eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by VrtxPhyDiskTest

VRTX allows physical disks to be grouped into virtual/logical disks and presented for consumption by single or multiple blade servers. If one/more of these disks fail or run out of space, it is bound to impact the virtual storage resources available to the blade servers, causing multiple blade servers to contend for limited storage space. The lack of adequate storage space will eventually degrade blade server performance.

To make sure that blade servers perform at peak capacity at all times, administrators must proactively and accurately identify the physical disks that are about to fail or run out of space, determine the cause for the failure/space crunch, and swiftly address it, so that the disk failure can be prevented. This is where the PowerEdge Physical Disks test helps.

For each physical disk in the VRTX, this test reports the current state of that physical disk and tracks how space in that disk has been utilized. This way, the test points administrators to those disks that are behaving abnormally and those that have been utilized excessively.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Health_status Indicates how healthy this physical disk currently is.   The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Other 1
Unknown 2
Normal 3
NonCritical 4
Critical 5
NonRecoverable 6

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the Measure Values listed above to indicate the current health of a physical disk. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.

Current_state Indicates the current operational status of this physical disk.   The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Failed 0
Unknown 1
Ready 2
Online 3
Foreign 4
Offline 6
Blocked 5
Non Raid 8
Removed 9

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the Measure Values listed above to indicate the current health of the physical disk. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.
Diskspare_status Indicates whether/not this physical disk.   The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed below:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Not a spare 1
Dedicated hot spare 2
Global hot spare 3

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the Measure Values listed above to indicate whether/not the physical disk is a spare disk or not. In the graph of this measure however, the same is represented using the numeric equivalents only.
Total_space Indicates the total space in this physical disk. GB  
Used_space Indicates the amount of disk space used in this physical disk. GB Compare the value of this measure across disks to know from which disk maximum space has been consumed.
Free_space Indicates the amount of space in this disk that is currently unused. GB A high value is desired for this measure. Compare the value of this measure across physical disks to know which disk has maximum free space.
Space_util Indicates the percentage of space in this disk that is in use. Percent A value close to 100% for this measure is indicative of excessive space usage. Compare the value of this measure across physical disks to identify that disk that could be running out of space.