Disk Activity - OS Test

This test reports statistics pertaining to the input/output utilization of each physical disk on an LPAR.

Target of the test : An IBM pSeries server

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every combination of LPAR:disk_partition .

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured.
Port	Indicate the port at which the specified Host listens. By default, this is NULL.
Real ServerName	Specify the name of the pSeries server in the Real ServerName text box. If the target pSeries server has been auto-discovered using HMC, the server name will be set automatically in the Real ServerName text box. However, while configuring this test for a pSeries server that has been manually added, you have to explicitly provide the server name in the Real ServerName text box. Note: To obtain the real server name, a user can login to the target pSeries server as a valid pSeries user, go to the shell prompt of the server, and execute the following command: lssyscfg - r sys -F name
Is Managed By	By selecting an option from the Is Managed By list, indicate whether the target pSeries server is managed using an HMC server or an IVM (Integrated Virtual Manager) server. If the target server has been auto-discovered via an HMC server, the HMC option will be automatically chosen from this list.
Management Server, Management User, Management Password	This test connects to an HMC/IVM server to perform LPAR discovery and to collect host-level and "outside view" metrics from the pSeries server. To enable this communication, first, provide the IP address/host name of the HMC/IVM server in the Management Server text box. If the eG manager had automatically discovered the target pSeries server by connecting to an HMC server in the environment, then, the IP address/host name and user credentials pertaining to that HMC server will be automatically displayed in the Management Server, Management User, and Management Password text boxes. However, if the pSeries server being monitored was manually added to the eG Enterprise system (and not auto-discovered via the HMC server), then, you will have to explicitly indicate whether the target pSeries server is managed by an HMC server or an IVM server by selecting an option from the Is Managed By list. If the HMC option is chosen, then, you will have to provide the IP address of the HMC server that manages the target pSeries server in the Management Server text box. In such a case, in the Management User and Management Password text boxes, you will have to provide the credentials of an HMC user who is assigned the hmcviewer role. On the other hand, if the IVM option is chosen from the Is Managed By list, it implies that the IP address/host name and user credentials pertaining to that IVM server has to be explicitly provided in the Management Server, Management User, and Management Password text boxes.
Confirm Password	Confirm the HMC Password by retyping it here
Domain	Set the Domain parameter to none.
Admin User, Admin Password, Confirm Password	The eG agent remotely communicates with each discovered LPAR on the pSeries server to obtain their "inside view". For this, the eG agent will have to be configured with the credentials of a valid user with access rights to each LPAR. If a single user is authorized to access all the LPARs on the pSeries server, provide the name and password of the user in the Admin User and Admin Passsword text boxes, and confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. On the other hand, if the test needs to communicate with different LPARs using different user accounts, then, multiple user names and passwords will have to be provided. To help administrators provide these multiple user details quickly and easily, the eG administrative interface embeds a special configuration page. To know how to use this page, refer to Configuring Users for LPAR Monitoring.
SSL	By default, the HMC/IVM server (as the case may be) is not SSL-enabled. This indicates that by default, the eG agent communicates with the HMC/IVM server using HTTP. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to No by default. If you configure the HMC/IVM server to use SSL, then make sure that the SSL flag is set to Yes, so that the eG agent communicates with the HMC/IVM server using HTTPS.
Ignore VMs Inside View	Administrators of some high security LPAR environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more LPARs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the Ignore VMs Inside View parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of LPAR names, or LPAR name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your Ignore VMs Inside View specification can be: lp,aixlp,lin. Here, the (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all LPARs on a pSeries server by default. Note: While performing LPAR discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the LPARs configured in the Ignore VMs Inside View text box.
Exclude VMs	Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical LPARs both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such LPARs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of LPARs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of LPARs, LPAR name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs pecification can be: lp,aixlp,lin. Here, the (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all AIX LPARs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of LPARs/LPAR name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of LPARs.
High Security	In highly secure environments, eG Enterprise could not perform agentless monitoring on the pSeries server using SSH. To enable monitoring of the target pSeries host in such environments, eG Enterprise offers the High Security flag. Setting this flag to Yes indicates that eG Enterprise will connect to the target pSeries server in a more secure way and collect performance metrics. However, you can set this flag to No if the eG Enterprise is allowed to connect to the target host normally.
Use IOTOP	This test uses the iotop command to collect detailed diagnostics on disk activity from Linux VMs. By default, this flag is set to No, indicating that the test will not use the iotop command – this in turn implies that this test will not report detailed diagnostics for Linux VMs by default. If you want the test to report detailed metrics on disk activity on Linux VMs, set this flag to Yes.
Use Sudo	This parameter is of significance to Linux VMs only. By default, the Use SUDO parameter is set to No. This indicates that, by default, this test will report the detailed diagnosis for the Percent virtual disk busy measure of each disk partition being monitored by executing the /usr/bin/iotop command or /usr/sbin/iotop command. However, in some highly secure virtualized environments, this command cannot be executed directly on a Linux. In such cases, set this parameter to Yes. This will enable the eG agent to execute the sudo/usr/bin/iotop command or sudo/usr/sbin/iotop and retrieve the detailed diagnosis of the Percent virtual disk busy measure.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Percent disk busy	Indicates the percentage of elapsed time during which the disk is busy processing requests (i.e., reads or writes).	Percent	Comparing the percentage of time that the different disks are busy, an administrator can determine whether load is properly balanced across the different disks.
Percent reads from disk	Indicates the percentage of elapsed time that the selected disk drive is busy servicing read requests.	Percent
Percent writes to disk	Indicates the percentage of elapsed time that the selected disk drive is busy servicing write requests.	Percent
disk read time	Indicates the average time in seconds of a read of data from the disk.	Secs
disk write time	Indicates the average time in seconds of a write of data from the disk.	Secs
Avg. queue for disk	Indicates the average number of both read and write requests that were queued for the selected disk during the sample interval.	Number
Current queue for disk	The number of requests outstanding on the disk at the time the performance data is collected.	Number	This measure includes requests in service at the time of the snapshot. This is an instantaneous length, not an average over the time interval. Multi-spindle disk devices can have multiple requests active at one time, but other concurrent requests are awaiting service. This counter might reflect a transitory high or low queue length, but if there is a sustained load on the disk drive, it is likely that this will be consistently high. Requests experience delays proportional to the length of this queue minus the number of spindles on the disks. This difference should average less than two for good performance.
Reads from disk	Indicates the number of reads happening on a logical disk per second.	Reads/Sec	A dramatic increase in this value may be indicative of an I/O bottleneck on the guest.
Data reads from disk	Indicates the rate at which bytes are transferred from the disk during read operations.	KB/Sec	A very high value indicates an I/O bottleneck on the guest.
Writes to disk	Indicates the number of writes happening on a local disk per second.	Writes/Sec	A dramatic increase in this value may be indicative of an I/O bottleneck on the guest.
Data writes to disk	Indicates the rate at which bytes are transferred from the disk during write operations.	KB/Sec	A very high value indicates an I/O bottleneck on the guest.
Disk service time	Indicates the average time that this disk took to service each transfer request ( i.e., the average I/O operation time)	Secs	A sudden rise in the value of this measure can be attributed to a large amount of information being input or output. A consistent increase however, could indicate an I/O processing bottleneck.
Disk queue time	Indicates the average time that transfer requests waited idly on queue for this disk.	Secs	Ideally, the value of this measure should be low.
Disk I/O time	Indicates the avarage time taken for read and write operations of this disk.	Secs	The value of this measure is the sum of the values of the Disk service time and Disk queue time measures. A consistent increase in the value of this measure could indicate a latency in I/O processing.