While it is not within the scope of this manual to describe the Acquire output file in full, there are some checks that you can make, by simple inspection, to confirm that the file is of the correct structure. In general records are formatted as comma-separated variables with a sequence number as the first field that increments from 10001 upwards for each measurement interval, ending in
This sample shows the first few records, and the last record, of a valid data file.
The symbol -> simply means the record continues off to the right (as is not seen here)
00000,0000,"01DEC08"," 9:00:00","01DEC08"," 17:00:00",03600,00001491210 ->
00001,0001,"MULTI","N","N","Y","Y","Y","A","YNN","N","C","N","E","N","YY ->
00002,0002,"N","00000000","16SEP2042","23:59:59","RC=0008","Y","N","N"," ->
00003,0003,"01JAN1900","00:00:00","D","Y","RC=0000 ","N","RC=0004","N ->
00004,0004," "
10001,0101,"11","10","01FEB19","04:17:11","G","S","00000108","N",300119
10002,0102,"01DEC08"," 9:00:00","01DEC08","10:00:00", 3600,"-05:00"
10003,0103,"SYSB","206400","ZOS ","ZV010900","Y","2064-1C2","1C2", ->
... many more records …
nnnnn,9999,0,0,0,0,0 <- record type 9999 denotes end of an RMF interval
10001,0101,"11","10","01FEB19","04:17:11","G","S","00000108","N",300119
10002,0102,"01DEC08","10:00:00","01DEC08","11:00:00", 3600,"-05:00"
10003,0103,"SYSB","206400","ZOS ","ZV010900","Y","2064-1C2","1C2", ->
... many more records …
nnnnn,9999,0,0,0,0,0<- record type 9999 denotes end of an RMF interval
Structure
The file consists of a large number of records in ASCII text format, so you can open it and examine it in Notepad or a similar utility. Each record contains a number of fields (typically seven or eight) separated by commas. Text fields are in double quotes. Most numeric fields are in scientific notation, (e.g., 1.23400E+02 means 123.4), but integers are usually stored as integers. If you use the parameter COMPRESS=Y then all zeros will be reduced to 0 regardless if they were scientific notation or not, and unneeded spaces and trailing zeros will also be removed. This will reduce the size of the file at the expense of CPU time. You should experiment with COMPRESS=Y and examine the reduction achieved versus the additional CPU time, to see if it is an acceptable trade off against longer data transmission times.
If you captured the data by means of a RUNTYPE=COLLECT (i.e., by using the COLLECT sample JCL), than the output data file will consist of several repetitions of the basic file structure as described here.
Option Records
The first few records in the file are copies of run-time options. These are completely ignored by Control Center but can be useful for diagnostic purposes. They have IDs (in the second column) of 0000 through 0004 and only appear once per run. The real data starts after these records.
Record sequence number
The first field in each record is a 5-digit sequence number starting at 10001 for the data after the options records. This sequence number is not checked by Control Center, it is simply there to easily “eyeball” if data is discontiguous.
The second field in each record is a 4-digit record type identifier. This is used by Control Center to interpret the remaining fields in the record.
Record type identifier
The 00nn records
The 00nn record types hold a copy of the run-time parameters used by Acquire. They are mostly ignored by Control Center and only occur once at the beginning of each file. The 0000 record contains a summary of the data in the rest of the file such as start and end dates and times, and a count of the number of missing data gaps detected.
The 01nn records
The 01nn record types are header/configuration records. There should be one of each type 0101 to 0107 plus possibly some 0113 records if HIS data is present hand has been processed.
The final field of the 0101 record holds the build date of the Acquire in the form ddmmyy (day, month, year).
Record 0102 holds the start and end date and time of the measurement interval, plus the duration of the interval in seconds. These are highlighted above. Check that the duration in seconds is the same as the difference between the start and end time. If it is not (to within a second or so) then you may have supplied input STIME and/or ETIME parameters that were not the same as those displayed by a SCAN run, with the result that Acquire has used more or fewer RMF intervals than you expected. If the times do not match the duration, the data is useless, because all the rates and averages within it will be wrong. You cannot correct this by simply editing the times or the duration - you must re-run Acquire.
Record 0103 holds details including the SMF ID. This must match what is defined in your Capacity Database or else all the data will be rejected. Other fields include processor identity information, the operating system type and release level, and whether the processor is logically partitioned. If it is, there should be some 10nn records towards the end of each interval.
Records 0104 to 0107 contain mostly reserved fields.
Records with the 0113 identifier hold metrics derived about the hardware from the Hardware Instrumentation Services SMF type 113 records. If HIS Basic Counters are not being recorded then there will be no 0113 records in the file.
