Performance Reports With the Performance Data Investigator

Several weeks ago I wrote about the latest enhancements to the Performance Data Investigator in Performance Data Investigator – Better than Ever.

That article had the following paragraph:

Performance Reports
You now have the ability to generate performance reports from PDI. In the past, you could get text-based reports from the PT1 product, but these were difficult to analyze. The performance reports provide graphical views of the performance data and can be customized to report on the metrics that are important to you.

Note that this reporting feature is part of the latest Navigator for i Enhancements and you need to install the PTFs documented in that blog.

Let’s assume your manager wants a weekly update on the some key performance metrics for your IBM i partition from your peak timeframe. In this contrived scenario, we’ll say that is every Friday – we’ll pretend Friday is the busiest day for your business and there are some critical jobs that run each Friday night. Every Monday morning, your manager wants to review CPU utilization, page fault informationand disk performance information from that timeframe (he’s particularly concerned about several disk performance metrics since there have been ongoing concerns about disk performance). With the new reporting feature, you can easily create a report definition that contains the desired metrics. You can then generate that report every Monday morning by running the report over the Collection Services data from the critical timeframe of the prior Friday.

Let’s walk through how you do this. 

Reports are found by expanding Performance>All Tasks>Reports>Performance Data Report Definitions.

You will find three predefined report definitions. You can create your own report definition to get exactly the report you want.

The report definition is separate from the report itself. The report definition specifies what perspectives (a perspective is simply a chart or table) you want to include in the report. You can then run that report definition over your selected Collection Services collection to create the desired report.

For our scenario, we will create our own custom report definition that includes the metrics we are interested in. From the report definitions page, you select Actions>Add Performance Data Report Definition. This will bring up the page where you define your report. You give it a name and description, then use the Add button to chose the performance charts (perspectives) that will be contained within your report. When you are adding a perspective you get the same navigation tree you see when you use the Investigate Data task. You simply select the charts or tables you want included in your report.

In my example, we are using Collection Services data and we want the following charts:

1. CPU Utilization and Waits Overview
2. Page Faults>Page Faults Overview
3. Disk>Disk Response Time>Detailed>Disk I/O Rates Overview - Detailed

For the Collection specified on the definition, we will let this default to the most recent collection in the default collection library (which is usually QPFRDATA). This is the collection that will be used by default when you create the report; you can override this setting when you create the report.

In the Cover Page field, you can add whatever text you want displayed on the first page of the PDF.

The report definition properties look like the following:

After you have created your report definition, you can then run that report over the desired performance collection, using the Actions>Create Performance Data Report, and when you do this, you have the ability to specify the collection over which the report will be run. In our contrived example, we would create the performance data report each Monday morning, selecting the Collection Services collection from the prior Friday.

 

 

In my example, I chose to generate my report as a PDF, which I can then share with others.

This reporting feature is extremely easy to use and very flexible. And you have it – it’s all part of Navigator for i; there is nothing for you to do except to make sure you have installed the latest PTFs required for Navigator.

Start using it today!

 

 

 

 

IBM Navigator for i - Rebuild Data on Failed Disk Unit in Parity Set

As I have written in the past few blogs, Navigator for i has been enhanced significantly with the latest updates. Read the Navigator for i Enhancements, IFS Enhancements to Navigator for i, and Performance Data Investigator – Better than Ever blogs if you haven’t read them already.

This week, I’ll continue the review of Navigator enhancements by sharing a few details on one of the enhancements to Disk Management.

As noted last week, the cover letter for PTF SI47573 has a brief summary of the enhancements that were made. For Disk Management, this summary is:

Disk Management
- The user access restrictions on Disk Management has been removed. In previous service packs, in order to use the isk Management features on IBM Navigator for i, the user/password from XPF and Service tools must be equal and uppercase. In this service pack, we removed the restriction and allow the user to have a different user and password for XPF and Service Tools.

- Rebuild disk unit data

-  Capability for a user to rebuild data on a failed disk unit in a parity set.

This blog article will review the second item – rebuild disk unit data.

In the latest service pack of IBM Navigator for i, IBM added the “Rebuild Data” action for the disk units list. This action allows the ability to rebuild data on failed disk units belonging to a failed parity set. This allows the user to easily recover from the failure.

IBM i service tools, “Work with Disk Units” has the “Work with Disk Unit Recovery” function to rebuild device parity disk unit data. The rebuild functionality is now part of the Web Navigator interface starting with the latest service pack.

