Proxmox Hypervisor Storage Test

Virtual machine images used by the Proxmox Hypervisor can either be stored on one or more local storage, or on shared storage like NFS or iSCSI (NAS, SAN). Storing VMs on shared storage facilitates the ability to live-migrate running machines without any downtime, as all nodes in the hypervisor have direct access to VM disk images. This also avoids the need for creating multiple copies of VM image data and ensure speedy live migration. There are basically two different classes of storage types:

• File level storage - File level based storage technologies allow access to a fully featured (POSIX) file system. They are in general more flexible than any Block level storage (see below), and allow you to store content of any type. ZFS is probably the most advanced system, and it has full support for snapshots and clones.

• Block level storage - Allows to store large raw images. It is usually not possible to store other files (ISO, backups,etc.) on such storage types. Most modern block level storage implementations support snapshots and clones. RADOS and GlusterFS are distributed systems, replicating storage data to different nodes.

Since the VMs and nodes in the target hypervisor rely heavily on the storage for their availability and overall performance, it is imperative that the storage should be available and be sized and tuned right. If not, the dependent VMs and nodes will experience serious performance setbacks ranging from a slowness to a standstill! To avoid such difficulties, administrators should continuously monitor the storage utilization by the target hypervisor and prevent storage space contention before it impacts operations of the VMs. The Proxmox Hypervisor Storage test reports these statistics for each storage that is utilized by the Promox hypervisor.

This test auto-discovers all the storage that are being utilized by the target Proxmox Hypervisor and for each storage, reports the critical measures related to storage space utilization. Using these statistics, administrators can increase the storage capacity before a possible performance deterioration of the VMs hosted on the target hypervisor occurs. In addition, this test also alerts the administrators of inactivity of each storage.

Target of the test : A Proxmox Hypervisor

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each storage used by the Proxmox Hypervisor being monitored

Configurable parameters for the test

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	The port at which the specified host listens. By default, this will be NULL.
Proxmox Node Name	Specify the name of the Proxmox node that you wish to monitor in this text box. By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the test monitor all the nodes in the target hypervisor.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Total storage space	Indicates the total capacity of this storage.	GB
Used space	Indicates the amount of space that is utilized in this storage.	GB	Ideally, the value of this measure should be low. If this value grows close to that of the Total storage space measure, then you may consider adding more storage to the storage, or free up the space in the storage by deleting unnecessary data. Compare the value of this measure across the storage types to identify the storage of which type is excessively utilized by the target hypervisor.
Free space	Indicates the amount of space that is currently available for use in this storage.	GB	A high value is desired for this measure. A sharp/consistent decrease in the value of this measure is an indication for the administrators to add more free space to the storage before it runs out of free space. Sometimes, the value of this measure may be 0 which indicates that the storage is currently unavailable. In such cases, the VMs that are currently using that storage could be rendered inaccessible to users.
Space utilization	Indicates the percentage of space that is already utilized in this storage.	Percent	A value close to 100% indicates that the storage is currently running out of space.
Is active?	Indicates whether this storage is currently active.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table above: Measure Value Numeric Value No 0 Yes 1 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above. In the graph of this measure however, the value of this measure is represented using their numeric equivalents only.
Is enabled?	Indicates whether/not this storage is enabled for access.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table above: Measure Value Numeric Value No 0 Yes 1 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above. In the graph of this measure however, the value of this measure is represented using their numeric equivalents only.
Is shared?	Indicates whether this storage is shared or not.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table above: Measure Value Numeric Value No 0 Yes 1 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above. In the graph of this measure however, the value of this measure is represented using their numeric equivalents only.