HPE Primary Storage on-prem real-time performance monitoring with Grafana

[StorageExperts]

For multi-array performance metrics and analysis, you have HPE InfoSight and Data Services Cloud Console (DSCC). For individual array real-time performance monitoring, you have storage array UI. But can you have it all? Is there a management interface that provides the best of both worlds? In this blog, I’ll introduce you to a solution that brings you the on-prem multi-array real-time performance visualization experience. I’ll also dive into the configuration and technical details.

– By Iris Wagner, senior software engineer, data infrastructure TME team, HPE Storage

If you’re an IT administrator or storage administrator who can benefit from the capabilities of multi-array real-time performance monitoring, please keep reading!

Introducing a solution for performance monitoring

When the entire world has moved to the cloud overnight, you’ll still find a few scenarios where a local solution suffices a simple task at hand – like monitoring some storage arrays on the same screen in real time, for example.

Unlike most cloud-based solutions, this solution is local, extremely light weight, and flexible. And it requires minimal configuring. Just like any solution, it’s not a “one fits all” use cases, but it is the ideal solution for say, dark-site data centers. By ditching cloud connectivity, you’re trading in some of complex advanced features, such as the advanced analytics and automated alerting and notifications.

It’s 3 types of services running seamlessly together

1. HPE Storage Array Exporter – Deployment provides Prometheus metrics for a single storage system. It can use an executable file or a container image.
2. Prometheus – An open source software application used for event monitoring and alerting. It records real-time metrics in a time series database allowing for high dimensionality. And it’s built using a HTTP pull model with flexible queries and real-time alerting.
3. Grafana – A multi-platform open source analytics and interactive visualization web application that provides charts, graphs, and alerts for the web when connected to supported data sources.

How does is all work?

HPE Primary Storage already has performance metrics collected by default, which is the hi-res stat data for HPE 3PAR, HPE Primera, and HPE Alletra 9K, as well as the heartbeat data and diagnostics for HPE Nimble Storage Analytics (DNA) for Nimble and HPE Alletra 6K. 

An HPE Storage Array Exporter instance periodically queries from a storage array its performance metrics via REST API calls, then compiles it into a Prometheus-compatible-format, and posts the metrics on a pre-defined (local or external) IP address with a specified port for each array. 

A Prometheus deployment is configured to periodically “scrub” the metrics from those IP addresses and ports, or in Prometheus terms, target endpoints. By default, the deployment will retain the scrubbed data for 15 days, which is configurable to meet your needs. 

Once the metrics are gathered and put in a well understood format, the last piece of the puzzle is to visualize them. Grafana is perfect for the job. It can be configured to take the Prometheus instance as its data source, and display the data into useful graphs. 

HPE storage has performance monitoring Grafana dashboards published. If you’re already familiar with Grafana, you can customize the dashboards or even write your own dashboard from scratch to best fit your needs.

This block diagram simply illustrates the relationship and inner-workings between the components for this solution.

What can the solution do? 

Ready to see the end results?  Here is a video demo of a customized Grafana dashboard for two Alletra arrays, The dashboard is modified based on the HPE Storage Volume Details dashboard. The sudden IOPs and Latency spikes reflect the workloads I started on those volumes moments prior.

Read my second blog on this topic for more details on configuring HPE Primary Storage on-prem real-time performance monitoring with Grafana.

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Meet HPE Storage Experts blogger Iris Wagner

Iris is a senior software engineer on the data infrastructure TME team. She is the subject-matter expert for hybrid cloud technologies and HPE primary storage.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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