Paging Space Utilization

We received this alert this morning.  At the time, the paging space utilization exceeded 80%:

[yo@pd2]/>lsps -a
Page Space      Physical Volume   Volume Group Size %Used Active  Auto  Type Chksum
paging05        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     0    no    no    lv     0
paging04        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     0    no    no    lv     0
paging03        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     0    no    no    lv     0
paging02        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB    80   yes   yes    lv     0
paging01        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB    79   yes   yes    lv     0
paging00        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB    80   yes   yes    lv     0
hd6             hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB    80   yes   yes    lv     0

There is normally 4GB of paging space active, plus there is another 3GB standing by.  Occasionally AIX paging space will become filled with stale segments, especially when java is in use on the system, which in this case is mostly from WebSphere.  By deactivating and reactivating the active paging spaces, those get cleared out.  Note: it can take up to about 10 minutes per space to deactivate.

For the procedure:
1.    Activate at least one of the spare spaces
a.    swapon /dev/paging05
2.    Step through each of the other active spaces, and issue a swapoff and swapon
a.    swapoff /dev/hd6
b.    swapon  /dev/hd6
c.    swapoff /dev/paging00
d.    swapon  /dev/paging00
e.    swapoff /dev/paging01
f.    swapon  /dev/paging01
g.    swapoff /dev/paging02
h.    swapon  /dev/paging02
3.    Release the standby space(s) activated earlier
a.    swapoff /dev/paging05

Following the procedure, we went from 80% to 5%:

[yo@pd2]/home/yo>lsps -a
Page Space      Physical Volume   Volume Group Size %Used Active  Auto  Type Chksum
paging05        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     0    no    no    lv     0
paging04        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     0    no    no    lv     0
paging03        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     0    no    no    lv     0
paging02        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     2   yes   yes    lv     0
paging01        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     4   yes   yes    lv     0
paging00        hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     6   yes   yes    lv     0
hd6             hdisk0            rootvg        1024MB     9   yes   yes    lv     0

Alert:

Subject: ALERT:Warning PctTotalPgSpFree at 19.926 on pd2

Host % Total Paging Space Free PctTotalPgSpFree for pd2 triggered PctTotalPgSpFree < 20 at 19.926

Alert detail:
ERRM_DATA_TYPE=CT_FLOAT64
ERRM_RSRC_CLASS_NAME=Host
ERRM_ATTR_NAME=% Total Paging Space Free
ERRM_COND_SEVERITYID=0
ERRM_NODE_NAMELIST={pd2}
ERRM_COND_NAME=PG_Warning
ERRM_ATTR_PNAME=PctTotalPgSpFree
ERRM_COND_HANDLE=0x6004 0xffff 0xd20fd739 0x873cfd56 0x126a2686 0xfbdb1899
ERRM_RSRC_HANDLE=0x6008 0xffff 0xd20fd739 0x873cfd56 0x122601f8 0x619e2352 ERRM_TYPE=Event
ERRM_ER_HANDLE=0x6006 0xffff 0xd20fd739 0x873cfd56 0x122601f1 0x70eec021
ERRM_RSRC_NAME=pd2
ERRM_RSRC_CLASS_PNAME=IBM.Host
ERRM_ATTR_NUM=1
ERRM_TYPEID=0
ERRM_TIME=1339082122,353161
ERRM_RSRC_TYPE=0
ERRM_COND_SEVERITY=Informational
ERRM_EXPR=PctTotalPgSpFree < 20
ERRM_VALUE=19.926
ERRM_COND_BATCH=0
ERRM_NODE_NAME=pd2
ERRM_ER_NAME=Warning notifications

.Trashes, .fseventsd, and .Spotlight-V100

Merely plugging a removable drive into a mac (when it has write access) makes OS/X think it can take the liberty to write a lot of hidden garbage onto that disk. If you want to stop this from happening, you have to put some special files on that disk before you plug it in.

To stop OS/X from doing Spotlight indexing, you need a file called .metadata_never_index in the root directory of the removable drive.

To stop OS/X from making a .Trashes directory, you need to make your own file that *isn’t* a directory and call it .Trashes

To keep it from doing logging of filesystem events on the drive, you need to make a directory called .fseventsd and inside that folder put a single file named no_log

The contents of these files don’t matter, so you can make them empty files using touch. Even better, you could make it a text file with a link to this post, so that you (or someone else) wandering across the files will know what they’re for.

