F5 Appliance Disks Test
This test monitors the disks in the target appliance and for each disk, this test reports the read/write latency and IOPS. In addition, this test helps the administrators to find out the disk that is the busiest.
Target of the test : F5 Velos/rSeries Appliance
Agent deploying the test : An external agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for the F5 VELOS/rSeries Appliance that is currently monitored. One set of results for each blade:disk in the chassis of the target F5 VELOS/rSeries Appliance being monitored, provided the chassis of the target F5 VELOS/rSeries Appliance is partitioned.
| Parameters | Description |
|---|---|
|
Test period |
How often should the test be executed. |
|
Host |
The IP address of the target host to be monitored. |
|
SNMPPort |
The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; the default value is 161. |
|
Data Over TCP |
By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No. |
|
Timeout |
Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds. |
|
SNMPVersion |
By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list. |
|
SNMPCommunity |
The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the switch. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMPVersion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear. |
|
Context |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the USERNAME provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the USERNAME in the CONTEXT text box. By default, this parameter is set to none. |
|
Username |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges - in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. |
|
AuthPass |
Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here. |
|
AuthType |
This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:
|
|
EncryptFlag |
This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. |
|
EncryptType |
If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:
|
|
EncryptPassword |
Specify the encryption password here. |
|
Confirm Password |
Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here. |
|
EngineID |
This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No. |
|
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:
|
|
Measurement |
Description |
Measurement Unit |
Interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Total size |
Indicates the total size of this disk. |
GB |
Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to find out the model, vendor, version, serial number, and type of this disk. |
|
Read IOPS |
Indicates the rate at which I/O operations were read on this disk during the last measurement period. |
IOPS |
Compare the values of these measures across the disks to know what is contributing to the abnormal I/O activity levels - read operations? or write operations?
|
|
Write IOPS |
Indicates the rate at which I/O operations were written on this disk during the last measurement period. |
IOPS |
|
|
Total IOPS |
Indicates the total number of I/O operations performed on this disk during the last measurement period. |
IOPS |
This measure is the total of Read IOPS and Write IOPS measures. The gradual increase in the value of this measure indicates a consistent rise of I/O load on the appliance. |
|
Data reads |
Indicates the total amount of data that were read on this disk during the last measurement period. |
MB |
|
|
Data writes |
Indicates the total amount of data that were written on this disk during the last measurement period. |
MB |
|
|
Read latency |
Indicates the average time taken to process each read operation on this disk. |
Milliseconds |
Very high values for these measures are indicative of the existence of road-blocks to rapid reading/writing by the appliance. By observing the variations in these measures over time, you can understand whether the latencies are sporadic or consistent. Consistent delays in reading/writing could indicate that there are persistent bottlenecks (if any) in the appliance to speedy I/O processing.
|
|
Write latency |
Indicates the average time taken to process each write operation on this disk. |
Milliseconds |
|
|
Merged data reads |
Indicates the number of times data were pulled from multiple sources to perform a read operation during the last measurement period. |
Number |
|
|
Merged data writes |
Indicates the number of times data were pulled from multiple sources to perform a write operation during the last measurement period. |
Number |
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