Monitoring Cisco HX Storage Clusters

Monitoring HyperFlex Clusters

This chapter describes the monitoring content available through the following HX Storage Cluster interfaces:

  • Cisco HX Connect

  • Cisco HX Data Platform Plug-in

  • Storage Controller VM command line

Monitoring HyperFlex Clusters with HX Connect

The Cisco HX Connect user interface provides a view of the Cisco HX storage cluster status, components, and features.

Key monitoring pages include information about the local Cisco HX storage cluster:

  • Dashboard―Overall Cisco HX storage cluster status.

  • Alarms, Events, Activity―See the Cisco HyperFlex Systems Troubleshooting Guide for details.

  • Performance―Charts for IOPS, throughput, latency, and replication network bandwidth.

  • System Information―System overview, plus status and tasks for nodes and disks.

    See the Cisco HyperFlex Systems Troubleshooting Guide for generating support bundles, Storage Cluster Maintenance Operations Overview for entering and exiting maintenance mode, and Setting a Beacon to set a node or disk beacon.

  • Datastores―Status and tasks related to datastores.

The Upgrade page provides access to HX Data Platform upgrade tasks.

Dashboard Page


Important
If you are a read-only user, you may not see all of the options available in the Help. To perform most actions in HyperFlex (HX) Connect, you must have administrative privileges.

Displays a status summary of your HX storage cluster. This is the first page that you see when you log into Cisco HyperFlex Connect.

UI Element Essential Information

Operational Status section

Provides the functional status of the HX storage cluster and application performance.

Click Information (Information icon) to access the HX storage cluster name and status data.

Cluster License Status section

Displays the following link when you log into the HX storage cluster for the first time or till the HX storage cluster license is registered:

Cluster License not registered link—Appears when the HX storage cluster is not registered. To register a cluster license, click this link and provide product instance registration token in the Smart Software Licensing Product Registration screen. For more information on how to get a product instance registration token, refer the Registering a Cluster with Smart Licensing section in the Cisco HyperFlex Systems Installation Guide for VMware ESXi.

Beginning with HXDP Release 5.0(2a), HX Connect users with expired or insuffecient licenses will be unable to access certain features or have limited feature functionality, for more information see License Compliance and Feature Functionality .

Resiliency Health section

Provides the data health status and ability of the HX storage cluster to tolerate failures.

Click Information (Information icon) to access the resiliency status, and replication and failure data.

Capacity section

Displays a breakdown of the total storage versus how much storage is used or free.

Also displays the storage optimization, compression-savings, and deduplication percentages based on the data stored in the cluster.

Nodes section

Displays the number of nodes in the HX storage cluster, and the division of converged versus compute nodes. Hovering over a node icon displays that node's name, IP address, node type, and an interactive display of disks with access to capacity, usage, serial number, and disk type data.

Performance section

Displays an HX storage cluster performance snapshot for a configurable amount of time, showing IOPS, throughput, and latency data.

For full details, see Performance Page.

Cluster Time field

System date and time for the cluster.

Table Header Common Fields

Several tables in HX Connect provide one or more of the following three fields that affect the content displayed in the table.

UI Element Essential Information

Refresh field and icon

The table automatically refreshes for dynamic updates to the HX Cluster. The timestamp indicates the last time the table was refreshed.

Click the circular icon to refresh the content now.

Filter field

Display in the table only list items that match the entered filter text. The items listed in the current page of the table below are automatically filtered. Nested tables are not filtered.

Type in the selection text in the Filter field.

To empty the Filter field, click the x.

To export content from other pages in the table, scroll to the bottom, click through the page numbers, and apply the filter.

Export menu

Save a copy of the current page of table data. The table content is downloaded to the local machine in the selected file type. If the listed items are filtered, the filtered subset list is exported.

Click the down arrow to select an export file type. The file type options are: cvs, xls, and doc.

To export content from other pages in the table, scroll to the bottom, click through the page numbers, and apply the export.

Activity Page

Displays a list of recent activity on the HX storage cluster allowing you to monitor the progress of VM operations, Cluster upgrade/expansion, and enter/exit maintenance mode.

UI Element Essential Information

Activity list

Displays a list of recent tasks including the following details:

  • ID

  • Description

  • VM power on/off/suspend status

  • Task status:

    • In Progress

    • Success

    • Failed

      For failed VM-power operations, the Existing State and Required State fields are also included.

  • Date and time stamp

  • Progress bar

An expanded Activity list shows the task's step name and status.

Click the circular icon to refresh the content and fetch recent activity. The page refreshes every 2 minutes.

Expand All / Collapse All button

Toggles the view of the job list to display top-level task information or task details.

You can also expand and collapse individual tasks.

System Information Overview Page

Displays HX storage cluster system-related information, including node and disk data, and provides access to HX maintenance mode.

HX Storage Cluster Configuration Data

Displays the basic configuration information for this HX storage cluster.

UI Element Essential Information

HX storage cluster field

Name of this storage cluster.

HX storage cluster status field

Provides functional status of the HX storage cluster.

  • Online—Cluster is ready.