Apple’s choice to do this is incredibly self-serving and shameful. At bare minimum, hidden files and features like these should be off by default for any non-mac-only filesystem formats. They should only be enabled when the user has been made aware of them.

Some Helpful Tivoli Storage Manager Scripts

Here are some helpful Tivoli Storage Manager scripts:

def scr RECLAIM "select stgpool_name,reclaim from stgpools where DEVCLASS!='DISK'" desc='Reclaim Thresholds'

def scr SCRATCH "select count(*) as Scratch_count, library_name from libvolumes where status='Scratch' group by library_name" desc='Find Scratch Tape Count"

def scr DBBKSTAT "SELECT date_time, type, backup_series, volume_seq, devclass, volume_name FROM volhistory WHERE ( type='BACKUPFULL' OR type='BACKUPINCR' OR type='DBSNAPSHOT' ) AND date_time>=current_timestamp-48 hours" desc='Show Database Backup Statistics'

def scr DBCLEAN "del volh todate=-7 type=dbb" desc='Purge Database Backups older than 7 days'

def scr BACKUPDBTAPE "ba db dev=3592 t=f" desc='Database Backup to Tape'

def scr BACKUPDBDISK "ba db dev=dbbkc t=f" desc='Database Backup to Disk'

def scr NAS336 "select entity, date(start_time) as StartDate, time(start_time) as StartTime, date(end_time) as EndDate, time(end_time) as EndTime, activity, schedule_name, cast(bytes/1024/1024/1024 as decimal(18,2)) as GB, successful from summary where entity='EMCNS480' and end_time >= current_timestamp-336 hours" desc='Last 336 hours of NAS operations'


Information necessary to troubleshoot NAS NDMP issues

In order to minimize the overall Service Request resolution time we strongly recommend that the following information is provided and logged to the Service Request. The information will enable our Support Engineers to deal with your request in a more effective and timely manner. Please cut / paste questions plus responses into the Service Request.

• Provide a detailed problem description that includes symptoms, error codes, error messages, and/or screen captures:




• At what stage did the problem occur i.e. during a full backup, incremental backup, non-DAR restore, or DAR restore?


• Was backup on a checkpoint file system or Production File System (PFS)? If it was on PFS, were files being accessed while the backup was in progress (e.g. file deletion, file manipulation or file creation etc.)?


• Did backups or restores work properly in the past? If yes, has there been any changes whatsoever in the backup environment, tape drive, media, zoning, new param, new patches, etc..?Was the backup or restore canceled or aborted at any time?


• How and when did the backup/restore stop?


• When the job(s) fail what is the error message?


• Is the backup/restore spanning to multiple tapes? If yes, are more tapes available when the job spans to the next tape?




• NDMP client questions:




• What is the version and patch level of the Vendor NDMP client software?


• Is the NDMP client running on a UNIX or NT platform and what is the OS version and patch(es) or Service Pack level? What local language is the NDMP client is running?


• Any special environmental backup settings? If yes, provide details.


• Does the NDMP client support Direct Access Restore (DAR)? If yes, is it be enabled?


• Is Internationalization enabled on the NDMP client?


• Are all required processes/services running? Please verify the license and NDMP application is installed properly.


• Please provide the NDMP software verbose log just for the problem areas if possible. For example, Networker daemons log, etc.


• Is there an open support ticket with the Backup NDMP client vendor? If yes, please provide the ticket number and contact information. The NDMP client vendor can also assist with troubleshooting.




• Connectivity questions:




• Provide detailed topology information from the Data Mover to tape drive including any devices in between.


• Please provide the device vendor and firmware version. For example, if this is SAN environment, provide switch, FC-SCSI bridge information, tape drive firmware version, etc. If it is SCSI connection, please provide the SCSI cable length.


• Is tape library in a DDS (Dynamic Drive Sharing) environment?
  Provide topology information between Data Mover and the NDMP client vendor software host connection.


• Please provide the IP and hostname of the NDMP Host running the NDMP software.

CachéDB/EPIC HP Business Copy Script

Finally figured out a way to execute pairresync, pairsplit, EPIC's InstFreeze and InstThaw from the proxy backup server.

