a few more minutes until the simulation that was started using serv_tut.bat completes, and then close the window of the simulation run. 11

12 2 Once the simulation console window is closed, wait for 10 more seconds (one collection interval) and then right-click the Sce_Perfmon_Import_Binary script in the Perfmon window, and choose Stop. Once the data collection is stopped, we can use the recorded information from Perfmon by importing it into SCE for server model creation. 12

13 Exporting system data to a text file To create a server model, Server Characterization Editor needs two types of information: Server Hardware Information (System Information) Server Job/Workload Information (from Perfmon s collected data) Since you have already collected data from Perfmon into a file, we need to extract system information and export it to a text file. 1 Open the System Information dialog by choosing Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information. 13

14 2 In the System Information dialog, right-click the System Summary and choose Save As Text File 14

15 3 When the Save As dialog box opens, browse to your C:\Perflogs directory, enter the file as local_system_info.txt and click Save. For subsequent data collections, you would not have to export system information. You may use the same local_system_info.txt file again while importing system information into Server Characterization Editor. 15

16 Importing the collected data into SCE (Server Characterization Editor) Now that you have collected all the required data pertaining to the server, the next step is to import all the data into Server Characterization Editor to characterize the data. Server Characterization Editor provides a nice GUI based interface to help visualize the data that you obtained. Here you may try to quickly analyze the data before using it to build a server simulation model. 1 Start Modeler. 2 Choose File > New 3 In the dialog box that comes up, choose Server Characterization and click OK. 16

17 4 In the Import Type dialog box, click Windows Perfmon and click OK. This section includes the import types for specialized modules. You might see a different list than what is shown here. This dialog box lets us choose the type of data collector we used to collect the data. All the data collectors shown in the above dialog are described in the SCE documentation. The Generic XML option is to be used in case the data collector you intend to use is not in the list of supported data collectors. In that case, you are given the option of generating a generic XML file for import from a template provided in the standard installation. 17

18 5 Convert the binary log file to a.csv file. Click Start > Run to open a command window. 6 In the Run dialog box that comes up, change directory to your PerfLogs directory. Then type relog.exe SCE_PERFMON_<YYYYMMDDHH>.blg -f csv -o SCE_PERFMON_<YYYYMMDDHH>.csv, and press Return. 7 In the Specify Perfmon Import Files dialog, click on the Browse button for Perfmon log file: and change Files of type from Binary Log Files (*.log) to (*.csv). Choose the SCE_PERFMON_<YYYYMMDDHH>.csv file under the C:\Perflogs directory. Click on the Browse button for System information file: and choose the local_system_info.txt file as the system information file, and then click OK. 18

19 8 Once the import is complete, review the configuration of the server in the Import Properties dialog box, and then click OK. Here, the Default job class mentioning that the target system was the measured system just means that you would model the same server that the data was collected on. 9 Choose File -> Save As The save the file as <your initials>_server_characterization. 19

20 10 In the SCE window, click on Total CPU Usage in the Unallocated processes/threads table. Note how the list of processes get sorted based on the Total CPU Usage. What you see on your server may vary (as your server might be running different processes), but the top CPU consumer in this case is the op_runsim_dev.e process (which is the simulation process) that you kicked off from the command line using serv_tut.bat. 20

21 11 Press and hold the Ctrl key, and click on the first two rows in the table to select them. Now click on the QuickGraph checkbox. 21

22 12 Once you click on the QuickGraph checkbox, a graph comes up detailing the total CPU usage, and the graph also shows the CPU usage of the two major CPU consumers. In the graph you see, you would be able to account for the major duration of high CPU usage, and also the main contributing factor. At the tail end of the high CPU usage, the second CPU consumer kicks in, and uses around 25 percent of the CPU. 22

23 13 Close the graph, and double-click on the Total Reads column in the same table. Now, you might be able to identify the process which had the maximum Total Reads as the CHKDSK process that was started when Perfmon was recording data. Clicking on any of the columns in the table sorts the processes listed in the table based on that column. 14 Choose File > Save to save the server characterization, and then choose File > Close to close the file. 23

24 Conclusion In this tutorial, you looked at how you could use Windows Perfmon to collect server data and also how the data could be imported into Server Characterization Editor for further analysis. The Server Characterization is a useful tool that may be used to characterize your jobs, define/view available server hardware in the standard models, and also helps you define Server Simulation models to used for performing what-if analysis on your server, based on data collected from sources such as Windows Perfmon. 24