Monitoring remote cluster through GUI

The IBM Storage Scale GUI can monitor and manage a single cluster. There are cluster setups where multiple clusters exchange data through AFM or cross cluster mounts. To provide consolidated monitoring of multiple clusters using the IBM Storage Scale GUI, it is possible to exchange monitoring information between GUI nodes of different clusters.

By establishing a connection between the GUI nodes, both the clusters can monitor the other cluster. To enable remote monitoring capability among clusters, the release-level of the GUI nodes that are communicating with each other must be 5.0.0 or later.

To establish a connection with the remote cluster, perform the following steps:
  1. Perform the following steps on the local cluster to raise the access request:
    1. Select the Request Access option that is available under the Outgoing Requests tab to raise the request for access.
    2. In the Request Remote Cluster Access dialog, enter an alias for the remote cluster name and specify the GUI nodes to which the local GUI node must establish the connection.
    3. If you know the credentials of the security administrator of the remote cluster, you can also add the user name and password of the remote cluster administrator and skip the step 2.
    4. Click Send to submit the request.
  2. Perform the following steps on the remote cluster to grant access:
    1. When the request for connection is received, the GUI displays the details of the request in the Cluster > Remote Connections > Incoming Requests page.
    2. Select Grant Access to grant the permission and establish the connection.
Now, the requesting cluster GUI can monitor the remote cluster. To enable both clusters to monitor each other, repeat the procedure with reversed roles through the respective GUIs.
Note: Only the GUI user with Security Administrator role can grant access to the remote connection requests.

You can see the details of the connections established with the remote clusters under the Remote Cluster tab.

Monitoring remote clusters

The following table lists the remote cluster monitoring options that are available in the GUI.

Table 1. Remote cluster monitoring options available in GUI
GUI option Description
Home The Remote clusters grouping shows the following details:
  • Number of remote clusters connected to resource cluster.
  • Number of file systems that are mounted on the local nodes.
  • Number of local nodes on which the remote file systems are mounted.
Files > File Systems The grid view provides the following remote cluster monitoring details:
  • Whether the file system is mounted on a remote cluster.
  • Capacity information.
  • Number of local nodes on which the file system is mounted.
  • Performance details.
  • Pools, NSDs, filesets, and snapshots.
Files > File Systems > View Details > Remote Nodes Provides the details of the remote cluster nodes where the local file system is mounted.
Files > Filesets The Remote Fileset column in the filesets grid shows whether the fileset belongs to a remote file system.

The fileset table also displays the same level of details for both remote and local filesets. For example, capacity, parent file system, inodes, AFM role, snapshots, and so on.

Files > Active File Management When remote monitoring is enabled, you can view the following AFM details:
  • On home and secondary, you can see the AFM relationships configuration, health status, and performance values of the Cache and Disaster Recovery grids.
  • On the Overview tab of the detailed view, the available home and secondary inodes are available.
  • On the Overview tab of the detailed view, the details such as NFS throughput, IOPs, and latency details are available, if the protocol is NFS.
Files > Quotas When remote monitoring is enabled, you can view quota limits, capacity and inode information for users, groups and filesets of a file system mounted from a remote cluster. The user and group name resolution of the remote cluster is used in this view. It is not possible to change quota limits on a file system that is mounted from a remote cluster.
Cluster > Remote Connections Provides the following options:
  • Send a connection request to a remote cluster.
  • Grant or reject the connection requests received from remote clusters.
  • View the details of the remote clusters that are connected to the local cluster.
Monitoring > Statistics and Monitoring > Dashboard You can create customized performance charts to monitor the remote cluster performance.

Monitoring performance of a remote cluster

You can monitor the performance of the remote cluster with the help of performance monitoring tools that are configured in both the remote and local clusters. The performance details collected in the remote cluster is shared with the local cluster using REST APIs.

After establishing the connection with the remote cluster by using the Cluster > Remote Connections page, you can access the performance details of the remote cluster from the following GUI pages:

  • Monitoring > Statistics
  • Monitoring > Dashboard
  • Files > File Systems
To monitor performance details of the remote cluster in the Statistics page, you need to create customized performance charts by performing the following steps:
  1. Access the edit mode by clicking the icon that is available on the upper right corner of the performance chart and selecting Edit.
  2. In the edit mode, select the remote cluster to be monitored from the Cluster field. You can either select the local cluster or remote cluster from this field.
  3. Select Resource type. This is the area from which the data is taken to create the performance analysis.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Click Apply to create the customized chart.

  • After creating the customized performance chart, you can mark it as favorite charts to get them displayed on the Dashboard page.

    If a file system is mounted on the remote cluster nodes, the performance details of such remote cluster nodes are available in the Remote Nodes tab of the detailed view of file systems in the Files > File Systems page.

After creating the customized performance chart, you can mark it as favorite charts to get them displayed on the Dashboard page.

If a file system is mounted on the remote cluster nodes, the performance details of such remote cluster nodes are available in the Remote Nodes tab of the detailed view of file systems in the Files > File Systems page.