HORCMINST=1
HORCC_MRCF=1
#
logFile=/tmp/`basename $0`_`date '+%a'`.log
#
# Issue the resync
date '+%X_About to resync" >$logFile
pairresync -g dbgroup -IBC1 >>$logFile
#
# Wait for the resync to complete
#
date '+%X_Waiting for resync" >>$logFile
while true ; do
if [[ `pairdisplay -g dbgroup -IBC1 | egrep -c 'COPY|PSUS|SSUS'` -eq 0 ]] ; then
date '+%X_Resync Complete" >>$logFile
break
fi
sleep 20
done
#
sleep 60
#
# Freeze the Epic system
date '+%X_About to Freeze" >>$logFile
ssh epicserver "/epic/prd/bin/instfreeze;sync;sync;sync" >>$logFile
sleep 15
date '+%X_About to Split" >>$logFile
pairsplit -g dbgroup -IBC1 >>$logFile
sleep 15
date '+%X_About to Thaw" >>$logFile
ssh epicserver /epic/prd/bin/instthaw >>$logFile
sleep 15
date '+%X_All Done" >>$logFile


Backup Logs - Last 14 Days Of Any Given Server

Auditors want these backup log reports all the time. Here a short script to display the last 14 days of backup logs for any given server.

select entity, date(start_time) as StartDate, time(start_time) as StartTime, date(end_time) as EndDate, time(end_time) as EndTime, activity, cast(bytes/1024/1024/1024 as decimal(18,2)) as GB, successful from summary where entity like '%$1%' and end_time >= current_timestamp-336 hours order by entity asc

Save this code as a TSM script and run it using the following syntax:

run script-name server-name

AIX Last Login Information

for user in ` lsuser -a time_last_login ALL| grep -v =` ; do
echo “$user NEVER”
done

for user in `lsuser -a time_last_login ALL| grep =|sed 's/ time_last_login=/:/'` ; do
last=`echo $user|cut -d: -f2`
id=`echo $user | cut -d: -f1`
echo "$id `perl -le \"print scalar localtime $last \" `"
done


What is a JAR file?

The JAR file format is based on the popular ZIP file format, and is used for aggregating many files into one. Unlike ZIP files, JAR files are used not only for archiving and distribution, but also for deployment and encapsulation of libraries, components, and plug-ins, and are consumed directly by tools such as compilers and JVMs. Special files contained in the JAR, such as manifests and deployment descriptors, instruct tools how a particular JAR is to be treated.

A JAR file might be used:

• For distributing and using class libraries


• As building blocks for applications and extensions


• As deployment units for components, applets, or plug-ins


• For packaging auxiliary resources associated with components

The JAR file format provides many benefits and features, many of which are not provided with a traditional archive format such as ZIP or TAR. These include:

• Security. You can digitally sign the contents of a JAR file. Tools that recognize your signature can then optionally grant your software security privileges it wouldn't otherwise have, and detect if the code has been tampered with.


• Decreased download time. If an applet is bundled in a JAR file, the applet's class files and associated resources can be downloaded by a browser in a single HTTP transaction, instead of opening a new connection for each file.


• Compression. The JAR format allows you to compress your files for efficient storage.


• Transparent platform extension. The Java Extensions Framework provides a means by which you can add functionality to the Java core platform, which uses the JAR file for packaging of extensions. (Java 3D and JavaMail are examples of extensions developed by Sun.)


• Package sealing. Packages stored in JAR files can be optionally sealed to enforce version consistency and security. Sealing a package means that all classes defined in that package must be found in the same JAR file.


• Package versioning. A JAR file can hold data about the files it contains, such as vendor and version information.


• Portability. The mechanism for handling JAR files is a standard part of the Java platform's core API.

Compressed and uncompressed JARs

The jar tool (see The jar tool for details) compresses files by default. Uncompressed JAR files can generally be loaded more quickly than compressed JAR files, because the need to decompress the files during loading is eliminated, but download time over a network may be longer for uncompressed files.

The jar tool

To perform basic tasks with JAR files, you use the Java Archive Tool (jar tool) provided as part of the Java Development Kit. You invoke the jar tool with the jar command. Table 1 shows some common applications:

Common usages of the jar tool

Creating a JAR file from individual files

jar -cvMf jar-file input-file...

Creating a JAR file from a directory

jar -cvMf jar-file dir-name

Creating an uncompressed JAR file

jar -cvMf0 jar-file input-file...

