HP Integrity NonStop J-Series - Manual (Page 79)

Guardian Performance Analyzer (GPA) User Guide
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You can get a picture of the overall health of the system from some of the data in the Node
Characteristics subsection of the report as well as from the Global Performance
Indicators.
From the Node Characteristics subsection, you can tell the following:

How many page swaps per second are taking place on the node (NODE SWAP
RATE). This is the total of the swap rate for all CPUs. If the report shows a node
swap rate greater than 1.0, it usually indicates that the system is having a memory
shortage problem or that the disk processes are not properly distributed among the
CPUs on the node. Example 4-1 shows that \NODEA has a swap rate of
2.3 pages/second due to a shortage of memory. Although the swap rate does not
exceed 1 swap/second for \NODEC, GPA has analyzed the swap rate and shows
that a lack of memory is the cause for the value of 0.5 swaps/second.

How many processors, if any, are out of balance. That is, how many processors
are being relatively over- or underutilized. For proper system performance, there
should be none. Example 4-2 shows that on \NODEB, one processor is out of
balance. Both \NODEA and \NODEC have two processors that are out of balance.

To what degree the system resources are being utilized. In the \NODEA example,
the node utilization level (AVG CPU BUSY) is 36.2 percent which, at 55.7 percent
of the maximum recommended level, is well below the acceptable limit.

How many transient processes are running on the node. Since transient processes
are relatively costly in terms of CPU utilization, the number should be as low as
possible, ideally zero. In our examples, the figures for transients (DYNAMIC
PCBS) are not considered problematic. Note, however, that excessive page
swapping without a memory shortage usually indicates excessive transient
processing.