Figure 1: New Action, Rebuild Data*** DawnMayDM2 here

Figure 2: Rebuild data on a disk unit confirmation panel

Figure 3: The disk unit list after rebuilding data on a disk unit.

I’d like to thank Ting ting Sun（孙婷婷）for writing the information regarding the Disk Management enhancements this week. Ting ting Sun（孙婷婷）is part of the IBM i development team in the China Systems and Technology Lab in Beijing.

IFS Enhancements to Navigator for i

Last week, I wrote about latest Navigator for i Enhancements and the PTFs that you need to install to get the latest capabilities. In that blog, I mentioned that the cover letter for PTF SI47573 had some information about other enhancements that have been made. One of the items in that cover letter relates to the IFS and it states the following:

2. Integrated File System
- Capability for a user to download a file or folder from an IBM i system to a local PC or upload a file from a local PC to a folder on an IBM i system.
- A simple text editor has been added for editing text files in the integrated file system.

Below you will find some additional information about these IFS enhancements:

Download

This feature allows you to download a file or multiple files/folders as a zip file from an IBM i partition to your local PC. Expand IBM i Management -> File Systems -> Integrated File System in IBM Navigator for i. Navigate through the file system folders until you locate the folder that contains the file or folder you want to download and click on it, then right-click the files or folders from in the console work space and select Download, which brings up the Download panel. When you select multiple files or folder, a compression is mandatory. You can specify the archive name and archive format before downloading starts. When you start the download, you will be using your browser download settings to determine where the downloaded file will be stored.

Upload

This feature allows you to upload up to five files from your PC to an IBM i partition. Expand IBM i Management -> File Systems -> Integrated File System in IBM Navigator for i, navigate through the file system folders until you locate the folder you wish to upload to, then right-click the folder in the console work space and select Upload, which brings up the Upload panel. You can select files to upload by clicking Browse button or clear the selection by clicking Clear button. After your file selection is finished, you start the upload by clicking Upload button and of course can cancel the upload process by clicking Cancel button at any time.

Edit

This feature allows you to edit text files in the Integrated File System. Expand IBM i Management -> File Systems -> Integrated File System in IBM Navigator for i, navigate through the file system folders until you locate the folder that contains the file you want to edit and click on it, then right-click the text file in the console work space and select Edit, which brings up the Edit panel. On the Edit panel, you are allowed to type in or modify text; click Save to save the content or Save As to save the contents to a new file.

The Integrated File System properties page (found when you click on Integrated File System from the left-hand navigation pane; the Actions drop-down has a properties option) allows for configuration of which files will have the edit action enabled. You can select to enable the edit action for all files or files with specific extensions.

I would like to thank Shengjun Wang (王胜军) for supplying me the information for this blog. Shengjun Wang (王胜军) works in the IBM China Systems and Technology Lab in Beijing on the IBM i Navigator development team.

 

 

 

 

Navigator for i Enhancements

You may remember the IBM announcement last October that included “IBM Navigator for i usability and performance enhancements.” Late in December, all of the required PTFs for this functionality were made available. However, the announcement information did not include all of the details of the new enhancements. If you take a look at the PTF cover letter of the IBM Navigator for i service pack update, SI47573, you will discover there are more enhancements that have been made than were included in the announcement information.

The announcement information covered the general usability and performance enhancements to the user interface – significant improvements have been made to the navigation with expandable sections in the left-hand navigation frame, which makes it more like System i Navigator. The usability and performance of tabs and tables have also been significantly improved. The Navigator for i page on the developerWorks site has additional information.

One area that had major enhancements that was not included in the announcement information was the Performance Data Investigator. The blog last fall, Performance Data Investigator – Better than Ever, reviewed those changes. The IBM i developerWorks site was recently updated with more information on these Fall 2012 enhancements.

If you read the PTF cover letter referenced above, you will discover that there are additional enhancements to IFS support, Disk Management support, OmniFind, DHCP and Database. Most of the enhancements are available for both the 6.1 and 7.1 releases and at the end of this article is a list of the PTFs you will need for each release.

I encourage you to install these PTFs if you have not yet done so and start using the latest features. You’ll be ready to explore the additional enhancements that I will write about in the upcoming weeks.

You need the following PTFs for full functionality. Note the PTF group levels listed below are the latest levels available as of the writing of this blog.

 

◦       IBM HTTP server for i group PTF (includes the java toolbox PTFs)
This PTF will provide the functionality you need for the Navigator console.

▪       7.1 - SF99368 level 17

▪       6.1 – SF99115 level 29

◦       Java group PTF
Since the Navigator function is implemented in Java, it's always a good idea to have the latest Java group PTF installed.

▪       7.1 - SF99572 level 12

▪       6.1 – SF99562 level 23

◦       Database group PTF
Many enhancements were made to the database capabilities so you also need the latest DB2 PTFs on the partitions you are managing. Performance Data Investigator enhancements for DB2 are only supported on 7.1.

▪       7.1 - SF99701 level 23

▪       6.1 – SF99601 level 28

◦       Performance Tools group PTF
The Performance Data Investigator enhancements also have operating system enhancements that are required; you will need these PTFs on the partitions you are managing.

▪       7.1 - SF99145 level 5

▪       6.1 – SF99144 level 6

 

 

 

New Function Usage IDs

Some time ago, I wrote the blog on Functional Usage Capabilities. Since that blog was written, I have learned about two additional function usage IDs that were introduced on the 6.1 and 7.1 releases via PTFs

The two function usage IDs are: 

• QIBM_DB_ZDA - TOOLBOX APPLICATION SERVER ACCESS
  This function usage ID allows the ability to restrict access to the optimized server that handles DB2 requests from clients. Server access is used by the ODBC, OLE DB and .NET providers that ship with IBM i Access for Windows as well as JDBC Toolbox, Run SQL Scripts, and other parts of System i Navigator and Navigator for i Web console. It provides an easy alternative (rather than writing an exit program) to control access to these functions  from the server side.
  
  The following PTFs provide this enhancement:
  • 6.1 - SI45956
  • 7.1 - SI46035

• QIBM_DB_DDMDRDA - DDM & DRDA APPLICATION SERVER ACCESS
  This function usage ID allows the ability to restrict access to the DDM and DRDA application server. It provides an easy alternative (rather than writing an exit program) to control access to DDM and DRDA from the server side.
  
  The following PTFs provide this enhancement:
  • 6.1 - SI45955
  • 7.1 – SI46034

The above PTFs may all be applied immediately; however, the appropriate server jobs need to be ended prior to the installation of the PTFs then started after the PTFs have been installed. See the PTF cover letters for detailed instructions and documentation on the function.

With the PTFs installed, these function usage IDs will be available on the WRKFCNUSG and CHGFCNUSG commands. The default values are to allow access, so installing the PTF will not change existing behavior. In addition, System i Navigator and Navigator for i will also display these function usage capabilities; they are found within the Host Applications, under the IBM i > Database grouping. The following screen capture shows an example:

The following screen capture shows an example of the QIBM_DB_ZDA function usage with customization; I have denied user DAWN from having access to the ToolBox Application server; this means user DAWN cannot run functions that require the QZDASOINIT job.

If you restrict a user with the IBM_DB_QZDA function usage ID as my example above shows, that user will not be able to use any functions from the GUI that require that requires the QZDASOINIT server job. On the client side, you may see the following error:

This may be a little difficult to debug. Security auditing can be used to track authorization failures and information regarding the usage failure of the function is logged in the audit journal.

While my example for this blog is trivial and probably not something you would implement, it does demonstrate how easy it is to set this up. If you have the need to restrict or control access to ODBC/JDBC functions or the DDM/DRDA server, you now have an easy way to do this.

There is a very nice article, Add QIBM_DB_ZDA and QIBM_DB_DDMDRDA function usage IDs, on developerWorks. This article covers all the information I’ve highlighted in this blog and it has additional information on how to use the audit journal to see if the function usage check fails.

 

 

 

Functional Usage Capabilities

Did you know that you can limit access to system functions by registering which users can access which functions? You can allow access or deny access via the functional usage capabilities; depending on the component, you could allow one user to change some settings and allow another user to only view those settings. Many system components support the use of function usage capabilities to provide more granular access to their capabilities. Functional usage does not eliminate or replace the need for securing resources on your system; it simply provides an additional way to control what functions a user can access.

There are:

• Three commands
  • Change Function Usage (CGGFCNUSG)
  • Display Function Usage (DSPFCNUSG)
  • Work with Function Usage (WRKFCNUSG)
• A set of APIs in the security category under User Function Registration Facility APIs
• A graphical user interface that allows you to manage the function usage on the system. The GUI for this capability is under Application Administration – Host Applications, within System i Navigator (where it is an optionally installable component) and Systems Director Navigator.