Updating a JAR file

jar -uf jar-file input-file

Viewing the contents of a JAR file

jar -tf jar-file

Extracting the contents of a JAR file

jar -xf jar-file

Extracting specific files from a JAR file

jar -xf jar-file archived-file

Here is the usage for AIX 6.1:

Usage: jar {ctxu}[vfm0Mi] [jar-file] [manifest-file] [-C dir] files ...
Options:
-c create new archive
-t list table of contents for archive
-x extract named (or all) files from archive
-u update existing archive
-v generate verbose output on standard output
-f specify archive file name
-m include manifest information from specified manifest file
-0 store only; use no ZIP compression
-M do not create a manifest file for the entries
-i generate index information for the specified jar files
-C change to the specified directory and include the following file
If any file is a directory then it is processed recursively.
The manifest file name and the archive file name needs to be specified
in the same order the 'm' and 'f' flags are specified.

Example 1: to archive two class files into an archive called classes.jar:
jar cvf classes.jar Foo.class Bar.class
Example 2: use an existing manifest file 'mymanifest' and archive all the
files in the foo/ directory into 'classes.jar':
jar cvfm classes.jar mymanifest -C foo/ .

Collecting Data for Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive Client: Performance

Collecting Data for Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive Client: Performance

Problem(Abstract)
Collecting troubleshooting documents aid in problem determination and save time resolving Problem Management Records (PMRs).



Resolving the problem
Collecting data early, even before opening the PMR, helps IBM® Support quickly determine if:
Symptoms match known problems (rediscovery).
There is a non-defect problem that can be identified and resolved.
There is a defect that identifies a workaround to reduce severity.
Locating root cause can speed development of a code fix.


Manually Gathering General Information

Please Review the following TSM Performance Tuning Guide:http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v1r1/topic/com.ibm.itsmm.doc/b_perf_tuning_guide.htm

1) From the operating system command prompt, run the following TSM command to gather up general information about TSM and the operating system environment (saved output is written to file dsminfo.txt):
dsmc QUERY SYSTEMINFO

2) From a TSM Admin command line client, enter the following commands:
QUERY SYSTEM > querysys.out

3) Gather the following file and information:
•dsminfo.txt
•querysys.out
•details of operating system levels ( i.e., HP-UX 11.23)
•TSM Client specific version (i.e., 5.4.0.2)


Manually Gathering Client Performance Specific Information

Collect TSM Performance Instrumentation Traces:

1) From the poor performing TSM client system, issue this command from an operating system command prompt:
dsmc INCREMENTAL -TESTFLAG=INSTRUMENT:DETAIL > backup.out
Note:
•-TESTFLAG=INSTRUMENT:DETAIL will generate a file with name "dsminstr.report.x "under the same directory where dsmerror.log locates. For Netware, the file name will be called dsminstr.rep.
•If the slow client is an API client, replace -TESTFLAG=INSTRUMENT:DETAIL with -TESTFLAG=INSTRUMENT:API
•If INCREMENTAL is not the slow action, replace dsmc INCREMENTAL with the appropriate slow TSM client command.
•For users who can't run a manual backup, add the following lines in the according option file for example: dsm.opt
TESTFLAG INSTRUMENT:DETAIL
Recycle Scheduler to active the trace

2) Collect a TSM server instrument trace when the slow client backup is running:
From a TSM Admin command line client, enter the following commands and collect output and trace:
a) Start Instrument tracing:
INSTrument BEGIN (leave trace running for 20 minutes)
b) Collect Process and Session output:
QUERY SESS > sess.out
QUERY PROC > proc.out
QUERY DB > db.out
c) End Instrument tracing:
INSTrument END FILE=inst.out
3) Gather the following files :
•backup.out
•dsminstr.report.x (dsminstr.rep on Netware)
•sess.out
•proc.out
•db.out
•inst.out

Counting TSM Sessions Every 15 Minutes and Logging To File With Time Stamp

#!/bin/ksh
#
SessCnt=`dsmadmc -id=admin -password=password -dataonly=yes q sess| grep -c Node`
#
date "+%y%m%d:%X_TSM Session Count=$SessCnt" >>/tmp/tsm_sessions
if [[ $SessCnt -gt 100 ]] ; then
echo TSM Session Count is $SessCnt | mail -s TSM_Sessions_High aix@company.com
fi
#
if [[ $SessCnt -gt 185 ]] ; then
echo TSM Session Count is $SessCnt | mail -s TSM_Sessions_at_MAX joe1@company.com joe2@company.com joe3@company.com
echo TSM Session Count is $SessCnt | mail -s TSM_Sessions_at_MAX joe1@remote.com
fi

Then create a crontab entry

0,15,30,45 * * * * /usr/local/scripts/tsm_session_ck

Delete All Logical Volumes in a Volume Group

for  lv  in  `lsvg  -l  <Volume_Group_Name>  |  grep /  |  awk '{print $1}'`  ;  do
echo  rmlv  -f  $lv
done

Remove the echo to execute.

