FCP Service Test

The FCP family of commands manages the Fibre Channel Target adapters and the FCP target protocol. These commands can start and stop FCP target service, bring target adapter ports up and down, show protocol statistics, and list client adapters connected to the controller on the target NetApp Cluster. If the FCP service is stopped or is currently not available, then all FC ports on the NetApp Cluster are disabled, thus leading to ramification of the HA pairs during cluster failover. For example, if you stop the FCP service on System 1, and System 2 fails over, then System 1 will be unable to service the LUNs of System 2. On the other hand, if System 2 fails over, and you stop the FCP service on System 2 and start the FCP service on System 1, System 1 will successfully service the LUNs of System 2. It is therefore imperative to monitor the status of the FCP service so that any glitch to service the data during cluster failover can be proactively avoided. The FCP Service test helps you achieve this!

This test reports the availability of the FCP service and proactively alerts the administrators of possible problems if the FCP service is not available.

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 FCP Service 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.

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

Availability

Indicates whether/not this FCP service is currently available.

 

The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values have been listed in the table below.

Measure Value Numeric Value
Available 0
Unavailable 1

Note:

By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned Measure Values while indicating whether this FCP service is available or not. However, in the graph of this measure, states will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents i.e., 0 or 1.