TT15
Optimizing System Performance by Monitoring UNIX Server with SAS®
Sam Mao, Quintiles, Inc.
Jay Zhou, Quintiles, Inc

To optimize system performance and maximize productivity, UNIX performance and resource usage should be monitored. UNIX monitoring is often done manually by sporadic checking using commands such as ‘top’, ‘ps’. A utility, that monitors and identifies extre mely resource-consuming processes, and sends e-mail to the owner of the processes, has been developed using SAS. The utility is automatically invoked by either another SAS macro in Windows NT or UNIX crontab. With the regular monitoring in appropriate fre quency, performance issues can be detected early, ensuring system efficiency and productivity. This paper presents a number of techniques in interacting SAS with UNIX while going through the major steps of monitoring and reporting of the utility. The techn iques include reading from different UNIX command outputs, tricks for processing data from UNIX command outputs, taking advantage of information available from UNIX, sending data dependent e-mail using UNIX mail facility through SAS data step.