The User Function Registration Facility API set was first introduced into the system way back in V4R3, so this capability has existed for quite a while. The commands were introduced in V5R3, which improved ease of use since a program no longer had to be written to implement it.

The first use of limiting function access within the operating system was in the V4R5 release when the Trace Connection (TRCCNN) command was introduced. Service commands required *SERVICE special authority; but *SERVICE special authority is quite powerful, and it's very likely that you'll want to allow someone to collect a dump or a trace, but not want them to have *SERVICE special authority. Today, most all of the service commands (trace, dump, watch) are supported with customized access via functional usage.

Since the introduction of TRCCNN, more system components have added support for granular access via functional usage. You can see the full list of functions supported with the DSPFCNUSG or WRKFCNUSG commands by taking the default of *ALL. The GUI also provides a list of all functions that are available.

The GUI for this capability can be found under Application Administration; it is the Host Applications category that provides this support.

• Default Access allows all users to access the function by default 
• All Object Access allows all users with all object system privilege to access the function
• Customize allows you to add or remove users or groups in the Access Allowed and Access Denied lists.

The following screen capture shows the kind of information you can see with the Display Function Usage command. In my example, you can see that I have allowed user DAWNMAY to access trace functions, even though DAWNMAY may not have *SERVICE special authority. User DAWN is not allowed to access trace functions.

 

i Can… Find All my Performance Collections in One Place

This week's blog was written by Lora Powell. Lora works on the IBM i Performance Tools team and is the lead for the Performance Tasks GUI in IBM Systems Director Navigator. Thanks, Lora.

If you are new to 6.1 or 7.1, you may not be aware that you can go to one place to see and work with all your performance collections.

When working with Performance Collections on 6.1 and beyond, some changes were made from previous releases. Along with the change in Performance Collection Tools to collect Job Watcher, Disk Watcher, Collection Services, and Performance Explorer data by the base operating system, an internal collection table was added to keep track of these collections on the system.

The Collections task gives you access into this table. To view and work with all the collections on a system, start with IBM Systems Director Navigator for i (hint: to start this, simply type in your Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browser the following URL: http://systemName:2001 where “systemName” is replaced with the name of your system). Select Performance on the left-hand navigation pane. Then select the Collections task.

 

This brings up the Collection Manager list of all the collections found on your system, from all performance collectors, including both the management collection objects (*MGTCOL) as well as generated database files.

Here you can work with your collections using the GUI interfaces to the Copy, Delete, Save and Restore commands. Selecting Properties will display general and detail information about the collection. You can select action Create Data on a management collection object to create the collection services file based collection. You can also Convert performance data from a previous release to the format needed for processing by the current release. Selecting Investigate Data on a collection services file based collection, disk watcher, job watcher or PEX collection will bring up a default perspective displaying the data from the collection with one or more charts and tables.

The collection table (located in QUSRSYS/QAPMCCCNTB) is updated whenever new collections are generated, restored or deleted from the system using the performance collection tools commands: CRTPFRCOL, RSTPFRCOL, or DLTPFRCOL (xxxPFRCOL), or the GUI equivalents as discussed above. If however, a collection was restored from another system using the RSTOBJ or RSTLIB commands, or if the collector job was ended abnormally either due to system or subsystem ending immediately, the table will not be updated accordingly.

Likewise, if you use DLTLIB to remove a collection, the collection table will not be updated. The table information for collections will then be inconsistent with the actual collections that exist on the system.

If any of the above situations occur, you may notice this inconsistency when using Performance Data Investigator (Investigate Data task under Performance). The list in the collection name dropdown is populated by the collections found in the collection table, so it will only show the collections from the table.

The collection table can be rebuilt at any time to update it with the libraries and collections that exist on the system. To rebuild the table, from the Collections panel, use Select Action>Rebuild Collection Table.

This may take a few minutes. When complete, click on the Refresh button on the Collections panel. The Collection Manager list will now include any previously missing libraries and collections, and any collections that were deleted will no longer be shown.

To then use Performance Data Investigator with the updated collection table, close any previously opened Investigate Data tabs, and go back in to Investigate Data. The Collection Library dropdown will now be populated with all the collections that currently exist on the system.

