If you're getting too many annoying phone calls inquiring about system performance, consider installing MPG's Performance Navigator with its new EXPO feature.

Written by Chris Smith

How many system administrators have faced the dreaded phenomenon where the disk is growing out of control and nearing capacity? Besides panicking, what do you do? First, you might ask, why is the disk growing—and why right now? And you can't help but wonder—how long has this been building up? If you have the right performance management tools, a surge in disk growth doesn't have to be a scary event.

The freeware from Vision Solutions measures 10 system performance and database indices, including available DASD.

Written by Chris Smith

If the thought ever crossed your mind that you are spending far too much time optimizing your System i, then you're not alone. More than three quarters of those who currently do system optimization manually would prefer to have an automated optimization solution do it for them. About a third of system administrators who tune an IBM i today use native operating system commands, and an equal number run customized scripts to get the job done.

If you're using the same old techniques from years ago, it's time you re-thought your approach.

Written by Steve Pitcher

Are you expecting an all-too-familiar AS/400 performance-tuning article written 15 years ago about disk arms, memory pools, and batch-vs.-interactive queries? Well, those things still matter with IBM i version 7.1, but there's a whole new raft of things you have to think about as well when tuning your system.

Optimize performance of applications and pinpoint system trouble spots with precise accuracy.

Written by M B Software & Consulting Services, Inc.

Workload Performance Series software is a comprehensive, integrated suite of modules that looks at virtually every aspect of your system's application-processing environment to diagnose and eliminate processing bottlenecks. This can help avoid costly hardware upgrades.

The utility gives users a view of all jobs and their dependencies across multiple platforms and will send the operator a trouble alert by email, text, or voice.

Written by Chris Smith

There are a number of reasons that fewer IBM i operator jobs exist today than in the past, but among them is the fact that job scheduler utilities have proven themselves reliable and today do much of the work that operators did manually decades ago.

No matter how well your systems perform, there are always ways to improve. Performance-management and capacity-planning tools help you find the best balance between high throughput and fast user-response time.

Written by John Ghrist

Despite the reputation IBM Power Systems (particularly the IBM i) have for reliability, uptime percentages with healthy doses of nines in them aren't the only criteria for system efficiency. The actual amount of processing that takes place in a given period can be crucial, especially for enterprises with high volumes of business, large numbers of remote system users, and customers who regularly access your systems to gather information such as the status of their orders. System response time is an efficiency benchmark for internal and external users alike, and the most effectual use of CPU cycles is a statistic that IT management needs to keep optimal at the same time.

Learn the critical areas that can lead to major disk expense and what is needed to resolve them.

Written by Greer Hahn

Editor's note: This article introduces the white paper "How to Avoid the Top Five Most Expensive Disk Issues" available free at the MC White Paper Center.

Why risk the disk? Many IT managers will be familiar with the "disk or die" ultimatums that a disgruntled system can issue and have felt the resulting fallout of poor performance, lost data, and, most commonly, the additional cost which can quickly run into many thousands of dollars of unplanned expense.

The native IBM i utility provides for running numerous automated disk cleanup jobs to help improve system performance.

Written by S4i Systems

Editor's Note: To download and try DASD-Plus at no obligation, visit the MC Software Center.

DASD-Plus is a utility that allows iSeries/System i administrators to schedule more than 27 automated cleanup jobs. These jobs can be run either in a "what-if" scenario to check out what will be cleaned up if the process is actually run or in a "commit" mode to clean up history logs, alerts, message queues, spool files, etc. Administrators can run surveys to monitor changes in libraries, objects, directories, and entries as well as monitor for spikes in disk utilization.