Prism Connection Status Test

The Nutanix Prism typically manages one/more Nutanix Acropolis clusters. Each node in a cluster runs a Nutanix Controller VM (CVM), which serves all of the I/O operations for the hypervisor and all VMs running on that node. A Prism service runs on every CVM with an elected Prism Leader which is responsible for handling HTTP requests. The cluster external IP will always be hosted by the Prism Leader. If the Prism Leader fails, then a new leader will be elected, which will assume the cluster external IP. This implies that the Prism service will be rendered unavailable, only if all the CVMs in a cluster fail. Such a failure can cause the dependent applications to suffer prolonged outages. Likewise, if the Prism leader takes too long to respond to HTTP requests, it will once again degrade application performance.

If this is to be avoided, then the availability and responsiveness of the Prism service should be periodically checked and abnormalities should be promptly reported. This can be achieved using the Prism Connection Status test.

This test emulates an HTTP request to a Nutanix Prism, reports whether the Prism service is available or not, and if available, also reports how quickly it responds to the request. Sudden breaks in Prism availability and poor responsiveness of the Prism service can be promptly detected in the process. The test also reports the response code returned by the Prism service, so that the nature of the response - whether it is an error response or not - can be determined.

Target of the test : A Nutanix Acropolis Prism

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Nutanix Acropolis Prism

Configurable parameters for the test

Test period - How often should the test be executed Host - The host for which the test is to be configured. port - The port at which the specified host listens. By default, this is NULL. nutanix Prism user and nutanix prism password - To connect to the Nutanix Prism and collect metrics from it, the eG agent should be configured with the credentials of a Prism user with the Viewer role. The steps for creating such a user are detailed in the Pre-requisites for Monitoring Nutanix Prism topic. confirm password - Confirm the nutanix prism password by retyping it here. ssl - By default, the Nutanix Prism server is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the Prism server via HTTPS by default. webport - By default, the Nutanix Prism server listens on port 9440. This implies that to monitor a Nutanix Prism server, the eG agent connects to the server via port 9440. DD FREQUENCY - Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. For a Nutanix Acropolis Prism server, this is set to 1:1 by default. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Prism availability	Indicates whether or not the Prism service is available.	Percent	If the value of this measure is 100, it indicates that the Prism service is available. The value 0 on the other hand denotes that the Prism service is unavailable.
Response time	Indicate the time taken by the Prism service to respond to HTTP requests.	Secs	If the value of this measure consistently increases, it indicates that the performance of the Nutanix prism is gradually deteriorating. Ideally, the value of this measure should be low.
Response code	Indicates the response code returned by the emulated HTTP request.	Number	The possible values for this measure and what they represent are detailed in the table below: Measure Value Description 200 The API request was successful and received a response. 201 The API request was successful and created an object. 400 The API request was malformed and could not be processed. 401 You have no access and/or are not authorized. 403 You are authorized but do not have the privileges for this API. 404 The URL was not found 405 The called method is not allowed or is not supported 408 The request timed out (20 seconds maximum). 500 The API request was received but there was a server error. 503 Service unavailable at this time or too early to process. 508 HTTP other than 1.1 not supported.