VSP Gx00 Battery Status Test

The Virtual Storage Platform is designed so that it cannot lose data or configuration information if the power fails. The battery system is designed to provide enough power to completely destage all data in the cache if two consecutive power failures occur and the batteries are fully charged. If the batteries do not contain enough charge to provide sufficient time to destage the cache when a power failure occurs, the cache operates in write through mode. When a power failure occurs and continues for 20 milliseconds or less, the storage system continues normal operation. If the power failure exceeds 20 milliseconds, the storage system uses power from the batteries to back up the cache memory data. If the charge in the batteries is not enough to withstand frequent power failures, then too much of data will be lost resulting in performance degradation of the target Hitachi VSP Gx00 Series storage device. To avoid such loss of data, it is necessary for the administrators to monitor the status of the batteries round the clock! The VSP Gx00 Battery Status test helps administrators in this regard!

This test reports the current status of the batteries used by each RAID store on the Hitachi VSP Gx00 Series storage device.

Target of the test : A Hitachi VSP Gx00 Series storage device

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every RAID store on the Hitachi VSP Gx00 Series device monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. TEST PERIOD - How often should the test be executed
  2. Host – The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. PRIMARY CONTROLLER IP - Specify the IP address of the storage controller on the target storage device in the PRIMARY CONTROLLER IP text box. By default, the IP address of the HOST will be displayed in the PRIMARY CONTROLLER IP text box.
  4. SECONDARY CONTROLLER IP - By default, the SECONDARY CONTROLLER IP text box is set to none. This implies that by default, the storage device being monitored supports a single controller only. Sometimes, a storage device could be configured with two controllers i.e., say for e.g., controller 1 and controller 2, so as to provide fail-over services - in other words, if the controller 1is down, then the controller 2 will take over to provide the critical storage services. In this case, you can provide the IP address of the controller 2 in the SECONDARY CONTROLLER IP text box.
  5. SnmpPort – The port number through which the storage device exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161.
  6. SNMPVERSION– By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the snmpversionlist 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.
  7. SNMPCommunity – The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the snmpversionchosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.
  8. 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 the username parameter. 

  9. 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.

  10. authpass– Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned username. This parameter once again appears only if the snmpversion selected is v3.
  11. confirm password– Confirm the authpass by retyping it here.

  12. 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:MD5 - Message Digest AlgorithmSHA - Secure Hash AlgorithmSHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bitSHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bitSHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bitSHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit

  13. encryptflag– This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the snmpversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the encryptflagis set to no by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the yes option. 

  14. 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:DES - Data Encryption Standard3DES - Triple Data Encryption StandardAES - Advanced Encryption StandardAES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bitAES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bitAES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit

  15. encryptpassword– Specify the encryption password here.
  16. confirm password– Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.
  17. TIMEOUT - Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in the TIMEOUT text box. The default is 10 seconds.
  18. 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 the data over tcp flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.
  19. ENGINE ID-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.
Measures made by the test:
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Battery status

Indicates the current status of the batteries of this RAID store.

 

The values reported by this measure and its numeric equivalents are mentioned in the table below:

Measure value

Numeric Value

noError

 1

acuteError

 2

seriousError

 3

moderateError

 4

serviceError

 5

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the current state of the batteries of this RAID store. The graph of this measure however, represents the status of a server using the numeric equivalents only - 1 to 5.