10 PowerShell commands every Windows admin should know

Over the last few years, Microsoft has been trying to make PowerShell the management tool of choice. Almost all the newer Microsoft server products require PowerShell, and there are lots of management tasks that can’t be accomplished without delving into the command line. As a Windows administrator, you need to be familiar with the basics of using PowerShell. Here are 10 commands to get you started.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Get-Help

The first PowerShell cmdlet every administrator should learn is Get-Help. You can use this command to get help with any other command. For example, if you want to know how the Get-Process command works, you can type:

Get-Help -Name Get-Process

and Windows will display the full command syntax.

You can also use Get-Help with individual nouns and verbs. For example, to find out all the commands you can use with the Get verb, type:

Get-Help -Name Get-*

2: Set-ExecutionPolicy

Although you can create and execute PowerShell scripts, Microsoft has disabled scripting by default in an effort to prevent malicious code from executing in a PowerShell environment. You can use the Set-ExecutionPolicy command to control the level of security surrounding PowerShell scripts. Four levels of security are available to you:

• Restricted — Restricted is the default execution policy and locks PowerShell down so that commands can be entered only interactively. PowerShell scripts are not allowed to run.


• All Signed — If the execution policy is set to All Signed then scripts will be allowed to run, but only if they are signed by a trusted publisher.


• Remote Signed — If the execution policy is set to Remote Signed, any PowerShell scripts that have been locally created will be allowed to run. Scripts created remotely are allowed to run only if they are signed by a trusted publisher.


• Unrestricted — As the name implies, Unrestricted removes all restrictions from the execution policy.

You can set an execution policy by entering the Set-ExecutionPolicy command followed by the name of the policy. For example, if you wanted to allow scripts to run in an unrestricted manner you could type:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

3: Get-ExecutionPolicy

If you’re working on an unfamiliar server, you’ll need to know what execution policy is in use before you attempt to run a script. You can find out by using the Get-ExecutionPolicy command.

4: Get-Service

The Get-Service command provides a list of all of the services that are installed on the system. If you are interested in a specific service you can append the -Name switch and the name of the service (wildcards are permitted) When you do, Windows will show you the service’s state.

5: ConvertTo-HTML

PowerShell can provide a wealth of information about the system, but sometimes you need to do more than just view the information onscreen. Sometimes, it’s helpful to create a report you can send to someone. One way of accomplishing this is by using the ConvertTo-HTML command.

To use this command, simply pipe the output from another command into the ConvertTo-HTML command. You will have to use the -Property switch to control which output properties are included in the HTML file and you will have to provide a filename.

To see how this command might be used, think back to the previous section, where we typed Get-Service to create a list of every service that’s installed on the system. Now imagine that you want to create an HTML report that lists the name of each service along with its status (regardless of whether the service is running). To do so, you could use the following command:

Get-Service | ConvertTo-HTML -Property Name, Status > C:\services.htm

6: Export-CSV

Just as you can create an HTML report based on PowerShell data, you can also export data from PowerShell into a CSV file that you can open using Microsoft Excel. The syntax is similar to that of converting a command’s output to HTML. At a minimum, you must provide an output filename. For example, to export the list of system services to a CSV file, you could use the following command:

Get-Service | Export-CSV c:\service.csv

7: Select-Object

If you tried using the command above, you know that there were numerous properties included in the CSV file. It’s often helpful to narrow things down by including only the properties you are really interested in. This is where the Select-Object command comes into play. The Select-Object command allows you to specify specific properties for inclusion. For example, to create a CSV file containing the name of each system service and its status, you could use the following command:

Get-Service | Select-Object Name, Status | Export-CSV c:\service.csv

8: Get-EventLog

You can actually use PowerShell to parse your computer’s event logs. There are several parameters available, but you can try out the command by simply providing the -Log switch followed by the name of the log file. For example, to see the Application log, you could use the following command:

Get-EventLog -Log "Application"

Of course, you would rarely use this command in the real world. You’re more likely to use other commands to filter the output and dump it to a CSV or an HTML file.

