Bear Computer Systems excels in the development and application of performance monitoring and analysis tools. Not only is the analysis capability in its broad-based monitor line rigorous and extensive, the programs themselves are easily utilized and adaptable to a wide range of system performance situations.
Bear Computer Systems is a pioneer in the application of virtual disk software. In conjunction with memory disks and our disk shadowing pack ages, we offer a complete virtual disk product series that is unparalleled in the industry.
A demonstration copy of BearWare® Monitor and MagicDisk software may be found here.
IMON tracks performance of an executing image. Already proven on site in scores of applications, particularly where users are developing their own software, the Image Monitor process runs at a higher priority than the process running the image which is being monitored. This allows users to monitor other active programs to isolate potential bottlenecks and improve operating efficiency as much as 500%!
IMON installs easily and the simple command language allows problems to be identified in just minutes. It pinpoints a program's worst problems areas immediately and collects data on any currently running process. It also makes recompiling, relinking and load maps unnecessary. Image Monitor further serves as an ideal technical management planning tool. Fast, up-front decisions can be made regarding which programmers to assign to performance improvement, and modules needing change are rapidly located. It also allows tuning during program development and verifies that an algorithm is performing to specification. Also offered are special features for non-standard OpenVMS languages and the convenience of on-line help. Data is recorded for later playback and complete documentation with extensive sampling is provided.
Return to BearWear® products
DMON reduces downtime due to disk storage exhaustion. This impressive software provides accurate disk usage monitoring of all accounts on the system, allowing a System Manager to compare current with past usage and immediately determine disk space allocation. It further furnishes a realistic quota file and the option of charging by quota and/or actual usage.
DMON operates a 3-tiered alarm mechanism that alerts the System Manager to impending disk space shortages, and maintains an automatic database of past and present usage by Directory and File Owner, without disrupting primetime use. It can monitor all disks on the system, including disk volume sets, and reports the totals and sub-totals in every directory, all files not contained in any directory, as well as showing how many blocks would be reclaimed if a purge were initiated.
DMON permits the System Manager to catch runaway programs, to determine which users are neglecting file clean-up, and to quickly detect when large temporary files have not been deleted. Reports are generated that pinpoint which directories and trees have been increasing in usage, and which individual user or group has changed disk storage usage. Disk shortage downtime is stopped in its tracks!
Return to BearWear® products
EMON offers a valuable window into Ethernet, eliminating guesswork in tracking and thus minimizing maintenance expense. It thoroughly analyzes traffic, verifies vital communications and collects information on all nodes. And it operates on standard DEC VT-style terminals on any AXP or VAX under the OpenVMS operating system without added hardware.
EMON provides displays of complete packet data, including total bytes; average, minimum and maximum number of bytes transmitted per packet; time lapse between packets; node addresses; protocol types used and controller internal counters. It permits all displays and their parameters to be adjusted by a single keystroke in real-time or playback, and acts an aid in debugging programs that use Ethernet both under DECnet and/or user-defined protocols.
EMON verifies if a node is able to send or receive and provides filter options for source, destination and protocol capture and display while placing no load on the Ethernet itself. It pinpoints nodes that create the most traffic by gathering highly accurate statistics on them, and then assists in quickly isolating and solving Ethernet problems.
Return to BearWear® products
SMON investigates the quality and operation of programs even where sources are unavailable, and serves as a time-saving training instrument for new programmers. It is a unique, powerful tool for monitoring, analyzing and debugging programs which use VMS System Services. Also, it is transparent to the user's process, and does not require code modification or relinking.
SMON acts as an easy-to-use, high-level debugger and reports all probable bugs in real-time applications, such as timing errors, buffer overlap and event flag errors. It provides complete symbolic trace output, with individual parameter analysis focusing on the error-causing parameter. All selected system service calls are monitored automatically, and all errors are reported with a complete formatted dump.
SMON offers loadable user interfaces for tailored error checking or system service call modification, and assures immediate fault isolation via timing and consistency check at runtime. It further allows tests and options to be individually enabled or disabled interactively. System security is greatly improved by monitoring the privileges a program actually uses, and a window is made available for monitoring at the system service level, even allowing additions or modifications to features in programs without sources.
