Aggregate Performance Test

To support the differing security, backup, performance, and data sharing needs of your users, you group the physical data storage resources on your storage system into one or more aggregates. These aggregates provide storage to the volume or volumes that they contain. Each aggregate has its own RAID configuration, plex structure, and set of assigned disks or array LUNs.

Periodically, you must monitor the I/O activity of each of the aggregates configured on your cluster, so that probable I/O overloads can be rapidly detected from time to time. The NetApp Aggregates test provides these performance insights. This test auto-discovers the aggregates configured on a NetApp Cluster, periodically reports the distribution of I/O load across all aggregates and helps you to identify the aggregate that is overloaded with read-write requests.

Target of the test : A NetApp Cluster

Agent deploying the test : An external/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each aggregate on the NetApp Cluster being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the storage controller cluster.
Port	Specify the port at which the specified host listens in the Port text box. By default, this is NULL.
User	Here, specify the name of the user who possesses the readonly role. If such a user does not pre-exist, then, you can create a special user for this purpose using the steps detailed in Creating a New User with the Role Required for Monitoring the NetApp Cluster.
Password	Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned User.
Confirm Password	Confirm the Password by retyping it here.
Authentication Mechanism	In order to collect metrics from the NetApp Cluster, the eG agent connects to the ONTAP management APIs over HTTP or HTTPS. By default, this connection is authenticated using the LOGIN_PASSWORD authentication mechanism. This is why, LOGIN_PASSWORD is displayed as the default Authentication Mechanism.
Use SSL	Set the Use SSL flag to Yes, if SSL (Secured Socket Layer) is to be used to connect to the NetApp Unified Storage System, and No if it is not.
API Report	By default, in most environments, NetApp Cluster listens on port 80 (if not SSL-enabled) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled) only. This implies that while monitoring the NetApp Cluster, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 80 or 443, depending upon the SSL-enabled status of the NetApp Cluster - i.e., if the NetApp Cluster is not SSL-enabled (i.e., if the Use SSL flag above is set to No), then the eG agent connects to the NetApp Cluster using port 80 by default, and if the NetApp Cluster is SSL-enabled (i.e., if the Use SSL flag is set to Yes), then the agent-NetApp Cluster communication occurs via port 443 by default. Accordingly, the API Port parameter is set to default by default. In some environments however, the default ports 80 or 443 might not apply. In such a case, against the API Port parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the NetApp Cluster in your environment listens, so that the eG agent communicates with that port for collecting metrics from the NetApp Cluster.
Exclude Aggregates	If you wish to exclude certain aggregates from the scope of monitoring, specify a list of comma-separated aggregates in this text box. By default, none will be displayed here.
Records Per Call	The eG agent by default, executes the API commands in order to query the aggregates in the target environment. In critical infrastructures spanning large number of aggregates, a single execution by the eG agent may query(or download) a sizeable amount of monitoring data, thereby adding to the cluster load. To avoid this, you can tweak the Records Per Call parameter to enable the eG agent to obtain monitoring data iteratively in chunks instead of retrieving the entire amount of monitoring data in a single go. Say for example, the eG agent is required to query 1000 aggregates, then specifying the value 100 in this text box will enable the eG agent to query 100 aggregates at a time for 10 times to obtain monitoring data from all the aggregates. By default, the value of this parameter is 10.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) beyond which the test will timeout if no response is received from the device. The default is 120 seconds.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Consistency point reads	Indicates the rate at which the read requests from the user is serviced during a Consistency Point (CP) operation in this aggregate.	Reads/Sec	A consistent decrease in the value of this measure could indicate that CP operations are slowing down the processing of read requests.
Total transfers	Indicates the rate at which the transfers are serviced by this aggregate.	Transfers/Sec	Compare the value of this measure across aggregates to identify the busy aggregates.
User read blocks	Indicates the rate at which the blocks are read from this aggregate upon a user request.	Blocks/Sec	A consistent decrease in the value of this measure could indicate a bottleneck when processing read requests. Compare the value of this measure across aggregates to know which aggregates service block read requests slowly.
User reads	Indicates the rate at which the read request from the user is serviced by this aggregate.	Reads/Sec	A consistent decrease in the value of this measure could indicate a bottleneck when processing read requests. Compare the value of this measure across aggregates to know which aggregates service read requests slowly.
User write blocks	Indicates the rate at which the blocks are written to this aggregate upon a user request.	Blocks/Sec	A consistent decrease in the value of this measure could indicate a bottleneck when processing write requests. Compare the value of this measure across aggregates to know which aggregates are servicing block write requests slowly.
User writes	Indicates the rate at which the write request from the user is serviced in this aggregate.	Writes/Sec	A consistent decrease in the value of this measure could indicate a bottleneck when processing write requests. Compare the value of this measure across aggregates to know which aggregates are servicing write requests slowly.