  • Offline—Cluster is not ready.

  • Read Only—Cluster is out of space.

  • Unknown—Transitional state while the cluster is coming online.

Hypervisor field

Hypervisor version installed on this HX storage cluster.

HXDP Version field

Installer package version installed on this HX storage cluster.

Uptime field

Length of time this HX storage cluster has been online.

Total Capacity field

Overall storage size of this cluster.

Available Capacity field

Amount of free storage in this cluster.

DNS Server(s)

IP address for the DNS server(s) for this HX storage cluster.

NTP Server(s)

IP address for the NTP server(s) for this HX storage cluster.

Controller VM Access

You can access the controller VM using SSH as an administrator. To enable access, click Actions at the top of the page to enable SSH access.

Node Data

Displays data about individual nodes in this HX storage cluster. To see this information in tabular format, go to the Nodes page.

UI Element Essential Information

Node field

Name of a node on this cluster.

Hypervisor Address field

IP address for the management network to this HX storage cluster.

Hypervisor Status field

  • Online—Node is available.

  • Offline—Node is not available.

  • In Maintenance—The running (and powered off) node is disconnected from the host.

  • In Progress—a backup job is in progress.

Controller address

IP address for the network controller for this HX storage cluster.

Controller Status

  • Online—The connection between the VM and the disk is available.

  • Offline—The connection between the VM and the disk is not available.

  • In Maintenance—the connection between the VM and the disk is powered off from the host.

  • In Progress—a backup job is in progress.

Model field

Physical hardware model number of this node.

HXDP Version field

Installer package version installed on this node.

Disks field

Number of persistent and caching disks in this node.

For nodes with disks, you can place your cursor over a disk to view an interactive display of information including the following.

Disks

UI Element Essential Information

Slot Number

Location of the drive, for example Slot Number 2.

Type of Disk

System, Cache or Persistent

Disk State

  • Claimed

  • Available

  • Ignored

  • Blacklisted

  • Ok to Remove

  • Unknown

Locator LED

Activates a physical light on the host to help locate a disk; options are On and Off.

Capacity

Total disk size.

Used / Total Capacity (Persistent Disks only)

Amount of the disk used versus the total disk size.

Serial Number

Physical serial number of this disk.

Storage Usage (Persistent Disks only)

Percentage of disk storage used.

Version

Version of the disk drive.

Disk Drive Interface

The disk drive interface type, for example SAS or SATA.

Nodes Page

Displays data about all of the nodes in this HX storage cluster in a table. Each column can be used to sort the data.

UI Element Essential Information

Enter HXDP Maintenance Mode button

Select a node to access this button.

Opens the Confirm HXDP Maintenance Mode dialog box.

Exit HXDP Maintenance Mode button

Select a node to access this button.

After you complete any maintenance tasks, you must manually exit HXDP Maintenance Mode.

Node column

Name of a node in this HX storage cluster.

Hypervisor Address column

IP address for the management network of the Node referred in the Node column.

Hypervisor Status column

  • Online—Node is available.

  • Offline—Node is not available.

  • In Maintenance—The running (and powered off) node is disconnected from the host.

  • In Progress—a backup job is in progress.

Controller Address column

IP address for the HX storage controller VM of the Node referred in the Node column.

Controller Status column

  • Online—The connection between the VM and the disk is available.

  • Offline—The connection between the VM and the disk is not available.

  • In Maintenance—the connection between the VM and the disk is powered off from the host.

Model column

Physical hardware model number of this node.

Version column

HyperFlex Data Platform installer package version installed on this node.

Disks column

Number of disks in the node.

Click the number to open the Disks page filtered by the selected node name.

Disks Page

Displays data about all of the disks in this HX storage cluster in a 7-column table. Each column can be used to sort the data.

UI Element Essential Information

Node column

Name of the node where the disk resides.

Slot column

Location of the SED drive. This identifies the drive for maintenance procedures.

Capacity column

Total disk size.

Status column

  • Available—Initial state for a newly added, data-at-rest capable disk. Also, a transitional state when disks move into one of the other states.

  • Blacklisted—State when a disk is not being consumed by the cluster due to either a software error or an IO error. This could be a transitional state while the cluster attempts to repair the disk, if the disk is still available, before the state transitions to Repairing.

  • Claimed—State when a disk is recognized and in use.

  • Ignored—State when a disk is not being consumed by the cluster; for example, the HX controller VM system disk, a disk with other data (valid file system partitions), or a disk where the IO is failing.

  • Repairing—State when a blacklisted disk is currently being repaired.

  • To Be Removed—State when a disk is scheduled for RMA.

The following states can be ignored:

  • Invalid

  • Normal

  • Removed—State when an SED disk is removed after using the Secure Erase option.

  • Time out

  • Unknown

Type column

  • Unknown

  • Rotational—Hybrid drive

  • Solid State—SSD drive

Usage column

  • Unknown

  • Cache

  • Persistent

Turn On Locator LED and Turn Off Locator LED radio buttons

Select a disk to access the radio buttons.

Activates or deactivates a physical light, or beacon, on the host to help locate the disk.