I wrote about workload groups some time ago in Manage Workloads Better with IBM i 7.1. The information in that older article is still accurate, and I’m not going to repeat a lot of what I wrote there. If you have not yet used workload groups, you may want to read the older blog for additional information on why workload groups are useful.
Back in 2013, IBM first published the IBM i Performance FAQ; this document is a fantastic resource on all types of performance topics. It reviews the various components of system performance, discusses benchmarking, sizing and capacity planning, monitoring, and covers the performance tools that are available on i. The document has answers to many commonly asked questions, and ends with an extensive list of references. I first blogged about it here.
IBM i now has historical data support from Collection Services and graphical display of that data with Graph History in the Performance task of IBM Navigator for i.
Last week I wrote about collecting performance data for database. This week I will review how you can visualize that database performance data with the Performance Data Investigator (PDI).
In the past, IBM i database performance management and analysis was done using tools specifically created for database, while system performance management and analysis was done using the system performance tools. There was little integration between the two toolsets.