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RE: Excessive Paging - AIX Related?

From: Post, Ethan <Ethan.Post_at_ps.net>
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 15:58:32 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.003E1591.20011220151022@fatcity.com>

I am resolved that the trouble is not enough swap and not enough aio processes. I think this will significantly improve the system. Spreading swap will be my next push if I still have trouble. vmtune will be last which is basically what I wanted to confirm.

AIX vmstat shows

kthr memory page faults cpu

----- ----------- ------------------------ ------------ -----------
 r b avm fre re pi po fr sr cy in sy cs us sy id wa  0 0 522715 4737 0 1 1 39 115 0 147 440 151 3 1 92 3  0 2 522715 4646 0 0 0 0 0 0 522 1169 133 3 4 91 2  0 2 522715 4646 0 0 0 0 0 0 472 564 60 0 0 99 0

However topas shows more info about where the pageing is occuring i.e. good/normal paging as oposed to bad paging as seen below. PgspIn and PgspOut are the bad kind.

Topas Monitor for host:    FOO                  EVENTS/QUEUES    FILE/TTY
Thu Dec 20 18:10:02 2001   Interval:  2         Cswitch    2625  Readch
11505467
                                                Syscall   40623  Writech
883896
Kernel   42.7   |############                |  Reads      5506  Rawin
0
User     13.1   |####                        |  Writes      514  Ttyout
318
Wait      9.3   |###                         |  Forks       179  Igets
9
Idle     34.7   |##########                  |  Execs       177  Namei
6369
                                                Runqueue    7.5  Dirblk
49
Interf KBPS I-Pack O-Pack KB-In KB-Out Waitqueue 2.0
en1        9.4    25.9    16.9     3.1     6.3
en0        1.4    10.9     3.9     0.9     0.5  PAGING           MEMORY
                                                Faults    30366  Real,MB
4095
Disk    Busy%     KBPS     TPS KB-Read KB-Writ  Steals        0  % Comp
39.2
hdisk0   47.4    574.7    92.3     9.9   564.8  PgspIn        2  % Noncomp
61.4
hdisk1   41.9    572.8    89.8     0.0   572.8  PgspOut       0  % Client
348
hdisk3    1.4    337.3    10.4     0.0   337.3  PageIn     66 2
0992
hdisk10   0.0      0.0     0.0     0.0     0.0  PageOut     229  PAGING
SPACE
hdisk4    0.0      3.9     0.4     0.0     3.9  Sios        118  Size,MB
2992
                                                                 % Used
22.3
dm_ep_eng(11094) 12.5% PgSp: 1.0mb root                          % Free
77.6
init     (1)      6.0% PgSp: 0.6mb root
ksh      (35124)  5.0% PgSp: 0.3mb oracle
ksh      (15854)  4.00    10.0.4mb oracle    4     Press "h" for help
screen.
ksh      (68298)  4.05 PgSp: 0.3mb oracle    5     Press "q" to quit
program.
sadc     (59690)  3.0% PgSp: 0.1mb root
ksh      (53722)  3.0% PgSp: 0.3mb oracle
ksh      (63038)  2.0% PgSp: 0.3mb oracle
ksh      (27478)  2.0% PgSp: 0.3mb oracle
ksh      (61336)  2.0% PgSp: 0.3mb oracle

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 3:40 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Ethan,

AIX performs all file i/o via the OS's virtual memory. In other words, the VM (which is a combination of both the RAM and the Swap) is used for both executable (OS/user code) and user's memory area as well as for I/O buffers. This allocation is dynamic and certain upper and lower limits are set by the parameters in vmtune. At times of high i/o, you will find that the 'fre' mem
(seen in vmstat' goes down drastically and the po/fr/sr goes up drastically
as a result of old memory pages that served file i/o buffers are paged out. This is normal and in line with what you are observing and is similar to Solaris.

What you *should* be concerned about is excessive values in 'pi' as this indicates excessive paging-*in*, probably due to earlier pageouts of live pages that are still required. You are probably seeing high I/o waits since there is a lot of writes (paging out) to the swap area. 'iostat' will probably indicate that disks that host your swap area are almost 100% loaded. In this case, you should make sure that you (a) spread out swap on multiple disks, making sure that they are NOT on RAID-5. (b) allocate dedicated drives to swap areas if possible (no RAID5!).

FWIW, vmstat in Solaris is able to distinguish between pi/po values for executable, file i/o and 'other' (?) types of paging. Can you find out for us if AIX also provides this? (Don't have access to an AIX box).

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!

John Kanagaraj
Oracle Applications DBA
DBSoft Inc
(W): 408-970-7002

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Author: Post, Ethan
  INET: Ethan.Post_at_ps.net

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Received on Thu Dec 20 2001 - 17:58:32 CST

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