All content - IBM Spectrum Control™: Performance monitoring hints and tips

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Need some help configuring performance monitoring for your storage systems and switches?

Find solutions to common problems that you might encounter when using IBM Spectrum Control to monitor the performance of your storage.

So, you've followed the instructions in Monitoring the performance of resources:

• added your storage for monitoring by IBM Spectrum Control
• scheduled a performance monitor
• defined performance alerts to notify you about potential bottlenecks in your storage

For IBM FlashSystem® 840 and IBM FlashSystem 900, the SNMP agent for managing the resource is not enabled

When you add your storage system for monitoring by IBM Spectrum Control, you might see the following message when you configure performance monitoring:

“Performance monitoring is not available for FlashSystem 900 Cluster_9.19.148.52 because its SNMP agent is turned off. You can enable the SNMP agent in the FlashSystem 900 Cluster_9.19.148.52 GUI”

Solution

Ensure that the SNMP agent is enabled on the storage system before you configure performance monitoring. IBM Spectrum Control communicates with the SNMP agent on port 161 (UDP) to collect performance metadata.
 

To enable the SNMP agent, open the management GUI of the storage system, go to Settings > Notifications > SNMP, click Agent, and enter a community name.

For IBM Spectrum Scale, performance data collection won't start

You see messages like the following in the performance monitor logs:

"HWNPM2146W / HWNPM2132W Performance data could not be collected for device <device name>…..The current samples are skipped."

Solution

This problem might occur if the performance monitoring tool on the IBM Spectrum Scale cluster is not configured correctly.

Ensure that the following requirements are met:

1. The IBM Spectrum Control server can connect to port 9084 on the cluster node where the collector component of the performance monitoring tool will run.
2. The queryinterface property is set to "0.0.0.0" in the /opt/IBM/zimon/ZIMonCollector.cfg file on the cluster node.

For more information about configuring the performance monitoring tool, see Configuring the collection of performance data for IBM Spectrum Scale.

The following hints and tips apply to all storage systems and switches:

A performance monitor was defined for the resource, but is not running

Start the immediate collection of performance data from the monitored resource. A successful probe must be completed on the resource before a performance monitor can start.

Go to the resource list page. For example, for block storage systems, go to Storage > Block Storage Systems. Right-click your storage system and click Data Collection > Start Performance Monitor.

On the resource list page, you can also check the performance monitor status and the most recent date when the performance monitor successfully collected data. Depending on when the performance monitor last ran successfully, try adjusting the time range and data resolution on the performance view. You might need to change the data resolution to hourly or daily.

A performance monitor was defined and is running, but cannot collect any data

Try the following actions:

• Check the values of Status and Latest Error (message) for the performance monitor on the Home > Performance Monitors page.

Right-click the performance monitor row and click Open Logs. You can view detailed informational, warning, and error messages that are related to the performance monitor job. In the log, click on a message ID to view recommended actions to help you troubleshooting the error or warning.

• Verify that the resource is up and available.

• Verify that the local area network is available and that the firewall is not preventing network access to product services and agents. Contact your firewall administrator to ensure that the required ports are open. To see a full list of the ports that are used by IBM Spectrum Control, see Ports used by IBM Spectrum Control. 

• If IBM Spectrum Control communicates with the resource by using an SMI-S provider (also called CIM agent or CIMOM), ensure that the provider can be accessed, and is up and available. To test the connection between IBM Spectrum Control and the SMI-S provider, right-click the storage system or switch and click Connections > Test Connection. For more information about troubleshooting the connection to an SMI-S provider, see CIM agents.

A problem with the database or product servers is preventing the collection of performance data 

Try the following actions:

• Verify that the product servers and database repository are up and available on the Home > System Management page.

If the system management overview shows the component servers with an error status, click Component Servers to view detailed server information and to restart the Data, Device, or Alert server.

Similarly, if the overview shows that the database has an error status, click Database to view detailed information, such as the memory usage, capacity, and version of your Db2 instance.

For more help diagnosing problems with the product servers, check out Troubleshooting problems with the IBM Spectrum Control component and servers.

• Check the log files to view detailed information about IBM Spectrum Control™ processing and to troubleshoot problems.

For information about the location of the log files for IBM Spectrum Control, see Default locations of log files.

The performance chart is not showing values for the selected metrics

The selected metrics might not be available for the resource.

The metrics that are available for a resource are determined by a number of factors, such as the type of resource, release version of a resource, and level of SMI-S provider. For example, some SAN Volume Controller metrics are available only to storage systems whose firmware version is 7.3 or later.

For a list of performance metrics that are available for the different storage systems and switches, check out the Performance metrics section in the knowledge center.

Useful links

Watch this video and learn how to use IBM Spectrum Control to troubleshoot the performance of your applications.

Joining the conversation

For continuing news about the documentation for IBM Spectrum Control and it's cloud services counterpart, IBM Storage Insights, follow me on Twitter @johnfmwalsh.