Configuring performance metrics and display options in the Statistics page of the GUI

Use the Monitoring > Statistics page to monitor the performance of system resources and file and object storage. Performance of the system can be monitored by using various pre-defined charts. You can select the required charts and monitor the performance based on the filter criteria.

The pre-defined performance charts and metrics help in investigating every node or any particular node that is collecting the metrics. The following figure shows various configuration options that are available in the Statistics page of the management GUI.

Figure 1. Statistics page in the IBM Storage Scale management GUI

You can select pre-defined charts that are available for selection from pre-defined chart list. You can display up to two charts at a time.

Display options in performance charts

The charting section displays the performance details based on various aspects. The GUI provides a rich set of controls to view performance charts. You can use these controls to perform the following actions on the charts that are displayed on the page:

Zoom the chart by using the mouse wheel or resizing the timeline control. Y-axis is automatically adjusted during zooming.
Click and drag the chart or the timeline control at the bottom. Y-axis is automatically adjusted during panning.
Compare charts side by side. You can synchronize the y-axis and bind the x-axis. To modify the X and Y axes of the chart, click the configuration symbol next to the title Statistics and select the required options.
Link the timelines of the two charts together by using the display options that are available.
The Dashboard helps to access all single graph charts, which are either predefined or custom created favorites.

Selecting performance and capacity metrics

To monitor the performance of the system, you need to select the appropriate metrics to be displayed in the performance charts. Metrics are grouped under the combination of resource types and aggregation levels. The resource types determine the area from which the data is taken to create the performance analysis and aggregation level determines the level at which the data is aggregated. The aggregation levels that are available for selection varies based on the resource type.

Sensors are configured against each resource type. The following table provides a mapping between resource types and sensors under the Performance category.

Table 1. Sensors available for each resource type
Resource type	Sensor name	Candidate nodes
Network	Network	All nodes
System Resources	CPU	All nodes
	Load
	Memory
NSD Server	GPFSNSDDisk	NSD server nodes
IBM Storage Scale Client	GPFSFilesystem	IBM Storage Scale Client nodes
	GPFSVFS
	GPFSFilesystemAPI
Native RAID	GPFSPDDisk	Elastic Storage Server (ESS) building block nodes
NFS	NFSIO	Protocol nodes running NFS service
SMB	SMBStats	Protocol nodes running SMB service
SMB	SMBGlobalStats	Protocol nodes running SMB service
CTDB	CTDBStats	Protocol nodes running SMB service
Waiters	GPFSWaiters	All nodes
AFM	GPFSAFM	AFM gateway nodes
	GPFSAFMFS
	GPFSAFMFSET
Transparent Cloud Tiering	MCStoreGPFSStats	Cloud gateway nodes
	MCStoreIcstoreStats
	MCStoreLWEStats

The resource type Waiters are used to monitor the long running file system threads. Waiters are characterized by the purpose of the corresponding file system threads. For example, an RPC call waiter that is waiting for Network I/O threads or a waiter that is waiting for a local disk I/O file system operation. Each waiter has a wait time associated with it and it defines how long the waiter is already waiting. With some exceptions, long waiters typically indicate that something in the system is not healthy.

The Waiters performance chart shows the aggregation of the total count of waiters of all nodes in the cluster above a certain threshold. Different thresholds from 100 milliseconds to 60 seconds can be selected in the list below the aggregation level. By default, the value shown in the graph is the sum of the number of waiters that exceed threshold in all nodes of the cluster at that point in time. The filter functionality can be used to display waiters data only for some selected nodes or file systems. Furthermore, there are separate metrics for different waiter types such as Local Disk I/O, Network I/O, ThCond, ThMutex, Delay, and Syscall.

You can also monitor the capacity details that are aggregated at the following levels:

NSD
Node
File system
Pool
Fileset
Cluster

The following table lists the sensors that are used for capturing the capacity details.

Table 2. Sensors available to capture capacity details
Sensor name	Candidate nodes
DiskFree	All nodes
GPFSFilesetQuota	Only a single node
GPFSDiskCap	Only a single node
GPFSPool	Only a single node where all GPFS file systems are mounted.
GPFSFileset	Only a single node.

You can edit an existing chart by clicking the ellipsis icon on the performance chart header and select Edit to modify the metrics selections. Follow the steps shown to drill down to the relevant metric:

Select the cluster to be monitored from the Cluster field. You can either select the local cluster or the remote cluster.
Select Resource type. This is the area from which the data is taken to create the performance analysis.
Select Aggregation level. The aggregation level determines the level at which the data is aggregated. The aggregation levels that are available for selection varies based on the resource type.
Select the entities that need to be graphed. The table lists all entities that are available for the chosen resource type and aggregation level. When a metric is selected, you can also see the selected metrics in the same grid and use methods like sorting, filtering, or adjusting the time frame to select the entities that you want to select.
Select Metrics. Metrics is the type of data that need to be included in the performance chart. The list of metrics that is available for selection varies based on the resource type and aggregation type.
Use the Filter option to further narrow down the selection. Depending on the selected object category and aggregation level, the Filter section can be displayed underneath the aggregation level, allowing one or more filters to be set. Filters are specified as regular expressions as shown in the following examples:
- As a single entity:
  node1
  
  eth0
- Filter metrics applicable to multiple nodes as shown in the following examples:
  - To select a range of nodes such as node1, node2 and node3:
    node1|node2|node3
    
    node[1-3]
  - To filter based on a string of text. For example, all nodes starting with 'nod' or ending with 'int':
    nod.+|.+int
  - To filter network interfaces eth0 through eth6, bond0 and eno0 through eno6:
    eth[0-6]|bond0|eno[0-6]
  - To filter nodes starting with 'strg' or 'int' and ending with 'nx':
    (strg)|(int).+nx

Creating favorite charts

Favorite charts are nothing but customized predefined charts. Favorite charts along with the predefined charts are available for selection when you add widgets in the Dashboard page.

To create favorite charts, click the ‘star’ symbol that is placed next to the chart title and enter the label.