Copy Performance Data using ACS IFS Tasks
Considerations for moving performance data to a different partition.
Two weeks ago I compared the IFS tasks between Navigator and ACS. One of the major advantages of the ACS interface is the ability to easily move files between partitions.
This week, I want to review considerations for moving performance data to a different partition. Many IBM i shops may want to analyze performance data on a partition other than the production system. The Performance Data Investigator uses SQL, and it may be desirable to keep that SQL workload off your production partition.
I’m currently working on presentations for the “IBM i Performance – Best of the Best” focused education roadmap for COMMON and have generated a workload to create some interesting performance data. I needed to copy this data to another partition so I can have two partitions to work from in case one has a problem (always have a backup if you plan to do a demo!). The preferred way to save performance data is with the Save Performance Collection (SAVPFRCOL) command (or the graphical interface in Navigator for i). I simply save the collection into a save file, then with ACS, I can just drag and drop, copy/paste, or send the save file to my other partition, where I can use the Restore Performance Collection (RSTPFRCOL) command to restore the collection.
However, I had a slightly more complex situation since I had created a test workload; in addition to the performance data I had already collected, I also wanted to get all the source files and programs copied to my second partition. Everything is in a single library named DMMLIB on partition DMi1 that did not exist on partition DMi2. I simply dragged the entire library to DMi2.
Under the covers, a SAVLIB to a save file was done and the save file was transferred to the destination system, where a RSTLIB was done. Looking at the history log on the destination system, I found confirmation of the RSTLIB.
There is one challenge with using this approach of copying a library to move performance data. Because RSTLIB is used on the target system, the performance data is not known within the collection manager. You need to rebuild the collection table to have that restored performance data show up in the Manage Collections task or within the Performance Data Investigator. There are a variety of ways to rebuild the collection table, the easiest of which is in the Manage Collections task: take the Actions -> Maintain Collections -> Rebuild Collection Table action.