VAX/VMS Standardized Response Measuring System John Lloyd MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd 3751 Shell Road Richmond, B.C., V6X 2Z9 CANADA (604) 278-3411 December 19, 1985 DESCRIPTION This set of DCL procedures, Datatrieve domains and commands, and a Fortran program comprises a "response time" measuring and graphing system. The command file MEASURE.COM should be run every hour in a priority 4 batch queue. It makes some measurements on disk usage or some such thing, and writes a record to a file giving the date and time and how long it took to do the measurements. The file name is coded by the year and month in SI form (ie YYMMDD.nodename). The DCL command procedure PLOT_MEASURE.COM summarizes an input file for a month into a number of plots showing average and worst case elapsed times by hour of the day, and a normalized plot showing the "stretch factor" of the average and 80th percentile elapsed times, again by hour of day. The DCL command procedure MEASURE_MAX.COM plots the weekly averages (I know the name is lousy) for whatever raw data you put in (eg 85*.MARS). The similarly named MEASURE_MAXHH.COM plots the same for the restricted hours of 0800 to 1800 each day (note weekends and stat holidays are always INCLUDED.) These procedures produce MEASURE_MAX.OUT and MEASURE_MAXHH.OUT. These plots are useful to determine the trend of response time (any negative slope plots ought to be re-examined!) To use this, you need: Datatrieve V3.1 or later, a VT240 or VT125 terminal, a Fortran compiler if you want to rebuild the analysis program, and a little bit of knowledge of DTR operations. First, create a DTR dictionary, and place MEASTAT.DTR MEASTAT_REC.DTR MEASURE.DTR MEASURE_REC.DTR in it. Point CDD$TOP at it in the PLOT_MEASURE.COM and MEASURE_MAX.COM files. Next, define a directory and a logical name MEASURE_DIR pointing at it for the data files. Submit (check the resubmit portion first) MEASURE.COM to a priority 4 batch queue, where it is guaranteed to run every hour (you usually have to create a queue not normally in general use). At the end of the month, or even in the middle of the month, run the PLOT_MEASURE.COM procedure giving the SI date of the month as the parameter. For example, November 1985 is given as 851101. A file yymmdd.OUT (for example 851101.OUT) is produced containing the ReGIS plot output suitable for a VT125 or ReGIS plotter. NOTE that this procedure assumes that data for three VAXes is present. Run MEASURE_MAX.COM, giving a number of monthly files for its input (eg 850601.MARS,850701.MARS,850801.MARS,850901.MARS). LOGICAL NAMES: We put the CDD things in CDD$TOP.SYSTEMS.COMPSERV.ACCOUNTING, although you probably have a better place. Check the definitions of CDD$DEFAULT in the PLOT_MEASURE.COM and MEASURE_MAX.COM files. Files are stored in CSA:[MEASURE], which is also referred to as MEASURE_DIR by the data acquisition procedure MEASURE.COM. NODE NAMES: Our nodenames are not everybody's choice (We had a lot of raised eyebrows when mentioning our "VENUS" 780 to Digital people-in-the-know, before the 8600 was announced!). You will want to change the PLOT_MEASURE.DTR file to suit. We run these programs on every node of a 4-node cluster (3 780s and an 8600). MDALIB.OLB This is a bunch of Macro stuff that fills in the holes of Digital's Run-time Library. Some of these routines are already obsolete. The LOC_IOFAST$xxx is just some simple RMS calls (See the Pageswapper, September 1984). EXAMPLES Included is PLOT_MEASURE.OUT and PLOT_MEASURE.LIS. The first is a REGIS plot of response time for an 8600 running about 40 to 60 users doing mostly word-processing. The second file is a sixel-graphics form printable on an LA50 or LN03 for a hardcopy.