System Services Monitor is only available for OpenVMS VAX systems.
Return to BearWear® products
MemoryDisk, the foundation product for all of Bear's VirtualDisk solution. Memory disks function like normal physical drives, but much, much faster. This increase in performance is obtained totaly transparent to users and software applications. This product eliminates physical disk seek and latency times while providing data transfer rates which are hundreds of times faster.
MemoryDisk is ideal for I/O intensive applications such as compilers, editors and other programs creating temporary files that need many disk transfers. In many applications, it can actually increase I/O throughput by over 500%! MemoryDisk is also a powerful I/O management tool, it can be also be used to partition disks and to perform file system tuning to gain even more significant performance improvements.
Return to BearWear® products
Bear's VirtualDisk solution, combines a memory disk with a virtual disk providing complete control of your systems I/O requirements. Transparent to user software, it is fully-supported memory disk and virtual disk drivers that diagnoses and treat a variety of I/O problems yielding higher performance. Bear's VirtualDisk solution may also be used to combine available space from many physical disks into one virtual disk. You will be amazed at the performance increase you will get with this solution!
Bear's MemoryDisk product allows a virtual disk to be "passed through" memory to speed up I/O-bound applications. It requires no source code modifications and allows multiple memory disks and virtual disks to be in use or on the same physical disk simultaneously. Less memory is used since only frequently required data are stored in memory, and temporary use of the PAGEFILE or Global Section for storage is provided.
Return to BearWear® products
Disk shadowing is a remarkable coupling of VirtualDisk capabilities. It adds all of the load-balancing and redundant-write protection of disk shadowing to the already outstanding features of its companion product, MemoryDisk. The flexibility of virtual disks makes it possible to shadow only critical data rather than the whole volume. Thus, catchup operations are speeded up, less processor time and disk space is use d, and there is seldom any need for additional hardware.
Disk shadowing allows disk backup to proceed during prime time without interruption of user programs. A special feature flushes file system data to the disk when the operator wishes to remove a shadow unit from the set. In conjunction with the improved performance that shadowing provides, this feature allows for a nearly resource-free method of disk backup.
Disk shadowing, when combined with the included memory disk feature, provides a true write-through cache product. Frequently accessed areas of the disk are available at memory-transfer rates while the data are not vulnerable to the volatility of memory. This product provide s the most complete set of tools available for controlling disk access, backup, performance and reliability -- no matter what the size or hardware mix of the system!
Cluster-wide disk shadowing adds yet another invaluable facet to the MagicDisk product line-up. It allows disk shadowing to run on each n ode of a cluster, and each node can further have a locally-resident copy of selected shadow sets. An additional process to send and receive distributed lock requests permits shadow sets to be as available as clustered hardware.
Cluster-wide disk shadowing adds these exciting additional benefits to disk shadowing: multiple nodes can service I/O operations to shadow sets; catchup operations need only run on one processor; and different processors may be selected to simultaneously do catchup operations for different shadow sets.
Cluster-wide disk shadowing also makes operator intervention unnecessary to discontinue or re-establish shadowing operations when a node l eaves or enters the cluster. The status of shadow sets is kept consistent on all nodes, and provided there is a physical path to at least one shadow member, the shadow set continues on all nodes.
Return to BearWear® products
ResQue! is the newest addition to Bear's comprehensive virtual disk product line, and perhaps the most exciting. Disaster recovery and offsite data backup are highly topical concerns in today's computing environment, and this breakthrough new option to disk shadowing is a major advance in offsite data protection and recovery management.
ResQue! transmits shadowed backup data to selected offsite computer systems automatically, all day, every day. Depending on the transaction load and speed of the network, it can recover data only minutes old, up to and including the last write!
ResQue! does not require code changes, and there are no drastic shifts in response time. It will work with whatever DECnet hardware is available at the particular HP sites. This is a must-have item for any Open-VMS System Manager who is serious about offsite data security and recovery.
ResQue! is about saving your data, and it's about time!
Return to BearWear® products