HP XP P9000Watch and HP XP P9000Sketch Reference Guide for HP XP P9000 Performance Advisor v5.5 (T1789-96341, February 2013)

1 Introduction to HP XP P9000Watch
This chapter describes the features of HP XP P9000Watch (previously called P9000Watch) and
the environment required to run it.
Overview
HP XP P9000Watch is a command-line interface utility provided with HP XP P9000 Performance
Advisor. It is designed for focused troubleshooting and can capture data as frequently as every 5
seconds.
NOTE: The 5 seconds data capture frequency applies to XP or P9000 disk array configured with
any number of LDEVs. If the requested data is more than 2000 LDEVs, the time taken to collect
performance data increases accordingly.
HP XP P9000Watch monitors the performance of the following:
• Array level
• Host groups
• Ports
• Client-Host Interface Processor (CHIP) or Channel Adapter (CHA)
• Array Control Processors (ACPs) or Disk Adapters (DKAs)
• RAID groups
• Logical Devices (LDEVs) of the XP and the P9000 disk arrays
In addition, HP XP P9000Watch monitors the replication status of P-VOLs and S-VOLs in the primary
data center disk array and provides the Sync/Async and CA Journal performance metrics.
HP XP P9000Watch can be used to troubleshoot performance issues, such as:
• Hot spots within the XP or P9500 disk arrays (hard disk drives or RAID groups that are over
utilized compared to the rest of the array)
• Front-end congestion (micro processors (mp) ports)
• Back-end issues
• Cache/Shared Memory issues, usage, contention and so on
• Determining true I/O throughput (from the mp port to the hard disk drive)
• Port I/O spikes
• Poor application response
• Data replication issues
The performance metrics are displayed on the console of the host system. The output data is stored
in comma separated files (.csv) that are generated, one file for each component. The .csv file
generated by HP XP P9000Watch in the Interactive mode can be loaded in HP XP P9000Sketch
to obtain a visual representation of the output data.
HP XP P9000Watch offers the following features:
• Focused troubleshooting
• Real-time performance data monitoring and collection for time intervals as low as 5 seconds
• In the “CLI mode” (page 10) (Command Line Interface), the output screen has the timestamp
when the data is retrieved.
• Ability to split data in desired intervals and store them in different files
6 Introduction to HP XP P9000Watch