topic Re: EVA performance tools in Disk Enclosures

EVA performance tools

Tom O'Toole — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:57:27 GMT

Can anybody say if there will be performance tools available for the EVA coming out in the near or distant future? Ones measuring the utilization of each component of the system, like VTDPY? There have been numerous times where we could have made use of such tools. Thanks.

-Tom O'Toole

Re: EVA performance tools

Fernando Bandeira — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:02:36 GMT

Hi Tom,

Right now Storage Optimizer (part of OVSAM) is the only publicly available performance monitoring tool for the EVA.

I have not seen any external documentation mentioning any other tools in the future.

Regards,

Fernando

Re: EVA performance tools

Alzhy — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 10:19:21 GMT

Actually OVSAM relys on HP MeasureWare Agents to track EVA LUN performance on the servers - not the EVA themselves.

And it is not even real-time!

Re: EVA performance tools

Fernando Bandeira — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 00:57:27 GMT

That is only one aspect of Optimizer functionality. The DPI for the EVA allows performance collection at a physical level as well.

Re: EVA performance tools

Tom O'Toole — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:03:22 GMT

Fernando,

Can you elaborate on what information this provides? Is this an optional part of ov/SAM, I haven't noticed it? Thanks!

Re: EVA performance tools

Alzhy — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:08:02 GMT

Same here... AFAIK... there is no performance monitoring tool specifically for the EVA.. it's on a per LUN basis via the server's monitoring tools OR the SAN switch.

DPI? Could you please elaborate?

Re: EVA performance tools

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 02:09:46 GMT

DPI = Device Plug-In

It knows about the features of that particular device it is written for.

Re: EVA performance tools

Stephen Kebbell — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 04:37:14 GMT

Hi Tom,

Storage Optimizer is a part of OVSAM, but when you buy an EVA only licenses for Storage Node Manager are included (also called Storage Operations Manager). You get a 60-day "Instant-On" for all components of OVSAM (Node Manager, Builder, Accountant, Optimizer, Allocater). If you want to use Optimizer after the 60 days are up, you need to buy a license for it.
When the EVA DPI is installed (it's not installed by default with OVSAM 3.1), and host agents are deployed on hosts connected to the EVA, you can start data collection for the EVA. As mentioned already, the data is not real-time. It collects data at intervals (I believe you can set the interval). You have to specify what metrics to collect - the metrics are listed in the DPI release notes.
http://www.openview.hp.com/products/dpi/install_guides/HP_HSVdpi_03_10_C.htm

Regards,
Stephen

Re: EVA performance tools

Fernando Bandeira — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:06:15 GMT

Hi Tom,

As Stephen already mentioned, there are various metrics that performance information can be collected for. Please note also that Optimizer is not only for the EVA - it monitors switches, HBA, ports, other storage systems, etc. Yes, it is not real time, but you can set the intervals. The advantage is that you can the keep this informaiton in the database, which can be used for a variety of purposes, such as planning, baselining, etc. Once you have been collecting information for a while, a baseline for the metrics (not all of them) can be established, whcih you can then set thresholds against, which means that should performance numbers fall outside of those thresholds, you can use OVSAMs notification capability to be notified.

Regards,

Fernando

Re: EVA performance tools

Tom O'Toole — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:37:58 GMT

Thanks...

These performance metrics are (much) better than nothing, although I would also like to see some things like - %CPU utilization within controller, top utilization processes - like VTDPY. Otherwise how does one know where the bottlenecks are?

To give an example, I tested single jobs on VRAID5 vdisks and VRAID1 to get timing information. VRAID1 was 15% slower in this testing. However when running many simultaneous jobs, the VRAID1 performed unexpectedly faster. Could it be that the extra CPU needed by raid5 created a controller CPU bottleneck with more than N jobs? Who knows? Because subsystem utilization data isn't available.

[Am I crazy, or is it a bit unreasonable to have to pay extra to buy another license to get performance information? After all, the customer wass already forced to purchase a microsoft management station. What if they don't want or need fancy, buzzword compliant, Gartner certified, enterprise enabled, management framework, vendor committed, best-of-breed, director-class, value-added software (and certainly don't want to pay for it), they just want access to the info?]

Re: EVA performance tools

Matt Burgess — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 22:06:44 GMT

There is an internal HP tool called EVAPerf, which is also host based, which is being developed and will soon become a product. I have no timeline on this. I will post again when I re-read the internal post.

Re: EVA performance tools

Tom O'Toole — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 14:18:05 GMT

By host based, do you mean SANapp (bathgatesOS) based? Has anyone heard more on this? Thanks.

Re: EVA performance tools

Todd Thelen — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 13:57:47 GMT

I have heard of the EVAperf tool and its basically a Windows Perfmon snap in tool. I have heard it can only monitor two eva's at this time and still doesn't give information as most of would like. Perfect example, looking at planning an EVA, you would want to look at Disk Group performance and this is not available either. Sad to say don't think much will be put into performance monitoring in detail as their is a new eva coming out and their focus is in the direction. What we have been told is the EVA is a "virtual array" and we should trust it. Hard to do when you don't understand what it can or in this case, cannot do.