9: Get-Process

Just as you can use the Get-Service command to display a list of all of the system services, you can use the Get-Process command to display a list of all of the processes that are currently running on the system.

10: Stop-Process

Sometimes, a process will freeze up. When this happens, you can use the Get-Process command to get the name or the process ID for the process that has stopped responding. You can then terminate the process by using the Stop-Process command. You can terminate a process based on its name or on its process ID. For example, you could terminate Notepad by using one of the following commands:

Stop-Process -Name notepad
Stop-Process -ID 2668

Keep in mind that the process ID may change from session to session.

Top 8 Traits Employers Look For

When looking for employment you should keep in mind the needs of potential employers. Of course you want the job – but what do employers want from you?

1. Loyalty – Loyal employees are the backbone of any organization. Look at your resume (or LinkedIn profile), does your work history seem like that of a loyal employee? If there are short term roles listed make it clear they were temporary jobs. Jobs not relevant to the role can be omitted. At interview do not gossip or share details of previous employers, colleagues or mutual acquaintances – indulging in tittle-tattle will make you appear disloyal.

2. Honesty – Employers need to be able to trust you. Never pad you resume, be honest about qualifications and experience. Nothing is more likely to make you appear dishonest than being caught in a half truth at interview.

3. Punctuality – Bosses need to know their workers will be at their posts on time every day as poor timekeeping can cost a company customers. Demonstrate good timekeeping by turning in your application form on time. If given an interview appointment make sure you arrive at least ten minutes in advance of you allotted time.

4. Determination – People who want to do well are much more likely to work with passion and gain results for their employers. When given the chance to question a potential employer at interview, don’t be afraid to ask about opportunities for advancement, as this will display determination and alert the interviewer to your desire to succeed.

5. Flexibility – The ever changing face of business means employers need workers who are willing to move with the times, adapting to the evolving demands of their role. Use your application form to demonstrate how you have been flexible in previous roles – if you took on extra responsibilities or undertook additional training make sure you let them know.

6. Smart Appearance – Whether you will be working in a formal or casual environment, it is important to take care with your appearance at interview. If you look scruffy employers may ignore your skills, assuming that someone who doesn’t take pride in themselves will be unlikely to take pride in their work.

7. Positive Outlook – Employers want go-getters on their team. Showing a positive outlook at interview is essential. If you have been made redundant from a previous role, don’t bemoan your fate to a potential boss, instead explain how excited you are to be exploring new opportunities.

8. Communications Skills – Communication skills are key. Ensure your application and resume are grammatically correct, ask a friend or family to look them over for you to help catch any typos or errors. At interview think before you speak, choose your words carefully and ensure they convey the message clearly. Don’t “um” and “ah” – it is better to take a few seconds to compose an answer than to say something stupid.

Demonstrating these eight key skills can help you land your dream role, and displaying these traits in your daily working life will make you stand out over other employees when the opportunity for advancement arises.

Filesystem Utilization Korn Shell Script

Script will run in cron @ 6,8,10,12am and 2,4pm to check filesystems that are above 90% full.
95% is the percentage used across the board unless otherwise noted.

#!/bin/ksh
#######################################################################################################
# Created: Javier Blanco
# Creation Date: 11/06/2001
# Use: By all unix servers
# Description: Script will run in cron @ 6,8,10,12am and 2,4pm to check filesystems that are
# above 90% full.
# 95% is the percentage used across the board unless otherwise noted.
#
########################################################################################################
export AD1=unixadmins@xyz.com

export PG1=555555555@pager.net
export PG2=555555555@pager.net

df -k | grep -iv -e filesystem -e /var/nim/resources -e proc -e cd -e /var/mksysbs -e /usr | awk '{ print $7" "$4}' | while read LINE
do
FILESYSTEM=`echo $LINE | cut -d"%" -f1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`
PERCENTAGE=`echo $LINE | cut -d"%" -f1 | awk '{ print $2 }'`
if [ $PERCENTAGE -ge 95 ]; then

echo "The system `hostname` has caused a filesystem alert on `date`. The ${FILESYSTEM} is ${PERCENTAGE}% full. \\n You will recieve this message every 2 hours until either the problem is corrected or the root crontab entry is commented out.[dfchk.sh] \\n \\n " | mail -s "- $FILESYSTEM is at $PERCENTAGE " $AD1 $PG1 #$PG2
fi
done

High Availability and Hardware Availability

High availability is sometimes confused with simple hardware availability. Fault tolerant, redundant systems (such as RAID) and dynamic switching technologies (such as DLPAR) provide recovery of certain hardware failures, but do not provide the full scope of error detection and recovery required to keep a complex application highly available.

