The Lite Onboard Monitor (LTOM) is a java program designed as a real-time diagnostic platform for deployment to a customer site. LTOM differs from other support tools, as it is proactive rather than reactive. LTOM provides real-time automatic problem detection and data collection. LTOM runs on the customer’s UNIX server, is tightly integrated with the host operating system and provides an integrated solution for detecting and collecting trace files for system performance issues. The ability to detect problems and collect data in real-time will hopefully reduce the amount of time it takes to solve problems and reduce customer downtime.
Historically, one of the major problems with obtaining the necessary diagnostic information to diagnose database/system performance problems is having the necessary diagnostic data collected while the problem is actually occurring. Additionally, the necessary diagnostic data is seldom collected because of the time it takes to react to recognizing there is a problem, trying to determine what kind of data to collect, and knowing how to collect the data. Frequently, the problem has passed or the database has to be shutdown to correct the problem. This forces the customer to wait until the next occurrence and then hopefully the data can be collected fast enough. LTOM does automatic problem detection and collects the necessary diagnostic traces in real-time while the database/system performance problem is occurring. LTOM provides services for:
- Automatic Hang Detection
- System Profiler
- Automatic Session Tracing
Version 4.1 of LTOM contains the following new features:
- System Profiler has been enhanced to collect additional metrics from the operating system and the database, including metrics on virtual memory, resident size memory, pga memory and db time.
- LTOMg had additional functionality to compare 2 system profiles.
- LTOMg identifies top sessions with respect to cpu utilization, db time, session pga, aggregate pga and process memory resident size
LTOM can be configured for use in a RAC environment. To use automatic hang detection, LTOM needs to be installed on only 1 node of the RAC cluster. To use all the other features of LTOM, such as the System Profiler or Session Recorder, LTOM must be installed on each node of the RAC cluster. For shared disk environments, install LTOM to a unique location for each node of the cluster.
You will find detailed how-to and download instructions for LTOM on Metalink (Document # 352363.1). It is also recommended that OSWatcher be installed on each node of a RAC cluster. You can find a brief description OSWatcher in my earlier post.