Isilon Cluster Disks Test

Processing bottlenecks in disks can significantly delay reading from and/or writing to the disks, affecting user experience with the storage cluster as a whole. To prevent this, administrators need to keep a close watch on the I/O activity on the disks of the storage cluster, detect a slowdown well before the users notice the slowdown, and take pre-emptive actions. The Cluster Disk Performance test can help administrators to achieve this. This test monitors the read and write operations on the disks, using which any abnormalities can be detected before users start complaining of slowdowns.

Target of the test : An EMC Isilon Storage System

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target storage system being monitored.

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

The port at which the host listens. By default, this will be NULL.

Timeout

Specify the time duration (in seconds) beyond which this test should time out in the Timeout text box. The default is 10 seconds.

Use SUDO

By default, this parameter is set to No. This indicates that, by default, the eG agent will not require any special permissions to execute the commands. However, in some highly secure environments, this command cannot be executed directly as the eG agent install user is different from the root user who has the privileges to run all commands on the target storage system. In such cases, create a sudo user using the steps discussed in the Pre-requisites for Monitoring the EMC Isilon Storage System. Credentials of such a user should be specified in the Username and Password text boxes in the COMPONENTS page.

Set the Use Sudo parameter to Yes. This will enable the eG agent install user to execute the commands.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Data reads

Indicates the amount of data utilized for performing the read operations on the disk.

MB/Sec

 

Data writes

Indicates the amount of data utilized for performing the write operations on the disk.

MB/Sec

 

Disk IOPS

Indicates the rate at which the I/O operations are performed on this disk.

IOPS