eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by HiVSPChanProcTest

A Hitachi VSP may comprise of multiple Channel adapters. The Channel adapter (CHA) processes a command from a host or other storage system to a local storage system and controls data transfer to the Hitachi VSP. The host and other storage system are connected to a fibre port on the CHA via the fibre channel. Sending and receiving commands to and from another storage system via the channel adapter enables data copy and backup between storages. For the data to be copied swiftly to the storage of the Hitachi VSP, it is essential for the Channel adapters to respond to the requests in a quick manner. If the Channel adapters are busy or unable to process the requests as and when the requests are received, then the data backup between the storage systems may not synchronize leading to data loss which inturn would result in critical failures. To avoid such critical failures, it is essential for the administrators to monitor each Channel adapter of the target Hitachi VSP and figure out the responsiveness and utilization of the Channel adapters. The HiVSPChanProcTest helps administrators to proactively determine the responsiveness of the channel adapters.

This test monitors the usage and responsiveness of each channel adapter, and reveals over-utilized channel adapters (if any).

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Usage Indicates the percentage of time for which this channel adapter was in use. Percent A high value or a value close to 100% is indicative of excessive usage of the channel processor. By comparing the value of this measure across adapters, you can accurately detect imbalances in load distribution, and rapidly identify the affected channel adapters. To ensure that load is balanced, you might want to consider the following:

  • Install additional CHAs, or;
  • Move devices defined on already overloaded ports to ports with CHPs that are less utilized, so as to balance front-end usage;
Data_traffic Indicates the rate at which data is transferred over this channel adapter port. KB/Sec  
Response_time Indicates the responsiveness of this channel adapter port to read-write requests. Microseconds Ideally, the value of this measure should be low. If the value of this measure is very high or is increasing steadily, then, you might want to check whether the I/O operations rate measure too reports a high value. If so, it is a clear indication that since the I/O activity is high, the hosts are taking a longer time to access the disks, thereby increasing the response time.