A modern, complex application requires access to all of these components:

• Nodes (CPU, memory)


• Network interfaces (including external devices in the network topology)


• Disk or storage devices.

Recent surveys of the causes of downtime show that actual hardware failures account for only a small percentage of unplanned outages. Other contributing factors include:

• Operator errors


• Environmental problems


• Application and operating system errors.

Reliable and recoverable hardware simply cannot protect against failures of all these different aspects of the configuration. Keeping these varied elements—and therefore the application— highly available requires:

• Thorough and complete planning of the physical and logical procedures for access and operation of the resources on which the application depends. These procedures help to avoid failures in the first place.


• A monitoring and recovery package that automates the detection and recovery from errors.


• A well-controlled process for maintaining the hardware and software aspects of the cluster configuration while keeping the application available.

High availability vs. fault tolerance

The difference between fault tolerance and high availability, is this: A fault tolerant environment has no service interruption but a significantly higher cost, while a highly available environment has a minimal service interruption.

Fault tolerance relies on specialized hardware to detect a hardware fault and instantaneously switch to a redundant hardware component—whether the failed component is a processor, memory board, power supply, I/O subsystem, or storage subsystem. Although this cutover is apparently seamless and offers non-stop service, a high premium is paid in both hardware cost and performance because the redundant components do no processing. More importantly, the fault tolerant model does not address software failures, by far the most common reason for downtime.

High availability views availability not as a series of replicated physical components, but rather as a set of system-wide, shared resources that cooperate to guarantee essential services. High availability combines software with industry-standard hardware to minimize downtime by quickly restoring essential services when a system, component, or application fails. While not instantaneous, services are restored rapidly, often in less than a minute.

 Many sites are willing to absorb a small amount of downtime with high availability rather than pay the much higher cost of providing fault tolerance. Additionally, in most highly available configurations, the backup processors are available for use during normal operation.

High availability systems are an excellent solution for applications that must be restored quickly and can withstand a short interruption should a failure occur. Some industries have applications so time-critical that they cannot withstand even a few seconds of downtime. Many other industries, however, can withstand small periods of time when their database is unavailable.

Caché System Failover Strategies

Caché fits into all common high-availability configurations supplied by operating system providers including Microsoft,IBM, HP, and EMC. Caché provides easy-to-use, often automatic, mechanisms that integrate easily with the operating system to provide high availability.There are four general approaches to system failover. In order of increasing availability they are:

• No Failover Strategy
• Failover Cluster
• Concurrent Cluster
• ECP Cluster

There are variations on these strategies; for example, many large enterprise clients have implemented ECP cluster and alsouse failover cluster for disaster recovery.It is important to differentiate between failover and disaster recovery. Failover is a methodology to resume system availability
in an acceptable period of time, while disaster recovery is a methodology to resume system availability when allfailover strategies have failed.

No Failover Strategy

With no failover strategy in place your Caché database integrity is still protected from production system failure. Structural database integrity is maintained by Caché write image journal (WIJ) technology; you cannot disable this. Logical integrity is maintained through global journaling and transaction processing. While global journaling can be disabled and transaction processing is optional, InterSystems highly recommends using them.

If a production system failure occurs, such as a hardware failure, the database and application are generally unaffected. Disk degradation, of course, is an exception. Disk redundancy and good backup procedures are vital to mitigate problems arising from disk failure.

Failover Cluster

A common and often inexpensive approach to recovery after failure is to maintain a standby system to assume the production workload in the event of a production system failure. A typical configuration has two identical computers with shared access to a disk subsystem.

After a failure, the standby system takes over the applications formerly running on the failed system. Microsoft Windows Clusters, HP MC/ServiceGuard, Tru64 UNIX® TruClusters, OpenVMS Clusters, and IBM HACMP provide a common approach for implementing failover cluster. In these technologies, the standby system senses a heartbeat from the production
system on a frequent and regular basis. If the heartbeat consistently stops for a period of time, the standby system automatically assumes the IP address and the disk formerly associated with the failed system. The standby can then run any applications (Caché, for example) that were on the failed system. In this scenario, when the standby system takes over the application, it executes a pre-configured start script to bring the databases online. Users can then reconnect to the databases that are now running on the standby server. Again, WIJ, global journaling, and transaction processing are used to maintain structural and data integrity.

