We're trying to work with Websphere and Oracle 9i as Linux guests (one for each) on an MP 3000 H30 running z/VM 4.4 as a hypervisor. Admittedly, this is a small box (1 GB of storage, and one CPU that's not even running at full-power for an MP 3000), but we're seeing horrible inconsistent response times in the SLES 8 images we're installing the products in. We've added paging volumes to spread the paging load out and are cautiously giving the guests more and more virtual storage, but since we're running the CPU at 100%, we don't think the problem is all page waits, although there have been some kernel messages from the Websphere machine in particular that memory allocations for Java processes (tasks?) are failing.
Most disturbing have been a couple of episodes in which the Websphere guest just simply stops responding to terminal inputs. Our terminal sessions are via ssh, but these sessions seem to just hang. New connections time out, and logged in users can't kill running tasks and so forth. As I say, the Linux images are getting (taking) a fair amount of the CPU, so it's not that the whole Linux images are just dormant.
Clearly I need to take the time to put instrumentation in place to monitor and manage this carefully, but we can't really afford the time, and the users are getting disgusted.
Are there some tell-tale signs I should looking for to explain why suddenly interactions with the guest are suspended for minutes at a time? Is there a list of stupid things I should make sure I haven't done that have quick fixes?
(Too much, too quickly, without any coordination: a lousy way to run a pilot project....)
Thanks, Nick
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