Enable the Runtime Performance Advisor tool

We can configure the Runtime Performance Advisor (RPA) or the console.

Before starting this task, wsadmin.sh must be running. See the starting the wsadmin scripting client information.

The RPA provides advice to help tune systems for optimal performance. See the using the Runtime Performance Advisor information on how to enable this tool using the console. The recommendations display as text in the SystemOut.log file.

This topic references one or more of the application server log files. As a recommended alternative, we can configure the server to use the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) log and trace infrastructure instead of using SystemOut.log , SystemErr.log, trace.log, and activity.log files on distributed and IBM i systems. We can also use HPEL in conjunction with the native z/OS logging facilities. If we are using HPEL, we can access all of the log and trace information using the LogViewer command-line tool from the server profile bin directory. See the information about using HPEL to troubleshoot applications for more information on using HPEL.

The processing of RPA is governed by various rules and corresponding rule IDs. The following table summarizes the mapping between rule IDs and the advice the RPA would process.

by the RPA.

Rule ID	Nature of Advice
ServerRule01	No room for new sessions rule
ServerRule02	Live session
ServerRule03	Session read and write size
ServerRule04	Session read and write time
ServerRule05	Servlet engine unbounded rule
ServerRule06	Servlet engine thread pool rule
ServerRule07	ORB unbounded
ServerRule08	ORB pool rule
ServerRule09	DataSource connection pool min and max size rule
ServerRule10	DataSource prepared statement discard rule
ServerRule11	Memory leak detection rule
surgeModeAlert	Surge mode rule
poolLowEffAlert	Pool low percent efficiency rule
hungConnModeAlert	Hung connection alert rule
connLowEffAlert	Connection low percent efficiency rule
connErrorAlert	Connection error alert rule
LTCSerialReuseViolationAlert	LTC serial reuse violation alert rule
LTCNestingAlert	LTC nesting rule
LTCConnPerThreadLimitAlert	LTC connection per thread limit rule
multiThreadUseViolationAlert	Multi-thread use JCA programming Model Violation
xComponentUseViolationAlert	Cross component use JCA programming model violation

The Runtime Performance Advisor (RPA) requires that the Performance Monitoring Service (PMI) is enabled. It does not require that individual counters be enabled. When a counter needed by the RPA is not enabled, the RPA will enable it automatically.

There is no MBean/object available for wsadmin to create a RPA configuration. We can use wsadmin to change the settings and make them effective at runtime. These changes will not be persisted. The changes remain until you stop the server. Since the RPA is disabled once you stop the server, you may want to disable the PMI Service or the counters that were enabled while it was active. We can enable the following counters using the Runtime Performance Advisor:

ThreadPools (module)
Web Container (module)
Pool Size
Active Threads
Object Request Broker (module)
Pool Size
Active Threads
JDBC Connection Pools (module)
Pool Size
Percent used Prepared Statement Discards
Servlet Session Manager (module)
External Read Size
External Write Size
External Read Time
External Write Time
No Room For New Session System Data (module)
CPU Utilization
Free Memory

The following provides an explanation for some of the settings that we can use:

• Calculation interval PMI data - This setting is taken over an interval of time and averaged to provide advice. The calculation interval specifies the length of the time over which data is taken for this advice. Details within the advice messages will appear as averages over this interval.

• Maximum warning sequence - This setting refers to the number of consecutive warnings issued before the threshold is relaxed. For example, if the maximum warning sequence is set to 3, then the advisor only sends three warnings to indicate that the prepared statement cache is overflowing. After that, a new alert is only issued if the rate of discards exceeds the new threshold setting.

• Number of processors - This setting specifies the number of processors on the server. It is critical in order to ensure accurate advice for the specific configuration of the system.

To enable the Runtime Performance Advisor tool , perform the following steps:

Setup the Runtime Performance Advisor (RPA), for example:

• Jacl:

  set perf [$AdminControl queryNames mbeanIdentifier=ServerRuleDriverMBean2,process=server1,*]
  set enabledVal [java::new java.lang.Boolean true]
  set attr [java::new javax.management.Attribute enabled $enabledVal]
  set perfObject [$AdminControl makeObjectName $perf]
  set ObjectArray [java::new {java.lang.Object[]} 1]
  set sigArray [java::new {java.lang.String[]} 1]
  $ObjectArray set 0 $attr
  $sigArray set 0 "javax.management.Attribute"
  $AdminControl invoke_jmx $perfObject setRPAAttribute $ObjectArray  $sigArray
   $AdminConfig save

What to do next

After completing the previous steps, start the server and monitor RPA.

Related concepts

Performance and Diagnostic Advisor

Related tasks

Use the wsadmin scripting AdminControl object for scripted administration

Use High Performance Extensible Logging to troubleshoot applications

Use the Performance and Diagnostic Advisor

Start the wsadmin scripting client

Commands for the AdminControl object