I hate to disagree with Stan but I think that there *are* times where it's
completely appropriate to run a performance tool 24x7x365.  Sometimes the
up-to-date nature of that information is worth the overhead.  I have had
too many customers in the past call and say something along the lines of
"Our performance last Tuesday was sure awful!  What caused it???"  Without
collected data, it's very difficult, if not completely impossible, to tell
what happened.

When is it appropriate to collect this type of data??  It depends :-).
Usually the answer is if the environment is inconsistent in its
performance, or consistently bad.  You make the call...

BTW, my favorite performance tools are *still* Lund's.  Glance is OK but a
performance tool without data collection capability (leaving out the Scope
collector for the moment) is like breakfast without sunshine or Florida
without orange juice (or something like that).  You can't beat the
ease-of-use of Lund's tools.  Also, Lund is the only company in the 3000
community offering system performance assistance as part of their standard
support contracts.  If you require interpretative assistance in the use of
Glance, you have to purchase consulting.  Lund also offers a free annual
system performance analysis as part of their support.


Bill Lancaster

At 02:25 PM 1/18/98 -0800, Stan Sieler wrote:
>Re:
>
>> >I've never needed to use a performance tool like GLANCE on my 927XL
>> >(mpe5.5), but now I do.   Any recommendations?
>
>I'll add my vote for the LPS tool "SOS"...  but,
><plug>
>mention that the System Managers Toolbox from Lund
>has a number of unique performance tools, including SHOT and
>PAGES.  Neither use the AIF:MI, which has been shown repeatedly
>and incontrovertibly to silently eat CPU.  Now, I like the AIF:MI,
>and the power it gives tools like SOS and Glance/iX (and others),
>but I would *never* run an AIF:MI tool 24-hours a day, day-in, day-out.
>I recommend first buying an AIF:MI based tool, and then
><double plug :) > a non-AIF:MI based tool. </double plug>
></plug>
>
>Stan (still fighting the flu :( ) Sieler
>
>