Monitor system activity

Monitoring system activity is one of the many important tasks in the day of an administrator. Monitoring the flow of work through the system is only a piece of the information that should be monitored on a daily basis. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways, such as using iSeries™ Navigator and iSeries Navigator Management Central.

Modeled after the top half of the Work with System Status (WRKSYSSTS) display in the character-based interface, the System Status window offers a quick and easy way to check the status of a system. Management Central allows you to monitor more in depth functions through the use of system monitors.

You can access the System Status window from the System folder or the Work Management folder.

To get to System Status from the System folder:

1. In iSeries Navigator, expand My Connections.
2. Right-click the connection on which you want to work and click System Status.

To get to the system status from the Work Management folder:

1. In iSeries Navigator, expand Work Management.
2. Right-click Work Management and click System Status.

For more information about the different tasks that you can complete using system status, see the iSeries Navigator help.

• Check memory pool usage
  Periodically checking the amount of memory your memory pools use is important. By monitoring these levels, you can tune your pools to run at maximum efficiency, which in turn, keeps the work cycle running smoothly. In iSeries Navigator, you can easily monitor the amount of memory your pools are using.
• Control levels of system activity
  You can control how much activity is on the system by controlling how many jobs can be active at the same time in a subsystem or by controlling the use of the processing unit by jobs that have already been started.
• Determine the status of a job
  Monitoring your jobs will help you understand what your jobs are doing. The job status is an important piece of information that you can use to find out what a job is doing.
• Monitor a subsystem
  Because subsystems are important to the daily activity done on your system, it is important that you monitor the activity in your subsystems.
• Determine the number of subsystems using a memory pool
  Subsystems are allocated a certain percentage of memory to run jobs. It is important to know how many different subsystems are pulling from the same memory pool. After you know how many subsystems are submitting jobs to a pool and how many jobs are running in a pool, you might want to reduce resource contention by adjusting the size and activity level of the pool.
• View job performance statistics
  A job's performance is important to anyone that uses an iSeries server because one job running poorly can affect other jobs on the system. To view potentially problematic jobs gives you the ability to prevent performance problems before they occur.
• View overall system status
  The iSeries Navigator puts all information relating to system status in one place. This makes it easier for you to monitor how your system is performing, identify potential trouble areas, and quickly determine what action you need to take to improve performance.