nmon (''Nigel's Monitor'') is a computer performance

system monitor A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. Monitoring can tra ...

tool for the

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *Alternate index, for an IBM Virtual Storage Access Method key-sequenced data set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belg ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating systems. The nmon tool has two modes a) displays the performance stats on-screen in a condensed format or b) the same stats are saved to a comma-separated values (CSV) data file for later graphing and analysis to aid the understanding of computer resource use, tuning options and bottlenecks. nmon for Linux is open source and available under

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

while the nmon for AIX is a proprietary software integrated into AIX.

Description

nmon collects the following operating system statistics: * CPU and CPU threads Utilisation * CPU frequency for servers or virtual machines that can alter their clock rate * GPU stats including utilisation, MHz and temperatures * Physical and Virtual Memory use * Disk read & write and transfers plus service time and wait times * Disk Groups - decided by the user * Swap and Paging * Network read & write and transfers * Local File-systems * Network File-system (NFS) * Top Processes by CPU use, Memory size and I/O rates * Kernel stats including Run Queue, context-switch, fork, Load Average & Uptime * Large and Huge memory pages * Virtual Machine stats (depending on the hardware) — useful for Linux running KVM to host virtual machines * Resources in the Server and virtual machine * nmon -h lists the details * To start collecting the stats to a file use the -f or -F option When viewing in on-screen mode the stats displayed are controlled by the user using single letter toggles. For example, "c" to show CPU and then another "c" will switch the CPU stats off. Use h to display a list of the options. When saving the stats to a file, there is a common default set of stats and then users can request more using command line options. Use nmon -? to display all the options. The output file can be analyzed with nmon_analyzer.

History

The original nmon version was for the IBM AIX operating system (Release 4.3 and above) and was freely downloadable binary format only tool from the IBM AIX wiki. * Later a version was written for the Linux operating system running on IA-32, x86, x86_64, IBM RS/6000 and POWER processors, Mainframe and ARM (including Raspberry Pi). nmon for Linux was released by IBM as

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

in July 2009. The code is available from the Sourceforge open source repository. * The nmon for AIX code was later bundled in as part of the

operating systems. From AIX 5.3 TL09 and AIX 6.1 TL02 onward it was included in the default installation of AIX and fully supported by IBM. The nmon command and the topas command are the same binary but behave differently depending on the command name used. The two editions (AIX and Linux) have completely different source code but offer many similar features, command line options and data — as much as the underlying operating system allow.

Features

* There are two runtime modes available: # In ''Online Mode'' it uses

curses A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular ...

for efficient screen handling, which updates the terminal frequently for real-time monitoring. # In ''Capture Mode'', the data is saved to a file in CSV format for later processing and graphing. The file also includes important configuration details that are useful for recommending tuning. * nmon concentrates on performance information for the performance tuner and in a concise layout to aid understanding. This includes CPU, memory, disks, adapters, networks, NFS, Kernel statistics, File-systems, Workload Manager (AIX), Workload Partitions (AIX) and Top Processes. * nmon includes support for older AIX releases, Linux running on x86, POWER and Mainframe platforms and other Linux supporting hardware.

Screenshots

File:Nmon 16m-2 CPU and memory screenshot.png, CPU Utilisation and Memory statistics File:Nmon 16m-2 resources and load average screenshot.png, Resources and Kernel/load average statistics File:Nmon 16m-2 top screenshot.png, top Processes sorted by CPU used

Alternatives

On AIX, there is the topas command that can output reports to a file but this is not in a format that can be used easily as a source for a spreadsheet or web tools like

RRDtool RRDtool (''round-robin database tool'') is a data logging and graphing system for time series data. It aims to handle time series data such as computer network, network bandwidth (computing), bandwidth, temperatures or Load (computing), CPU loa ...

. On Linux, there is the

top 
Top most commonly refers to:

* Top, a basic  term of orientation, distinguished from bottom, front, back, and sides
* Spinning top, a ubiquitous traditional toy
*  Top (clothing), clothing designed to be worn over the torso
*  Mountain top, a moun ...

command which is good for CPU and processes but does not cover disks and networks. For disk I/O, the

iostat 

iostat (''input/output statistics'') is a computer system monitor tool used to collect and show operating system computer data storage, storage input and output statistics. It is often used to identify performance issues with storage devices, incl ...

command can give you the details and ntop for network information. But neither of these commands allow saving data in a format suitable for a spreadsheet or simple further processing. Linux utility dstat can be used to produce text data, even in comma separated value format, which is quite suitable for spreadsheet programs.

References

External links

* {{Official website
AIX nmon man page

Tuning a Perfect Note: A look at performance tuning and new AIX 5.3 commands
Curses (programming library) Free system software System monitors Unix process- and task-management-related software