Foglight for Storage Management Shared 4.6

Another way to find out information about your storage environment is to ask questions. The Insights tab contains the Analytics view to show frequently-asked questions about storage environments. Answers are displayed in the form of tables and graphs. You can select questions that apply to all storage resources or to a specific type of storage resource.

To use the Insights > Analytics view:

On the Storage Environment dashboard, click the Insights tab, and then click Analytics.

In the Categories pane, click a category to display the questions for that category in the Questions pane.


	TIP: If the list of questions is long and you want to narrow it down, search for a particular text string using the Search Questions box.

In the Questions pane, click a question to display the answer in the Answer pane.

In the Answer pane, you can change the number of results displayed by changing the value of the Show Top box.

To investigate a component or its parent device, click a name in the Name or Parent column.

Assessing Connectivity and I/O Performance

You can also identify connectivity and port performance problems that occur during I/O requests by assessing storage from the perspective of the virtualization environment. The VMware and Hyper-V Explorers offer an end-to-end look at all the entities that make up your virtual infrastructure, including clusters, hosts, virtualization storage, and virtual machines.

NOTE: This workflow assumes that the following requirement is satisfied:

•

VMware or Hyper-V Performance agents are defined for the target environment, and the agents are configured to collect storage data. For more information, see Step 2 in Collecting Storage Data for Virtualized Devices and Servers.

This section covers the following topics:

•

Introducing the Virtualization Dashboards

•

Summary of Icons Used in Topology Diagrams

•

Exploring Connectivity with SAN Topology Diagrams

•

Exploring I/O Performance with SAN Data Paths

Introducing the Virtualization Dashboards

This workflow introduces you to the version of the Virtualization dashboards available in Foglight for Storage Management. For detailed information, see the VMware Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management User and Reference Guide or Hyper-V Monitoring in Foglight for Storage Management User and Reference Guide.

Table 4. List of dashboards that display virtualization storage environment-to-SAN relationships when data collection is enabled on VMware or Hyper-V Performance agents
Dashboard	SAN Topology Tab	SAN Data Paths Tab
ESX Host/Hyper-V Server	Yes	Yes
Virtual Machine	Yes	Yes
Cluster	Yes	—
Datastore, CSV, logical disk	Yes	—
LUN	Yes	Yes
NASVolume	Yes	—

The following workflow walks you through opening a virtualization dashboard and selecting an entity to explore.

To use the virtualization dashboard and topology diagrams:

On the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click either VMware > VMware Explorer or Hyper-V > Hyper-V Explorer.


	TIP: If you do not see the menu, ask your Foglight for Storage Management Administrator to add the role VMware Administrator or Hyper-V Administrator to your user account.

The Explorer opens an Infrastructure menu below the Dashboards menu on the navigation panel.

Under Infrastructure, on the Topology tab, select the desired entity.

The dashboard opens.


	NOTE: The topology will display clusters, virtualization servers, and virtual machines. For VMware, it will display Virtual Centers and Datacenters.

•

From the Summary tab, you can monitor and investigate entities in your virtual infrastructure using an approach similar to the Storage Environment dashboard.

•

When you click the Storage tab, you see a list of all logical storage used by the entity and the associated storage capacity. Click a storage entity name to open the dashboard containing details about the entity.


	TIP: When the list of entities is long—which is often the case for virtual machines—you can find an entity by typing its full or partial name in the Topology tab’s Search box.

When you select a cluster, the dashboard will include SAN Topology tabs. Host/server and virtual machine dashboards will include SAN Data Paths views in addition to SAN Topology that you can explore.

•

Click the SAN Topology tab. For instructions about this view, see Exploring Connectivity with SAN Topology Diagrams.

•

Click the SAN Data Path tab. For instructions about this view, see Exploring I/O Performance with SAN Data Paths.

Summary of Icons Used in Topology Diagrams

In topology diagrams, the icons represent entities in your monitored virtual infrastructure and storage infrastructure, as described in the following table. Each icon incorporates a small status icon to show the status of the entity.

Table 5. Icons used in topology diagrams.
Icon	Represents	Description
	Physical Host	A physical server in your network.
	ESX Host Hyper-V Server	A physical server hosting the hypervisor-based architecture and virtual machines controlling and managing resources for the virtual machines.
	Virtual Machine VMware Hyper-V	A virtual machine running on a host or server.
	Datastore Logical Disk CSV	A datastore or CSV (Cluster Shared Volume) or logical disk is a logical storage structure used to provide virtual machine disks and files.
	Disk Extent	A disk extent is all or part of a host disk that can provide the physical storage for a datastore, CSV or logical disk. The disk extent can be on a local DAS device, or it can be mapped to a LUN on a storage array or filer in the SAN.
	Cloud	Hides port-level complexity in a topology diagram. Click the icon to view ports and their connected devices in a Detail window. NOTE: The SAN Data Paths tab does not use the cloud icon. All ports and their devices are shown in the diagram.
	FC Port	FC ports connect to other FC ports on switches, physical hosts, storage arrays, or filers using fibre-channel network technology in the SAN.
	IP Port	IP ports provide access to the IP network for storage devices using iSCSI or other protocols.
	Controller	A controller manages the ports used by a storage array or filer.
	LUN	A LUN (logical unit number) represents a logical SAN block storage device on an array or filer that can be exposed for mapping to a server.
	NASVolume	A NASVolume is a volume whose physical storage is on a filer or unified storage supplier. It can be mounted by an ESX host to provide the physical storage for a datastore using NFS.
	Member or Node	A storage server that works together with other members or nodes in a clustered storage architecture. The array cluster distributes the workloads among the members of the cluster.
	Logical Interface	In Netapp cluster mode, users access storage by SVMs. Connectivity to SVMs is provided through logical interfaces (LIFs). A LIF has an IP address or a World Wide Port Name, used by a client or host to connect to an SVM.