To be continued

A New Era Started Today

Finally made the decision of buying a Digital SLR camera. After months of tedious research I narrowed my choice to the Canon EOS 7D. It's final! I ordered the 7D from Buyer Edge, an online retailer located in New Jersey. The setup is simple: Just the camera for now.

MIT team lights it up -- without wires

The latest MIT news flash could finally allow consumers to cut their power cords: A Massachusetts Institute of Technology research team has figured out how to wirelessly illuminate an unplugged light bulb from seven feet away.
Within the next five years, MIT physicist Marin Soljacic foresees a day when people could forgo the tangle of wires that keeps laptop, iPod, and cellphone users on a short leash. Instead, they could use a carefully designed magnetic field to deliver power to devices over the air. "At this point, this is a proof of principle -- the main point of our research was to see if we could transfer energy wirelessly," said Soljacic, who was inspired by the annoying beeps his cellphone made in the middle of the night when he forgot to charge it. "It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging."
Details about WiTricity, or wireless electricity, were reported yesterday in Science Express, an online publication of the journal Science.
In the demonstration, Soljacic and his team generated a magnetic field on one copper coil. Seven feet away, a similar coil specially tuned to resonate with the field received enough power to light up a 60-watt bulb. Typically, a laptop requires about 30 to 40 watts, he said, and an iPod or cellphone might require a few watts.
Already, some products have been developed that allow consumers to wirelessly charge their devices over very short distances.
But if Soljacic's idea bears fruit, consumers could be truly unplugged -- their rechargers and bulky adapters replaced by a device that transmits power wirelessly. The Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy funded his research.

It's All About Process

As long ago as 1931, the distinguished American economist, William Edwards Deming said that "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing!"

In IT today it is still difficult to describe how a business requirement ends up as part of a functioning business service. This is almost never written down as a single contiguous process. At best we seek to articulate this across several different process methodologies, at worst we recognize no process methodology at all and re-invent the wheel with each new business development.

In IT it is essential that we should know what we are doing. It is equally essential that we should know, record and understand what we have done and how we did it. This is the essence of balanced control with good governance and to achieve this we need to ensure that we follow a defined, consistent and repeatable process.

Process is there to help people and it has some very important attributes that are essential to the delivery of quality IT Services.

A most significant attribute of good process is that it is measurable against industry accepted criteria or standards. When a process methodology refers to certification at a given level, or to compliance with an industry standard then this is usually a result of independent audit and assessment.

Enterprise application integration

In today’s competitive and dynamic business environment, applications such as Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Business Intelligence and Integrated Collaboration environments have become imperative for organizations that need to maintain their competitive advantage. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the process of linking these applications and others in order to realize financial and operational competitive advantages.

When different systems can’t share their data effectively, they create information bottlenecks that require human intervention in the form of decision making or data entry. With a properly deployed EAI architecture, organizations are able to focus most of their efforts on their value-creating core competencies instead of focusing on workflow management.

For generations, systems have been built that have served a single purpose for a single set of users without sufficient thought to integrating these systems into larger systems and multiple applications. EAI is the solution to the unanticipated outcome of generations of development undertaken without a central vision or strategy. The demand of the enterprise is to share data and processes without having to make sweeping changes to the applications or data structures. Only by creating a method of accomplishing this integration can EAI be both functional and cost-effective.

One of the challenges facing modern organizations is giving all their workers complete, transparent and real-time access to information. Many of the legacy applications still in use today were developed using arcane and proprietary technologies, thus creating information silos across departmental lines within organizations. These systems hampered seamless movement of information from one application to the other. EAI, as a discipline, aims to alleviate many of these problems, as well as create new paradigms for truly lean proactive organizations. EAI intends to transcend the simple goal of linking applications, and attempts to enable new and innovative ways of leveraging organizational knowledge to create further competitive advantages for the enterprise.

EAI is a response to decades of creating distributed monolithic, single purpose applications leveraging a hodgepodge of platforms and development approaches. EAI represents the solution to a problem that has existed since applications first moved from central processors. Put briefly, EAI is the “unrestricted sharing of data and business processes among any connected application or data sources in the enterprise.”

Undoubtedly, there are a number of instances of stovepipe systems in an enterprise, such as inventory control systems, sales automation systems, general ledger systems, and human resource systems. These systems typically were custom-built with specific needs in mind, utilizing the technology.