Henrik -- some notes on AIX and the 4.3 do_vmstat.c

[Kauffman, Tom]

We're starting to move to the new IBM P6 environment, so I started
looking at backing the 4.3 do_vmstat.c into 4.2.

This pretty well showed I'm not a C programmer.

However -- I added the two additional fields, cpu_ec and cpu_pc to the
AIX structure in the 4.2 do_vmstat.c, recompiled, and the result works
with the new P6 box. It will also work with new P5 or earlier systems,
as the two extra values will just stay at <NAN> in the RRD. For existing
older systems, I used 'rrdaddsource' from the RRD web site to add the
cpu_pc and cpu_ec datasets to my existing RRD and everything is working
just fine.

I did have to change the vmstat_ec and vmstat_pc graph entries -- the
4.3 code is doing a multiply by 100 that doesn't seem to be required.
The pc value is actual physical CPU usage and the ec value is percentage
of entitlement. In the short list below, this system is using between
0.01 and 0.02 physical CPUs and running between 7 and 17 percent of the
entitlement (set at 0.10 CPU)

Thanks for such a GREAT tool!

The AIX Doc on the two fields:

Beginning with AIX 5.3, the vmstat command reports the number of
physical processors consumed (pc), and the percentage of entitlement
consumed (ec), in Micro-Partitioning environments. These metrics will
only be displayed on Micro-Partitioning environments.

pc 	Number of physical processors consumed. Displayed only if the
partition is running with shared processor.
ec 	The percentage of entitled capacity consumed. Displayed only if
the partition is running with shared processor. Because the time base
over which this data is computed can vary, the entitled capacity
percentage can sometimes exceed 100%. This excess is noticeable only
with small sampling intervals.

And sample vmstats from my test system:

kthr    memory              page              faults              cpu
----- ----------- ------------------------ ------------
-----------------------
 r  b   avm   fre  re  pi  po  fr   sr  cy  in   sy  cs us sy id wa
pc    ec
 0  0 825268 603594   0   0   0   0    0   0  31  244 155  2  6 92  0
0.01   9.6
 1  0 825269 603591   0   0   0   0    0   0  24 7474 148  5  9 86  0
0.02  16.7
 1  0 825266 603594   0   0   0   0    0   0  19  297 153  3  4 92  0
0.01   9.5
 1  0 825125 603722   0   0   0   0    0   0  28 3514 152  5 11 84  0
0.02  17.7
 3  0 825037 603810   0   0   0   0    0   0  28  259 143  2  5 93  0
0.01   8.5
 1  0 825041 603806   0   0   0   0    0   0  23  223 139  2  4 94  0
0.01   7.6
 2  0 825040 603807   0   0   0   0    0   0  27  236 156  2  7 91  0
0.01  10.6
 4  0 825041 603806   0   0   0   0    0   0  24  206 142  1  4 95  0
0.01   6.8
 1  0 824855 603992   0   0   0   0    0   0  25  262 154  3  4 93  0
0.01   8.8
 1  0 824851 603996   0   0   0   0    0   0  24  201 144  2  4 94  0
0.01   7.5
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