Note that with the latest PTFs installed, you will see that the Collection Name dropdown list also shows the date and time that the collection was started. The default name of the collections generated by Collection Services is ‘Q’ plus the Julian data and time. Since this is difficult for most to translate into a “real” date, adding the human-readable format of the date and time stamp makes it easier to find the collection you are looking for.

For the latest PTF information affecting the Collection Manager and Performance Data Investigator, check out the developerWorks Technology Updates page recently launched under the Performance Tools category: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/techupdates/perftools.

 

 

New Systems Director Navigator Service Packs Bring New Enhancements to 6.1

If you’re on IBM i 6.1 and have not yet started to use IBM Systems Director Navigator for i, there’s never been a better time to start using it! With the recently released Service Pack 8 PTFs (SI42186, SI42187, SI42188), you’ll find many new enhancements that were previously available only in 7.1.

The following are the significant updates now also available in 6.1.

1.    Multiple Sessions Allowed

You can now have more than one IBM Systems Director Navigator for i session active for the same user. Prior to this PTF, only one session could be opened for the same user ID.

2.    5250 Emulation

 You can now access the same 5250 Emulation portlet that is included with IBM i Access for Web from the System welcome page within IBM Systems Director Navigator for i. Note: Customization of the 5250 Emulation portlet is not supported from within the Navigator console.

3.    Set Target System

You can now select another system to manage, besides the IBM i system where you're running IBM Systems Director Navigator. You can select to manage another 6.1 system, or you can also manage 7.1 and 5.4 systems as well. Select the "Set Target System" task in the task navigation area to specify the system you want to manage.

 4.    Database

• On Demand Performance Center: Support has been added for a new centralized authority model when working with all the SQL performance tools. SQL Details for a Job now has the capability to start a SQL Performance Monitor from the jobs lists. Index Advisor now includes a column with the time that an index was first advised. The Show Indexes list now includes columns for SSD and In Memory values.
• Health Center: New SQL0901 category has been added to the Environmental Limits tab to help log situations where the database engine has an unknown error and more data is needed to be collected.
• Database Management: Several usability enhancements to lists including saving list contents to various output formats and ability to filter lists.
• Maintenance Category: A new Maintenance category helps to organize database maintenance lists for check pending constraints and index rebuilds.
• Omnifind Text Search Functions: Support has been added for managing Omnifind text search servers and indexes.

 5.    Journal Management

• Show Journaled Objects action was added for a journal.
• Change Receivers action was added for a journal.
• Remote Journals action was added for a journal.
• Add Remote Journal action was added for a journal.
• Properties action was added for a journal receiver.
• Activate action was added for remote journals.
• Deactivate action was added for remote journals.
• Remove action was added for remote journals.
• Properties action was added for remote journals.

 6.    Integrated Server Administration

• The Create Server task was added for creating the IBM i hosting environment for an iSCSI attached BladeCenter or System x server.
• The Delete Server task was added for deleting the IBM i hosting environment for an integrated server.
• The Launch Web Console task was added for launching the service processor Web console for an iSCSI attached integrated server.
• Added support for iSCSI software targets.
• Several iSCSI configuration tasks were simplified.

 7.    File Systems

The user can now remove Integrated File System (IFS) objects listed in the Folder Attribute Information Report panel.

 8.    Disk Management

•  The graphical view is now enabled
•  Install Disk Unit is now supported in graphical view.

 9.    Performance

•  Improved Performance Data Investigator (PDI) integration with Active Jobs, System Status and Disk Status. New menu actions and new buttons on these interfaces will allow a user to access relevant Collection Services performance data charts or tables found in the Investigate Data task. Options to start applicable performance tools such as Disk Watcher or Job Watcher are additionally provided on these interfaces.
• You can now view the QAPMJVM Collection Services database file from the Investigate Data task.

10. IBM Tivoli Directory Server for IBM i (LDAP)

All the LDAP management functions are now enabled. Please apply PTF SI43345 before you are willing to access IBM Tivoli Directory Server Web Administration Tool.

 

Go ahead – check it out! There’s nothing to install; just point your browser to the following URL for your desired IBM i 6.1 system: http://IBMiSystemName:2001

 

Here are some valuable resources on IBM Systems Director Navigator:

• Information Center 
• IBM Systems Director Navigator Redbooks publication  
• IBM Systems Director Navigator Web site

 

I'd like to thank Stacy Benfield and Tim Kramer for this week's blog. Tim is the lead developer for IBM Systems Director Navigator and Stacy is the lead developer for the Performance Data Investigator. Thanks, Stacy and Tim!