The 02nn records
The 0201 and 0202 records describe processor activity (CP, zIIP, zAAP). They are followed by several groups of records, typically types 0203 to 0213, with some repeated sub-groups. Each group represents the activity within a service class or performance group. However, the characters “RPT” in the 0203 record identify the data as originating from a report class or report performance group.
0212 and 0213 records carry the address spaces counters for various classes of work (Batch, TSO, STC, OMVS etc).
The 03nn records
There should be many groups of records 0301, 0302 and 0303 (and occasionally 0304). Each group represents activity to a particular disk volume. A record type 0304 indicates that the volume is a paging disk.
The 04nn records
If present, these records indicate activity on magnetic tape drives, similar to the 03nn records.
The 05nn records
These records contain information about the mapping between channel paths and control units. There will be many pairs of 0501/0502 records unless you have set WORKLOAD=NONE when there will be none. If you have CHP=Y or CHP=L set, the you will also see one 0503 record, and many 0504 records. A 0504 record will be followed by a 0505 record if the channel is a HiperSocket.
The 06nn records
Records 06nn hold information about the main store allocation and paging rates, unreferenced interval counts and migration age.
The 07nn records
There may be many groups of records 0701 through 0708, possibly with a number of 0707 records at the end of each group. These groups of records hold information about the workload components that Acquire has constructed from the service classes, report classes or performance groups as appropriate. The 0701 record at the start of each group holds the internally derived workload component name. The first group of records should be for the OVERHEAD component, which holds details of CPU time not charged to any service class or performance group. The 0707 records (if present) give counts of I/O to specific disk drives. If you specified DD=N, there will be no 0707 records.
Note that the workload component data holds no information at all about individual jobs or transactions. Everything is accumulated over the measurement interval.
If you specify WORKLOAD=NONE there will be no 07nn records at all.
(There are no type 08nn records in this release of Acquire)
The 09nn records
If present, these records contain information about transactions, terminal IDs and users of a CICS application. A group of records 0901, 0902 and 0903 identifies a CICS application by name. This header group is then followed by four records per transaction type, then four records per terminal ID, then four records per user. Then there is the header group for the next application, followed by its detail records, and so on. Naturally, this data can get extremely voluminous if the system supports a number of large applications with many transaction types and users.
While this data can be helpful for building a model, it is NOT mandatory. If you specify CICS=N, no 09nn records will be written.
The 10nn records
These records identify the activity in the various Logical Partitions (LPARs) defined on the configuration. The 1001 record identifies the partition from which data was captured. Sets of 1002, 1003 and 1004 records give details of all known logical partitions, including their name, the number of logical processors, and their dispatch times by type of processor (CP, zAAP zIIP, IFL, ICF), including the PHYSICAL pseudo-partition information.
The 11nn records
These records identify the activity in any Coupling Facilities and the structures they support.
The 12nn records
These records identify page dataset activity and occupancy.
The 13nn records
These records contain job level detail if JOBS=I or JOBS=J was used in the Acquire run. If job interval detail is captured this can greatly increase the size of the file(s) created in this run.
The 14nn records
These records contain DB2 subsystem overview information if DB2=Y was used in the Acquire run as well as DB2 transaction data if DB2ACC= was specified. If DB2 accounting data is captured this can greatly increase the size of the file(s) created in this run.
The 15nn records
These records contain MQ Series data if MQ=Y was used in the Acquire run.
The 18nn records
These records contain Websphere Application Server data if WAS=Y was used in the Acquire run.
The 21nn records
These records contain product usage data if PRODUSAGE=Y was used in the Acquire run.
The 90nn records
These records hold disk occupancy information from Acquire/DASD SMF records. 9001/9002 records are for individual disk volumes, and 9003/9004 records hold data about SMS Storage Group occupancy and 9005/9006 records hold dataset group information.
The 9999 record
The 9999 record is the trailer record that identifies the end of each segment within the file. It must always be present as the last record for a segment. If for some reason it is absent, you can add one. Its format is always:
nnnnn,9999,0,0,0,0,0
The 5-digit sequence number (nnnnn) must be present, but its value is not checked.
Other general points
With one exception, there should be no negative numbers in the data. (Note that 1.23456E-01 is not a negative number; it means 0.123456). The exception is in field 4 of the 0701 record, which will mostly always be -1.
Sequence numbers are not checked when the data is imported to the Capacity Database. If you need to edit the file (for example, to delete unwanted data) you do not have to re-sequence the following records.