Uptime - OS Test
In most virtualized environments, it is essential to monitor the uptime of VMs hosting critical server applications in the infrastructure. By tracking the uptime of each of the VMs, administrators can determine what percentage of time a VM has been up. Comparing this value with service level targets, administrators can determine the most trouble-prone areas of the virtualized infrastructure.
In some environments, administrators may schedule periodic reboots of their LPARs.a By knowing that a specific VM has been up for an unusually long time, an administrator may come to know that the scheduled reboot task is not working on an LPAR.
The Uptime - OS test included in the eG agent monitors the uptime of each LPAR.
Target of the test : An IBM pSeries server
Agent deploying the test : A remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for every LPAR guest on an IBM pSeries server.
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 |
Indicate the port at which the specified Host listens. By default, this is NULL. |
Real ServerName |
Specify the name of the pSeries server in the Real ServerName text box. If the target pSeries server has been auto-discovered using HMC, the server name will be set automatically in the Real ServerName text box. However, while configuring this test for a pSeries server that has been manually added, you have to explicitly provide the server name in the Real ServerName text box. Note: To obtain the real server name, a user can login to the target pSeries server as a valid pSeries user, go to the shell prompt of the server, and execute the following command: lssyscfg - r sys -F name |
Is Managed By |
By selecting an option from the Is Managed By list, indicate whether the target pSeries server is managed using an HMC server or an IVM (Integrated Virtual Manager) server. If the target server has been auto-discovered via an HMC server, the HMC option will be automatically chosen from this list. |
Management Server, Management User, Management Password |
This test connects to an HMC/IVM server to perform LPAR discovery and to collect host-level and "outside view" metrics from the pSeries server. To enable this communication, first, provide the IP address/host name of the HMC/IVM server in the Management Server text box. If the eG manager had automatically discovered the target pSeries server by connecting to an HMC server in the environment, then, the IP address/host name and user credentials pertaining to that HMC server will be automatically displayed in the Management Server, Management User, and Management Password text boxes. However, if the pSeries server being monitored was manually added to the eG Enterprise system (and not auto-discovered via the HMC server), then, you will have to explicitly indicate whether the target pSeries server is managed by an HMC server or an IVM server by selecting an option from the Is Managed By list. If the HMC option is chosen, then, you will have to provide the IP address of the HMC server that manages the target pSeries server in the Management Server text box. In such a case, in the Management User and Management Password text boxes, you will have to provide the credentials of an HMC user who is assigned the hmcviewer role. On the other hand, if the IVM option is chosen from the Is Managed By list, it implies that the IP address/host name and user credentials pertaining to that IVM server has to be explicitly provided in the Management Server, Management User, and Management Password text boxes. |
Confirm Password |
Confirm the HMC Password by retyping it here |
Domain |
Set the Domain parameter to none. |
Admin User, Admin Password, Confirm Password |
The eG agent remotely communicates with each discovered LPAR on the pSeries server to obtain their "inside view". For this, the eG agent will have to be configured with the credentials of a valid user with access rights to each LPAR. If a single user is authorized to access all the LPARs on the pSeries server, provide the name and password of the user in the Admin User and Admin Password text boxes, and confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. On the other hand, if the test needs to communicate with different LPARs using different user accounts, then, multiple user names and passwords will have to be provided. To help administrators provide these multiple user details quickly and easily, the eG administrative interface embeds a special configuration page. To know how to use this page, refer to Configuring Users for LPAR Monitoring. |
SSL |
By default, the HMC/IVM server (as the case may be) is not SSL-enabled. This indicates that by default, the eG agent communicates with the HMC/IVM server using HTTP. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to No by default. If you configure the HMC/IVM server to use SSL, then make sure that the SSL flag is set to Yes, so that the eG agent communicates with the HMC/IVM server using HTTPS. |
Ignore VMs Inside View |
Administrators of some high security LPAR environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more LPARs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the Ignore VMs Inside View parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of LPAR names, or LPAR name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your Ignore VMs Inside View specification can be: *lp,aixlp*,lin*. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all LPARs on a pSeries server by default. Note: While performing LPAR discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the LPARs configured in the Ignore VMs Inside View text box. |
Exclude VMs |
Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical LPARs both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such LPARs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of LPARs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of LPARs, LPAR name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs pecification can be: *lp,aixlp*,lin*. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all AIX LPARs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of LPARs/LPAR name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of LPARs. |
ReportManagerTime |
By default, this flag is set to Yes, indicating that, by default, the detailed diagnosis of this test, if enabled, will report the shutdown and reboot times of the AIX LPARs in the manager’s time zone. If this flag is set to No, then the shutdown and reboot times are shown in the time zone of the system where the agent is running. |
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 |
---|---|---|---|
Has the VM been rebooted? |
Indicates whether the VM has been rebooted during the last measurement period or not. |
Boolean |
If this measure shows 1, it means that the guest was rebooted during the last measurement period. By checking the time periods when this metric changes from 0 to 1, an administrator can determine the times when this guest was rebooted. |
Uptime of VM during the last measure period |
Indicates the time period that the VM has been up since the last time this test ran. |
Secs |
If the guest has not been rebooted during the last measurement period and the agent has been running continuously, this value will be equal to the measurement period. If the guest was rebooted during the last measurement period, this value will be less than the measurement period of the test. For example, if the measurement period is 300 secs, and if the guest was rebooted 120 secs back, this metric will report a value of 120 seconds. The accuracy of this metric is dependent on the measurement period - the smaller the measurement period, greater the accuracy. |
Total uptime of the VM |
Indicates the total time that the VM has been up since its last reboot. |
Mins |
Administrators may wish to be alerted if a guest has been running without a reboot for a very long period. Setting a threshold for this metric allows administrators to determine such conditions. |
Note:
If a value less than a minute is configured as the test period of the Uptime - Guest test, then, the Uptime during the last measure period measure will report the value 0 for AIX LPARs until the minute boundary is crossed. For instance, if you configure the Uptime - Guest test to run every 10 seconds, then, for the first 5 test execution cyles (i.e., 10 x 5 = 50 seconds), the Uptime during the last measure period measure will report the value 0 for the AIX LPARs; however, the sixth time the test executes (i.e, when test execution touches the 1 minute boundary), this measure will report the value 60 seconds for the same LPARs. Thereafter, every sixth measurement period will report 60 seconds as the uptime of the AIX LPARs. This is because, Unix-based operating systems report uptime only in minutes and not in seconds.