IBM TotalStorage DS6000 Series: Performance Monitoring and Tuning

Chapter 4. Planning and monitoring tools 117

4.3.4 Using IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center for Disk

This section provides a step-by-step guide to configure and use performance Manager

functions provided by the TotalStorage Productivity Center for Disk.

Performance Manager GUI

The Performance Manager Graphical User Interface can be launched from the IBM Director

console interface. After logging on to IBM Director, you will see a screen as in Figure 4-26. On

the right most tasks pane, you will see the Manage Performance launch menu. It is

highlighted and expanded in the figure shown.

Figure 4-26 IBM Director console with Performance Manager

Exploiting Performance Manager

You can use the Performance Manager component of the TotalStorage Productivity Center for

Disk to manage and monitor the performance of the storage devices that TotalStorage

Productivity Center for disk supports.

Performance Manager provides the following functions:

򐂰 Collecting data from devices

Notes:

1. You should refer to the following Web sites for the updated support summaries,

including specific software, hardware, and firmware levels supported.

http://www.storage.ibm.com/software/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/software/support/

2. The IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center program pre-configures the TCP/IP ports

used by WebSphere.

Ensure that TCP/IP connection characteristics are authorized through your network.

118 IBM TotalStorage DS6000 Series: Performance Monitoring and Tuning

򐂰 Configuring performance thresholds

򐂰 Viewing performance data

The installation of the performance Manager onto an existing TotalStorage Productivity

Center for Disk server provides a new

Manage performance task tree on the right-hand side

of the TotalStorage Productivity Center for Disk host.

This task tree includes the subtasks as seen in Figure 4-27.

Figure 4-27 Performance Manager tasks

Performance Manager data collection

The Performance Manager collects data from the IBM TotalStorage DS6000, setting a

particular performance data collection frequency and duration of collection. Once

Performance Manager receives data collected, it processes the performance data and saves

it in Performance Manager database tables.

To collect performance data, you have to create data collection tasks for the supported,

discovered storage devices. To create task, you have to specify

򐂰 A task name

򐂰 A brief description of the task

򐂰 The sample frequency in minutes

򐂰 The duration of data collection task (in hours)

Figure 4-28 on page 119 is an example of the panel you should see when you create the

performance Data Collection task on a DS6000.

Note: All figures below are taken from the DS8000, but the DS6000 view is the same.

Chapter 4. Planning and monitoring tools 119

Figure 4-28 DS8000/DS6000 Data Collection Task

Once the task is created, you can execute it immediately or define a scheduled job for this

task.

To check the status of all defined tasks, you can access the Task Status. This tool gives

details of tasks including task status (for example: running, competed...), device ID, Device

status, Error Message ID, and Error message.

Managing Performance Manager database

The collected performance data is stored in a backend DB2 database. This database needs

to be maintained in order to keep relevant data in the database. You may decide frequency for

purging old data based on your organization’s requirements.

Performance Manager gauges

Once data collection is complete, you may use the gauges task to retrieve information about a

variety of storage device metrics.

Gauges are used to tunnel down to the level of detail necessary to isolate performance issues

on the storage device. To view information collected by the Performance Manager, a gauge

must be created or a custom script written to access the DB2 tables/fields directly.

The metrics available change depending on whether the cluster, Rank Group or volume items

are selected.

Two types of gauges are available:

򐂰 Performance

򐂰 Exception

Performance

DS6000 Server performance gauges values provide details on:

򐂰 Total I/O rate: Cluster level (server0/server1) total I/O request rate

Note: Data collection tasks can be defined with one or more storage devices. By selecting

several storage devices, you can collect performance data from different storage

subsystems. In this case, the collection data will have the same characteristics (sample

frequency and duration of data collection).

120 IBM TotalStorage DS6000 Series: Performance Monitoring and Tuning

򐂰 % I/O requests delayed due to NVS: Percentage of I/O requests that have been delayed

due to NVS memory (persistent memory) shortage.

Figure 4-29 shows the different values available at the DS6000 cluster level.

Figure 4-29 DS8000/DS6000 Cluster level gauge values

DS6000 Rank Group (Rank) performance gauges provide details on:

򐂰 Total I/O: DS6000 lower interface total I/O per second

򐂰 Reads/second: DS6000 lower interface reads per seconds

򐂰 Writes/second: DS6000 lower interface writes per seconds

򐂰 AVG. response time: Average response time for the lower interface in milliseconds

Figure 4-30 on page 121 shows the different values available at the DS6000 Rank Group

level.