[alexpo]

IBM Systems > Support >
IBM System Planning Tool

for POWER processor-based systems
The IBM System Planning Tool (SPT) is the next generation of the IBM LPAR Validation Tool (LVT). It contains all of the function from the LVT and is integrated with the IBM Systems Workload Estimator (WLE). System plans generated by the SPT can be deployed on the system by the Hardware Management Console (HMC). The SPT is available to assist the user in system planning, design, validation and to provide a system validation report that reflects the user’s system requirements while not exceeding system recommendations. The SPT is a PC based browser application designed to be run in a standalone environment.
Download from:

IBM Systems Support: System Planning Tool

[FASherman]

Gosh, your post includes a link. Whatever could we do with such a thing besides post it?

You can also use this as a disaster recovery tool. Use SPT for building your DR servers on your desktop and save the plan. Then you can upload the plan to the DR HMC and have it build the servers from the plan. Very quick and already validated. Combine this with NIM for bare metal restores and you can start building servers within minutes of hitting your DR site.

[alexpo]

I like the idea of using the SPT for documentation of existing configurations.
Cheers.

[alexisl]

Is WLE something that I should already have on my p570? Do I need it to run SPT? Being that I work at a college we have only certain times that are high demand (registration and grades) and I would especially like to monitor the system during that time to make it more efficeint.

[alexpo]

WLE is separately downloadavle IBM tool that is used to derive system specs according to expected workloads such as web serving, mail serving etc.

I advise to use nmon utility as perfromance monitoring tool.
It is freely downloadable from IBM sites.

[steevojb]

excellent, looks really good

Thanks

steevojb

[alexisl]

I use nmon but it is tough to get everything on the screen that I want to monitor (CPU, Memory, Top Processes). It also seems to use a lot of CPU, 20-30 %, but I guess that would be the same for any monitoring tool. One thing I like is the ability to download the data and put it in a graph.

[FASherman]

A good monitoring tool will use less than 5% of CPU resources. A monitoring tool that uses that much CPU defeats the whole purpose of monitoring.

[jivnjt]

Howdy Fred - thanks for the invite to the site! Are you going to throw us a bone on what monitoring tool you like?

JT

[Mike]

Hello, We have a large environment with 180 LPAR , AIX OS instances on P595s. I'm researching planning and sizing tools to help manage the current configuration ( Procs and memory) including resources taken for LPAR overhead. Is SPT the tool for doing this? Does IBM have other tools? Thanks