Visualizing data captured by nmon

In Good Time

Setting up ONA Plus

ONA Plus is available by subscription from onTune [6], or you can download a 30-day free trial [7] to try before you buy. A license for one Windows computer for one year includes all updates and releases, with remote support (email, fax, phone), available eight hours a day (US eastern time). The published price is $2,000 per year, but at the time of publication, onTune was having a limited-time offer of $1,500 per subscription.

Once you have the software, setting up ONA Plus on your Windows laptop or PC is pretty straightforward. The tool comes with an easy install script that basically does everything for you. The easiest way to proceed is just to run the install tool (Figure 11), which performs all the necessary configurations and sets up the MariaDB database that is included with the download package. The install package is easy to use, and most of the installation files are just MariaDB files plus a few files for the tool itself. (See also the "Improvements" box.)

Figure 11: The ONA Plus installation tool. As always, please remember your MariaDB password.

Improvements

The following items for improvement of ONA Plus are on my wish list:

A Linux version – Although the tool runs reliably and quickly on Windows laptop systems, unfortunately, a Linux version is currently not in the developer's plan. It would be nice to see this development, because my company is a Linux shop and hence does not really have any Windows-based systems.
Continuous processing of nmon logs as they become available – After the initial copying and processing of nmon logs, it would be really cool if any subsequent logs would be ingested and processed automatically as they are made available and the corresponding results incorporated into the overall charts and body of information.
Color schemes and chart and graph backgrounds – Because this tool visualizes data, it would be beneficial to be able to change the background color. In data center environments, especially, the light tends to be either rather dim or very bright, and the dark background can make it difficult to view the performance graphs.

Summary

Visualizing nmon data in an efficient and effective fashion requires a tool that is fast, reliable, scalable, and easy to use. I have had very good experiences with ONA Plus analyzing very large logfiles from hundreds of server systems. The tool is speedy and true to the data, with a straightforward interface, and it comes with sufficient bells and whistles to guarantee a good user experience while providing accurate, valuable results.

Infos

Monitoring with nmon: http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/Nmon-All-Purpose-Admin-Tool/(language)/eng-US
ONA Plus: http://ontune.us/ona-plus/
Excel Nmon Analyser: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Power+Systems/page/nmon_analyser
pyNmonAnalyzer: https://github.com/madmaze/pyNmonAnalyzer
Java Nmon Analyser: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jnmonanalyser/
Subscription: http://ontune.us/buy-now/
Free trial: http://ontune.us/freetrial/

The Author

Dominique "Dom" Heger is owner and CEO of DHTechnologies (DHT; http://www.dhtusa.com) and Data Nubes (http://www.datanubes.com). He has worked for more than 30 years in systems performance, capacity planning, reliability and availability, data analytics/mining, and network technologies. Over the years, he has conducted several large-scale systems performance and capacity planning projects in a wide range of professional environments.

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