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Foglight for Storage Management Shared 4.6.5 - User and Reference Guide

Getting Started Monitoring Storage Performance Investigating Storage Devices Investigating Storage Components Investigating VPLEX Storage Troubleshooting Storage Performance Managing Data Collection, Rules, and Alarms Understanding Metrics Online-Only Topics

Understanding Metric Data in Charts and Tables

In the Storage & SAN dashboards, charts and tables display metric data. Data is collected by Storage Collector agents, aggregated into collections, and the collections are published to the SAN & Storage dashboards at regular intervals. For more information about storage collection schedules and the type of data collected, see Modifying Data Collection Schedules.

The data displayed in charts and tables represents data for one or more intervals in the selected time range as follows:

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Current. The value collected in the last interval in the selected time range. In charts, the last plotted value is the current value.
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Period. Aggregated values for the entire selected time range. Period values are often used to provide context for current values.
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Historical. Individual values for each collection interval in the selected time period. Historical values are often presented as datapoints in a plot chart or as sparklines to show how metrics changed over the time period.
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Latest. Values in the latest collection interval available, irrespective of the selected time range. If data collection is enabled, this value reflects the latest collection. If data collection is disabled, this value represents the last collection made by the agent. Although latest values are tracked, the SAN & Storage dashboards do not display these values.

For indepth information about metrics, see http://communities.quest.com/docs/DOC-12862.

Values are not available (n/a) under the following circumstances:

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The device vendor does not provide the necessary metric. In this case, the text n/p by vendor appears after the metric name in column headings.
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A device is offline (reported in the State field).
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A device is not actively being used, such as when a disk is configured as a spare (reported in the Used or Role fields).
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For the Latency metric (which is a partially computed metric), when the operations/second value is very low, the latency metric may not be submitted during a collection interval.
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If all other situations do not apply, then it is likely that data collection failed for some reason. If the current value is unavailable for a time range that occurs in the past, you can try changing the selected time range to end before or after the problem interval.

Modifying and Extending Data Collection

You can modify and extend data collection in the following ways. You may want to make these changes now, or adjust the settings in the future if you find a need.

 
Table 2. Data collection options
Options
Instructions

If not already enabled during installation, collect data about virtualization device-to-SAN relationships and display this information in SAN topology diagrams. Requires a VMware or Hyper-V Performance agent.

Collecting Virtual Storage-to-SAN Relationships

Infer connections from physical hosts to storage and show the connections in topology diagrams.

Inferring Physical-Host-to-Storage Relationships

Change the default collection interval.

Modifying Data Collection Schedules

Modify when rules trigger alarms (change threshold values) and add a list of email addresses to notify when alarms occur.

Managing Foglight for Storage Management Rules

Next Steps

Your next steps depend on whether you want to monitor your storage environment to identify problems or whether you need to respond to the report of a problem in the virtual infrastructure.

Monitoring Your Storage Environment

The following workflow suggests one approach to monitoring your storage environment and investigating issues. You may prefer a different approach, depending on your monitoring needs.

1
Performance Monitoring — Start by assessing alarms on all storage devices. See Monitoring Storage Performance.
2
Capacity Monitoring — After you acknowledge and/or resolve device-level alarms, you may want to investigate individual storage devices and their components. See Investigating Storage Devices.
3
Connectivity and I/O Performance Monitoring — You can identify performance or connectivity problems that occur during I/O requests by viewing diagrams that place storage components within the context of the virtualization environment, from VMs and hosts to storage devices. See Assessing Connectivity and I/O Performance.
Responding to Problem Reports

Storage Administrators need to respond to reports about problems in the storage environment.

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When you receive reports from colleagues about poorly-performing VMware virtual machines, use the Storage Troubleshooting analysis tool to determine whether resources in the SAN are contributing to the problem. For instructions, see Troubleshooting Storage Performance.
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When you receive emails from Foglight for Storage Management about a storage device or component that has entered a problem state, click the link in the email to navigate to the dashboard that provides details about the alarm. To learn how to set up email notifications, see Configuring Email Notifications for Alarms.

Monitoring Storage Performance

This section introduces the Storage Environment dashboard and guides you through monitoring your storage environment by assessing device status and alarms. The next sections provide alternative approaches to assessing your storage environment through the use of questions or by assessing the connectivity and port performance within the context of your virtual infrastructure. The last section introduces reports.

This section covers the following topics:

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Introducing the Storage Environment Dashboard
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Summary and Resource Information for each Collected Target:
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Asking Questions About the Monitored Storage Environment
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Assessing Connectivity and I/O Performance
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Monitoring Storage Capacity
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Creating Storage Reports
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