How to Monitor EMC Isilon Storage System Using eG Enterprise ?

eG Enterprise monitors the EMC Isilon Storage System using a remote agent  on any Windows host in the environment. This agent is capable of monitoring the performance of the storage system in the following ways:

  • By polling the SNMP MIB of the target storage system;
  • By connecting to the storage system via SSH and running CLI commands;

To enable the eG agent to use the aforesaid methodologies, a set of pre-requisites should be fulfilled. These requirements have been discussed in the following section.

Pre-requisites for Monitoring the EMC Isilon Storage System

To enable the eG external agent to collect performance metrics from the target storage system, the following pre-requisites should be fulfilled:

  1. The target storage system should be SNMP-enabled.
  2. The eG agent should be able to access the target storage system over the network.
  3. The eG agent should be able to communicate with the target storage system via SSH. For this, specify the SSH port (default port: 22) while configuring the EMC Isilon Storage component for monitoring and ensure that the SSH port is opened on the firewall (if any) between the agent and the target storage system.
  4. Configure the credentials of a root user who can access the target storage system via SSH. In high security environments, administrators may not want to expose the credentials of the root user. In such cases, you can create a sudo user with the privileges of accessing the target storage system and then, execute the CLI commands via SSH. To achieve this, do the following:

    • Edit the SUDOERS file on the target storage system and append an entry of the following format:

      <eG_agent_install_user> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:<Command_with_path>

    • For instance, if the eG agent install user is EG_Monitor, then the entries in the SUDOERS file should be:

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi ALL

      The above-mentioned entry indicates that the eG install user will have permissions to run all the commands on the storage system like the root user.

    • Sometimes, administrators may want to restrict the privileges of the sudo user to run the commands specific to monitor the target storage system. In this case, specify the commands mentioned below:

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi status*

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi statistics*

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi dedupe stats

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi storagepool*

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi version

      For example, if you specify the following command alone, then, you will be allowed to run the commands that retrieve the status of the hardware/logical components of the storage system.

      EG_Monitor ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/isi status*

      Similarly specifying the other commands mentioned above will help you to run the commands that retrieve the relevant statistics of your interest.

    • Finally, save the file.

    Now, provide the credentials of the sudo user while configuring the EMC Isilon Storage component for monitoring. To enable the eG agent to use the sudo user to run the CLI commands, set the Use Sudo flag to 'Yes' in the test configuration page.

Once the above-said pre-requisites are fulfilled, manage the EMC Isilon Storage component using the eG admin interface. The steps for achieving this are discussed in the Managing the EMC Isilon Storage System topic.