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Visualizing data captured by nmon
In Good Time
An excellent article by Jeff Layton [1] on nmon monitoring showed nmon to be a most useful performance assessment and evaluation tool. My experience and use of nmon focuses on Layton's statement that "Nmon can also capture a great deal of information from the system and produce CSV files for postprocessing. However, the results are typically not easy to postprocess"; hence, you need a tool to visualize the data.
This is particularly true for big data firms that deal with thousands of Linux server systems and very large amounts of captured information. The visualized information needs to get into reports as quickly as possible, because the time to answer is paramount to be proactive. The bottom line can be based on the vast amount of nmon data; to get a comprehensive picture quickly of all server systems, you have to be able to drill down through the data to analyze individual servers' performance behavior on an ad hoc basis. To accomplish that objective, I've been using a tool at my company called onTune nmon Analyzer Plus (ONA Plus) from TeemStone [2].
ONA Plus: It's Fast
To use the tool, you first copy the nmon logs to the tool's directory. After the copy process, the application starts to load the files automatically. It takes about 20 minutes to process 10GB of nmon data (on a contemporary Windows laptop). In most instances, when dealing with a lot of nmon logs from thousands of servers, you can get a cup of java and come back to find the processing done.
The tool pops up the window in Figure 1 right after the last logfile disappears in the tool's directory. To begin, you choose the start and end dates for the period of interest and select OK . The application processes the logs, executes a viewer
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