IBM WebSphere Application Server Performance Cookbook

IBM Support Assistant (ISA)

IBM Support Assistant (ISA) 5 provides a case management system along with various diagnostic tools. ISA is an "as-is" tool with best effort support through esupport@us.ibm.com. Some of the bundled tools are not as recent as direct downloads of the latest versions from each tool's downlod page.

Installation

Use the Download link

Log Analysis

ISA 5 includes a log analysis engine called Phase 1 Problem Determination (P1PD) that finds common warnings and errors and proposes various solutions through the "Scan Logs" button:

  1. In the top left, click Cases > Add
  2. Enter a Summary and click the green checkbox
  3. Click the "< Cases" button at the top right of the pop-up to hide it
  4. Your case should now be selected in the cases dropdown box
  5. In the Files tab, click the Add files button and select any log files such as SystemOut.log, a ZIP file of logs, etc.
  6. If you uploaded a ZIP file, right click it and select Unpack
  7. Click the "Scan this Case" button in the top right and click Submit
  8. Once the scan completes, click the "Overview" and "Symptoms" tabs to review the log analysis.

Starting ISA5

  1. Run the start_isa.bat or start_isa.sh script in the ISA5 installation directory. The script will start three different WebSphere Liberty Java processes for ISA and some tools. When the script prints, Press ENTER to finish..., you may press ENTER and the start script will finish. Pressing ENTER will not stop the servers (there's a separate stop_isa.bat/stop_isa.sh script for that). So, feel free to press ENTER; nothing will happen and you'll get your terminal back or close the window.

  2. Open a browser and go to http://localhost:10911/isa5 (replace localhost with the target hostname if running remotely)

  3. You may create cases and upload and interact with files, or you may immediately run tools through the Tools tab. For example:

Java Web Start Tools

All of the tools with [Desktop] in the name are GUI tools launched through Java Web Start. When first launching each tool, you may receive a warning such as the following which you can click Continue through:

There may be long delays while launching tools using JWS. On some versions of Linux, there is a known issue, seemingly with SWT-based applications such as HealthCenter, where the program becomes hung and never launches. It appears this is a race condition in SWT and it is usually worked around by enabling the Java Console in the Java ControlPanel application of the Java on the path.

Specifying the Java Maximum Heap Size

Most of the Desktop JWS tools allow you to specify the maximum Java heap size in a small browser popup overlay when launching the tool: