Chapter 6. Performance Management reporting
6.1 Performance management panels
In addition to the new performance charts, the new web-based GUI also provides panels that are focused around managing performance with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center.
6.1.1 Dashboard
In Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.2, the panel in the center of the bottom row of panels in the main dashboard has been changed to show information solely on Performance Monitors (see Figure 6-1). Before Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.2.x, that panel was used to show information about recent jobs. Now it is more focused and you can easily see if all performance jobs are running as expected.
Figure 6-1 Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Dashboard
The status of the performance monitors shown in the dashboard will be one of those listed in Table 6-1.
Table 6-1 Status of performance monitor jobs on the dashboard
Status Meaning
Running The number of performance monitors that are in the process of starting or stopping.
Running with problems The number of performance monitors that are encountering problems when collecting data. Check the log for a performance monitor to view its warning or error messages. If the performance monitor does not encounter problems during the next time it collects data, its status is changed to Running.
Failed The number of performance monitors that encountered error conditions during processing and are no longer running. Check the log of a performance monitor to view its error messages.
In our example, there are two jobs “Running with Warnings”. When you open the Performance Monitors panel by clicking the hypertext link, you can find additional information about those jobs.
6.1.2 Performance Monitors
You can open the Performance Monitors panel from either the dashboard or the navigation pane on the left by clicking Home Performance Monitors.
The panel has two tabs:
Performance Monitors
Threshold Violations
Figure 6-2 shows the Performance Monitors tab of the panel. It is opened by clicking the link from the Tivoli Storage Productivity Center dashboard.
Figure 6-2 Performance Monitors panel
On the Performance Monitors panel, you can easily see and manage all performance data collection jobs from a central place. The panel is similar to the one that was available in Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 as a tab on the Jobs panel. The following columns have been added:
Type
. Distinguishes between a storage system and a switch.
Latest Collection
. Shows you the time of the latest collected performance sample, based on the date and time settings of the device.
Threshold Violations
. Number of threshold violations in the latest collected performance sample.If you look at the jobs in warning state in Figure 6-2, you quickly see that Tivoli Storage Productivity Center was not able to retrieve any information in the last day in the column called Last Day Success (%).
You can also see when the last successful attempt was made as well as an error message. You can start, stop, and modify the schedule of a performance monitor (see the context menu in Figure 6-3), as well as view the logs for any job.
Figure 6-3 Actions you can run
In addition, you can directly open the resources detail page or properties. You can also view the performance of the device, which opens a new window.
6.1.3 Threshold violations
Tivoli Storage Productivity Center has the ability to define thresholds that can triggers alerts. The alerts are either stored in the Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Alert Log (Home Alerts) or they can be forwarded via email or other mechanisms. This means you can view the threshold violation in the Alerts log as well.
The Performance Monitors window in Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.2.2 provides a Threshold Violations tab. This tab shows only the threshold violations. It acts as a filter to the alert log as shown in Figure 6-4 on page 123.
Note: This success rate is defined as:
Successful Collections ÷ Attempted Collections (× 100) A 24-hour sliding window is used to calculate the value.
Figure 6-4 Threshold Violations panel
The Threshold Violations table can get large and span multiple pages. It is limited to show events from the last three weeks. Currently, the setting of three weeks cannot be changed by the user.
Alerts and Threshold Violations differ in several other ways, which might not have been obvious so far:
Alerts can be acknowledged but threshold violations cannot be acknowledged.
Threshold violations will expire based on the retention setting of sample performance data.
Threshold Violation details
If you double-click any of the entries in the table, a dialog box opens and provides details about the specific event that generated the threshold violation. Figure 6-5 on page 124 shows the details of a disk utilization percentage threshold violation.
Note: In Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, there are several default thresholds that are always set, even if you have not set up your own alerts. If these are triggered, you will see a threshold violation entry on this panel even though there is no entry in the Alerts panel.
Figure 6-5 Example of Threshold Violation details
The threshold violation shown in Figure 6-5 contains the following details: 1. The date and time of the event.
2. Information about the measured values and the threshold settings at that specific time. 3. An overview chart displaying the performance 2 hours before and up to 2 hours after the
event. This information is presented in both a tabular and graphical form. The event itself is indicated by a vertical line. The red and yellow horizontal lines show the threshold settings at the point of the event.
Note the little icon on the upper right corner of the violation details panel. If you click it the same chart will be opened in a new window. In this window, you can take actions such as changing the time frame and changing the displayed metrics.
Depending on the type of the alert, Tivoli Storage Productivity Center will be able to help you find a cause of the violation by showing you the top contributing resources. For example, the volumes that had the highest workload or the affected volumes and hosts.
Note: If you changed the threshold settings within the 4-hour window, Tivoli Storage Productivity Center will not show this. Only the settings at the time of a violation are retained by Tivoli Storage Productivity Center.