Modern Performance Monitoring

The modern Unix server floor can be a diverse universe of hardware from several vendors and software from several sources. Often, the personnel needed to resolve server floor performance issues are not available or, for security reasons, not allowed to be present at the very moment of occurrence. Even when, as luck might have it, the right personnel are actually present to witness a performance "event," the tools to measure and analyze the performance of the hardware and software have traditionally been sparse and vendor-specific. Because few real Unix cross-platform toolkits exist, there is no standard method for administrators to accurately view an event, record it for later analysis, or share it with additional qualified personnel for an efficient resolution.