3.3. Performance Co-Pilot (PCP)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 introduces support for Performance Co-Pilot (PCP), a suite of tools, services, and libraries for acquiring, storing, and analyzing system-level performance measurements. Its light-weight distributed architecture makes it particularly well-suited for centralized analysis of complex systems. Performance metrics can be added using the Python, Perl, C++, and C interfaces. Analysis tools can use the client APIs (Python, C++, C) directly, and rich web applications can explore all available performance data using a JSON interface.

The Performance Co-Pilot Collection Daemon (pmcd) is responsible for collecting performance data on the host system, and various client tools, such as pminfo or pmstat, can be used to retrieve, display, archive, and process this data on the same host or over the network. The pcp package provides the command-line tools and underlying functionality. The graphical tool also requires the pcp-gui package.

Resources

For information on PCP, see the Index of Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) articles, solutions, tutorials and white papers on the Red Hat Customer Portal.
The manual page named PCPIntro serves as an introduction to Performance Co-Pilot. It provides a list of available tools as well as a description of available configuration options and a list of related manual pages. By default, comprehensive documentation is installed in the /usr/share/doc/pcp-doc/ directory, notably the Performance Co-Pilot User's and Administrator's Guide and Performance Co-Pilot Programmer's Guide.
If you need to determine what PCP tool has the functionality of an older tool you are already familiar with, see the Side-by-side comparison of PCP tools with legacy tools Red Hat Knowledgebase article.
See the official PCP documentation for an in-depth description of the Performance Co-Pilot and its usage. If you want to start using PCP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux quickly, see the PCP Quick Reference Guide. The official PCP website also contains a list of frequently asked questions.

Overview of System Services and Tools Provided by PCP

Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) provides a large number of command-line tools, graphical tools, and libraries. For more information on these tools, see their respective manual pages.

Table 3.1. System Services Distributed with Performance Co-Pilot in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Name	Description
`pmcd`	The Performance Co-Pilot Collection Daemon (PMCD).
`pmie`	The Performance Metrics Inference Engine.
`pmlogger`	The performance metrics logger.
`pmmgr`	Manages a collection of PCP daemons for a set of discovered local and remote hosts running the Performance Co-Pilot Collection Daemon (PMCD) according to zero or more configuration directories.
`pmproxy`	The Performance Co-Pilot Collection Daemon (PMCD) proxy server.
`pmwebd`	Binds a subset of the Performance Co-Pilot client API to RESTful web applications using the HTTP protocol.

Table 3.2. Tools Distributed with Performance Co-Pilot in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Name	Description
`pcp`	Displays the current status of a Performance Co-Pilot installation.
`pmatop`	Shows the system-level occupation of the most critical hardware resources from the performance point of view: CPU, memory, disk, and network.
`pmchart`	Plots performance metrics values available through the facilities of the Performance Co-Pilot.
`pmclient`	Displays high-level system performance metrics by using the Performance Metrics Application Programming Interface (PMAPI).
`pmcollectl`	Collects and displays system-level data, either from a live system or from a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmdbg`	Displays available Performance Co-Pilot debug control flags and their values.
`pmdiff`	Compares the average values for every metric in either one or two archives, in a given time window, for changes that are likely to be of interest when searching for performance regressions.
`pmdumplog`	Displays control, metadata, index, and state information from a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmdumptext`	Outputs the values of performance metrics collected live or from a Performance Co-Pilot archive.
`pmerr`	Displays available Performance Co-Pilot error codes and their corresponding error messages.
`pmfind`	Finds PCP services on the network.
`pmie`	An inference engine that periodically evaluates a set of arithmetic, logical, and rule expressions. The metrics are collected either from a live system, or from a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmieconf`	Displays or sets configurable `pmie` variables.
`pminfo`	Displays information about performance metrics. The metrics are collected either from a live system, or from a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmiostat`	Reports I/O statistics for SCSI devices (by default) or device-mapper devices (with the `-x dm` option).
`pmlc`	Interactively configures active `pmlogger` instances.
`pmlogcheck`	Identifies invalid data in a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmlogconf`	Creates and modifies a `pmlogger` configuration file.
`pmloglabel`	Verifies, modifies, or repairs the label of a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmlogsummary`	Calculates statistical information about performance metrics stored in a Performance Co-Pilot archive file.
`pmprobe`	Determines the availability of performance metrics.
`pmrep`	Reports on selected, easily customizable, performance metrics values.
`pmsocks`	Allows access to a Performance Co-Pilot hosts through a firewall.
`pmstat`	Periodically displays a brief summary of system performance.
`pmstore`	Modifies the values of performance metrics.
`pmtrace`	Provides a command line interface to the trace Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA).
`pmval`	Displays the current value of a performance metric.

3.3. Performance Co-Pilot (PCP)

Resources

Overview of System Services and Tools Provided by PCP

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