EMC ECS Node Processes Test

EMC ECS is a software-defined storage system. The software for EMS ECS is a set of services running on Unix host as processes.

Since the processes running on each node are providing all the storage-related services, all the processes must be running fine for optimal operation of the node. Any issue or abnormal behavior of the processes would indicate an existing or potential issue on the node and can cause a problem with node availability for storage operations. This test monitors each process running on each node of the EMC ECS Storage system and reports metrics related to resource utilization by each process.

Target of the test : A Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage System

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each process running on each node of EMC Elastic Cloud Storage

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed .
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured. Since the storage device is managed using the IP address of its storage controller, the same will be displayed as host.
Port	The port number at which the specified host listens. By default, this is NULL.
ECS REST API Port	This is the port at which REST API connectivity is provided. By default, port 4443 is used.
Username and Password	To collect performance metrics from the target storage device, the eG agent should be configured with the credentials of a user who is vested with "read-only" privileges to access REST API of the target storage device. Specify the credentials of such a user in the Username and Password text boxes.
Confirm Password	Confirm the password by retyping it here.
Timeout Seconds	Specify the time duration for which this test should wait for a response from the storage system in the Timeout text box. By default, this is 60 seconds.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Thread count	Indicates the number of Operating System threads used by a given process.	Number	Ideally this number should be optimal as defined by manufacturer, but it the process is creating too much thread or the number of threads is persistently high, it may be a problem with service. If number of threads is high process end up taking too much CPU time which put additional load on CPU.
CPU	Indicates the percentage of node’s CPU used by the given process. The EG Enterprise doesn’t list out all the processes running on the node but collects stats only for EMC ECS-related processes, so the sum of CPU utilization of all processes will not add up to 100%.	Percentage	If a high value persists over a long time, means process is hogging too much CPU which might starve other processes of CPU time and process may start failing. Persistent high CPU usage of host and unavailability of CPU may cause performance degradation of host.
Relative memory	Indicates the percentage of memory used by the process out of total memory available to the process.	Percentage	Memory usage percentage of any process should not too much deviate from defined value. Persistent high usage may starve other processes on memory and can cause process failures.
Memory usage	Indicates the memory used by the process in absolute terms.	GB