Nfs Mounts Test

Network File System protocol (NFS) is often used to share file systems between servers and clients. Often, if an NFS file system fails, the directories mapped to the NFS file system will be unavailable. Accesses to these directories/files will take a long time and ultimately fail. This could potentially result in application failures and outages. Hence, administrators need the capability to detect when an NFS file system is unavailable or is running out of space. The Nfs Mounts test provides administrators with this capability.

This test executes on a system that is an NFS client – i.e., is mounting directories from remote servers - auto-discovers all NFS-mounted directories, and reports in real-time the availability and space usage of each of these directories. This test is supported only on Unix platforms  (and not on Windows).

This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence : Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick the desired Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose the test from the DISABLED TESTS list, and click on the << button to move the test to the ENABLED TESTS list. Finally, click the Update button.

Target of the test : A Unix host

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every NFS-mounted directory auto-discovered

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Timeout	Specify the maximum duration (in seconds) for which the test will wait for a response from the server. The default timeout period is 30 seconds.
Exclude file systems	Provide a comma-separated list of file systems to be excluded from monitoring. By default, this is set to none, indicating that all file systems will be monitored by default.
Report by file system	This test reports a set of measures for every NFS-mounted directory auto-discovered on a target NFS client – this implies that  the discovered directory names will appear as descriptors of this test in the eG monitoring console. By selecting an option from the Report by file system list, you can indicate how you want to display these directory names in the eG monitoring console. By default, the Remote Filesystem option is chosen; this indicates that, by default, the eG monitoring console will refer to each directory using the complete path to that directory in the remote file system – typically, this would include the name of the remote file system. For instance, if the shares directory on a remote host with IP 192.168.10.1 is being monitored, then the corresponding descriptor will be: //192.168.10.1/shares. If you choose the Local Filesystem option instead, then, the eG monitoring console will display only the name of the local file that is mapped to the remote directory – for example, if the //192.168.10.1/shares directory is locally mapped to the file /mnt, then the descriptor will be /mnt. Alternatively, you can have both the remote file system path and the local file mapping displayed in the eG monitoring console, by selecting the Both option from this list. In such a case, the descriptor will be of the format: //192.168.10.1/shares (/mnt).

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Is the NFS mount available?	Indicates whether the directory is accessible or not.	Percent	The value 100 indicates that the mounted NFS is accessible. The value 0  indicates that the mounted NFS is not accessible.
Total capacity	Indicates the current total capacity of the mounted system disk partition.	MB
Used space	Indicates the amount of space currently used in a mounted system disk partition.	MB
Free space	Indicates the free space currently available on a disk partition of a mounted system.	MB
Percent usage	Indicates the percentage of space used on a mounted system disk partition.	Percent	Ideally, this value should be low. A high value or a value close to 100% is indicative of excessive space usage on this mounted system disk partition. If a number of NFS directories are exhibiting similar usage patterns, it is a definite cause for concern, as it indicates that the NFS file system as a whole could be running out of space. If this situation is not brought under control soon, application failures and outages will become inevitable!