 

Name that Thread

Did you know in the 7.1 release, you can now name the secondary threads you create in a process?  Prior to 7.1, the system assigned a thread ID and there was no interface to specify a thread name.  However, thread IDs can be difficult to work with, particularly when doing problem determination, because the IDs provide no indication of what that thread is for. You’d have to go in through the work management interfaces to display each thread and examine its call stack to have some idea of what that thread may be doing.

Likewise, the synchronization mechanisms commonly used in multi-threaded applications--mutexes,  condition variables, and read/write locks--couldn't be managed by names prior to 7.1; name support was also added for these in the 7.1 release.

Of course, the documentation in the IBM i Information Center doesn't exactly tell you this; you must do some review of application programming interfaces to find out about this little enhancement.

The work management “Work with Threads” interface that displays thread information (option 20 when using WRKJOB on the green screen) was updated to display the thread name. The thread name isn't displayed through the IBM Systems Director Navigator Web console or in System i Navigator. Also, very few of the IBM-supplied multi-threaded processes have taken advantage of using the thread naming capability; probably because these interfaces are not portable.

You can set the name of the target thread with the pthread_setname_np() function.

You can retrieve the name of a thread with the pthread_getname_np() function.

Likewise, there are setname and getname interfaces for mutexes, condition variables, and read/write locks.
pthread_mutex_setname_np()
pthread_mutex_getname_np()
pthread_cond_setname_np()
pthread_cond_getname_np()
pthread_rwlock_setname_np()
pthread_rwlock,getname_np()

Active Jobs with IBM Systems Director

The past two blogs were on topics related to active jobs “Work with Active Jobs,” which reviewed the features of the green-screen interface, and "IBM Systems Director Navigator for i's Work Management Integration with Performance Tasks." 

As long as I've been writing about active jobs, I thought I’d conclude this series of articles with how you can also view active jobs by using IBM Systems Director.

First, to view active jobs through IBM Systems Director, you must have the IBM Systems Director 6.1.2 Common Agent for IBM i (CAS) or the IBM Systems Director 5.2.x and CIM Agent (Common Agent, previously called the level 2 agent) installed and running. Using IBM i Resources with an IBM Systems Director Server describes all the agents available for i, the prerequisite products and PTFs, along with how to start the agents. The "Directing i" article has a nice summary of the agents you can use with IBM Systems Director.

There are several different ways to accomplish any task with Systems Director. You can start by selecting the system you want to manage by using the Navigate Resources interface and work through the options available from there. Or you can start from an option in the Director navigation pane in the left-hand side of the user interface, and once you select the desired function, you can browse for the system you want to manage. 

In my example, we'll start with the director navigation pane. To get to active jobs, expand the System Status and Health section and select Manage Processes, as shown in the following figure.

Since we’ve not yet selected a system to manage, a dialog is displayed to select the system now. See figure below.

By clicking on browse, you can find the systems available for to manage. (Note: If you haven’t yet discovered your IBM i system through System Discovery, you must do that before you’ll see the system in the list.) See figure below.

Select which system you want to use from the list of systems available to you and add it to the selected box. Click ok, and you’ll see a screen similar to the following. By default, you’ll see Applications (seen in figure below), which shows you a list of active jobs.

For an active job, you can select to monitor the process, end it controlled, or end it immediately, as shown below.

If you choose to create a monitor, it brings up the dialog to create a process monitor – it's a simple monitor that will log an event under the selected conditions, as shown below.

Servers will show you the list of server jobs.  (Blog post "i Can …. Identify Your Server Jobs" has more information about TCP Servers.)  This is very similar to the TCP/IP Servers information you can view with IBM Systems Director Navigator or System i Navigator, as shown below.

The options for server jobs are to start or end the server (depending upon its current status) or to display the server jobs, as shown below.

Showing the jobs will show you the active jobs for that server, as shown below.

Subsystems will display the subsystems on the system, whether they’re started or not, and the actions you can take are either to start the subsystem if it isn’t active, end an active subsystem or to display the jobs running in an active subsystem. See figure below.

It's been my experience that not many IBM i shops have experimented with IBM Systems Director. Perhaps by learning a little bit about how you can use Systems Director to manage i, you’ll learn more about what it can do.

For more information on using Systems Director with i, refer back to the blog, "Managing i with IBM Systems Director."