IBM Tivoli Monitoring CPU calculation options and

considerations for Linux on System z

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Version Date: June 2013

Mike Sine
IBM Advanced Technical Skills
I/T Specialist
sine@us.ibm.com

© IBM Corporation 2013

Special Notices

This document reflects the IBM Advanced Technical Skills organizations’ understanding
of the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Agent Management Services. It was produced and
reviewed by the members of the IBM Advanced Technical Skills organization. This
document is presented “As-Is” and IBM does not assume responsibility for the statements
expressed herein. It reflects the opinions of the IBM Advanced Technical Skills
organization. These opinions are based on the authors’ experiences. If you have questions
about the contents of this document, please contact the author at sine@us.ibm.com .

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the United States, other countries, or both.

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Tivoli Enterprise Console, WebSphere, z/OS, xSeries, zSeries, System z, z/VM.

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Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

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Special thanks to the following people who contributed information to this effort:

• Rocky McMahan
• Mike Bonett

© IBM Corporation 2013

New ITM attribute with sampling interval

As of IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) 6.2.3, a new attribute, Process Instant Busy CPU
(Percent), has been included in the Linux OS agent (lz agent). The ITM manual defines
this attribute in the following manner:

Process Instant Busy CPU (Percent) The percentage of CPU used by this process in the
last sampling interval normalized to account for multiple online processors.

Many CPU attributes are collected by ITM. The typical attribute collection is point-in-
time. The lz agent is configured to collect data from the Linux operating system on an
interval or on-demand. Collection intervals are optimized to balance the need for data
within reasonable overhead thresholds. Increasingly customers are looking for CPU
statistics that take several data samples within a collection interval and then present an
average for that sampling interval. The ITM developers have received these same
requirements from ITM customers. The Process Instant Busy CPU (Percent) attribute
meets these criteria. This is why this attribute includes (Percent) in its name. It is
producing an average over the sampling interval. For customers running the Linux OS
agent on dedicated hardware, the additional overhead necessary to take multiple samples
within a collection interval is typically negligible. For customers running the Linux OS
agent in a virtualized environment, the additional samples collected within the interval
could prove problematic in larger virtual environments.

While a small amount of overhead may be negligible on a dedicated server, propagating a

small amount of overhead across a large number of virtual servers may have a significant
impact. The Process Instant Busy CPU (Percent) is a configurable attribute.
Administrators can change the sampling interval or disable the new attribute all together.

The sampling interval for the Process Instant Busy CPU (Percent) attribute is configured
using the KLZ_PROCESS_SAMPLE_SECS environment variable. This variable is set
in the lz.ini file located in <ITMhome>/config directory. The default directory is
/opt/IBM/ITM/config. When the lz agent starts, the lz.ini file is read, variable
assignments are translated and/or set into the lz.config file in the same directory. The
default value for KLZ_PROCESS_SAMPLE_SECS is 30 seconds. The value 0 specifies
that the Instant Busy CPU calculation is disabled. Tuning this attribute will allow
customers to configure the sampling interval to better meet their monitoring requirements.
For customers who find the overhead associated with a sampling type attribute outweighs
the benefits of collecting this attribute, they can disable or modify the attribute
accordingly.

Customers running the ITM Linux OS agent (lz agent) on Linux for System z are
encouraged to consider disabling this attribute unless specifically needed. The attribute
can be configured on each Linux virtual machine. If the data is needed on a small subset
of mission critical Linux virtual machines, enabling interval sampling on this smaller
subset will most likely not be significant if the attribute is disabled or modified in non-

© IBM Corporation 2013

critical Linux virtual machines on the same LPAR. If no specific need for this data
attribute justifies its collection, then disabling this attribute is advised in virtual
environments, especially the large z/VM LPAR environment that may host a large
number of Linux virtual servers.

Summary:

IBM Tivoli Monitoring provides an end-to-end architected solution running on most of the popular
platforms today including platforms running Linux. Linux often runs as a virtual machine. ITM’s new
attribute, Process Instant Busy CPU (Percent), is provided to meet attribute requirements identified by
ITM customers. While this attribute might be appropriate running on dedicated servers, modifications to
the sampling interval, enabling the attribute only on mission critical virtual machines, or disabling this
attribute in virtual environments is recommended.

© IBM Corporation 2013