How to Monitor the HP 3PAR Storage System Using eG Enterprise?

eG Enterprise  monitors the HP 3PAR Storage system in an agentless manner. All that is required for this is an eG agent needs to be deployed on a remote Windows host in the environment.

The eG agent will poll the SMI-S Provider of the target HP 3PAR Storage system at set intervals and collects the required performance metrics, provided the target storage system is not SSL-enabled. If the target HP 3PAR Storage system is SSL-enabled, then, the eG agent will poll the HPE 3PAR Web Services API Server using REST API commands and collects the required metrics. To know where to install this eG agent and how to configure the eG agent to interact with the SMS-S Provider/HPE 3PAR Web Services API Server, follow the guidelines discussed in the sections below:

Pre-requisites for monitoring Non-SSL HP 3PAR Storage System

  1. By default, the SMI-S Provider/CIM Server is embedded within the HP 3PAR Storage system. The eG agent can therefore, be deployed on any remote windows host in the environment. Ensure that the Windows host is able to connect to the SMI-S Provider and pull out metrics related to the storage system.
  2. By default, the SMI-S Provider is disabled in the HP 3PAR Storage system. To enable the SMI-S provider, the administrator should login to putty and connect to the target HP 3PAR Storage system via SSH. Remember that the administrator should possess super user privileges to connect to the target storage system.

  3. Once connected to the target HP 3PAR Storage system, issuing the startcim command in the CLI of the target storage system will enable and start the SMI-S Provider.

    Note:

    The SMI-S Provider will start in 90 seconds after the startcim command is issued.

  4. To disable the SMI-S Provider, issue the stopcim command. If you wish to be prompted to confirm your intention to disable the SMI-S Provider, then you may issue the stopcim –f command.

  5. If you are in doubt about the current status of the SMI-S Provider, then you can verify the current status of the SMI-S Provider in the CLI by issuing the showcim command. An example SMI-S Provider status information is as follows:

    -Service- -State- --SLP-- SLPPort -HTTP-- HTTPPort -HTTPS- HTTPSPort PGVer CIMVer

    Enabled Active Enabled 427 Enabled 5988 Enabled 5989 2.9.1 3.1.2

    Using this command you can view the overall status of the SMI-S Provider; the status and ports used for the HTTP, HTTPS, and SLP; the version of the internal Pegasus CIM Object Manager; and the version of the CIM Server/SMI-S Provider.

  6. By default, to pull out the required metrics from the target HP 3PAR Storage System, the eG agent executes certain SMI-s API commands. For this purpose, the eG agent should connect with a special user who is authorized to access the target storage system. Note that the user should possess Browser role. To know how to create a user with Browser role, refer to How to Create a New User with Browser Role?.

  7. Manage the target storage system using the eG administrative interface. To know the procedure refer to Monitoring HP 3PAR Storage System.

Pre-requisites for monitoring SSL-enabled HP 3PAR Storage System

HPE 3PAR Web Services API delivers a programming interface for performing storage management tasks with HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems.

  1. By default, the HPE 3PAR Web Services API Server is embedded within the HP 3PAR Storage system. The eG agent can therefore, be deployed on any remote windows host in the environment. Ensure that the Windows host is able to connect to the HPE 3PAR Web Services API and pull out metrics related to the storage system.

  2. By default, the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server is disabled in the HP 3PAR Storage system. To enable the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server, the administrator should login to the HPE StoreServ CLI as a user with administrator privilege and issue the following command:

    # ssh <administrator account>@<SP IP Address>

    Here, administrator account is the name of the user who is authorized to login to the target HPE 3PAR Storage server and the SP IP address is the IP address of the target HPE 3PAR Storage server.

  3. Once connected to the target HP 3PAR Storage system, issuing the startwsapi command in the CLI of the target storage system will enable and start the HP 3PAR Web Services API server.

    • If you are in doubt about the current status of the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server, then you can verify the current status of the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server in the CLI by issuing the showwsapi command. An example HPE 3PAR Web Services API server status information is as follows:

      -Service- -State- -HTTP_State- HTTP_Port -HTTPS_State- HTTPS_Port -Version-

      Enabled Active Enabled 8088 Enabled 8080 1.6.1

      Using this command you can view the overall status of the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server; the status and ports used for the HTTP, HTTPS, and the version of the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server.

  4. If the HPE 3PAR Web Services API server is not SSL-enabled, then, execute the following command to SSL-enable the server.

    # setwsapi -https enable

  5. By default, to pull out the required metrics from the target SSL-enabled HP 3PAR Storage System, the eG agent executes certain REST API commands. For this purpose, the eG agent should connect with a special user who is authorized to access the target storage system. Note that the user should possess Browser role. To know how to create a user with Browser role, refer to How to Create a New User with Browser Role?.

  6. Manage the target storage system using the eG administrative interface. To know the procedure refer to Monitoring HP 3PAR Storage System.

How to Create a New User with Browser Role?

In order to collect the required metrics, the eG agent should connect to a user with Browser role and execute certain API commands on the target storage system. Administrators can either create a new user or use an exisiting user witth Browser role for this purpose. To create a new user with Browser role, do the following:

  • Open the CLI of the target storage system.

  • Here, specify the following command:

    createuser [option] <username> <domainname> <role>

    where,

    [option] is specifying the user's password in clear text format. This should be in format: -c <clear-textpassword>

    For example, to create a user named john belonging to NAS domain with Browser role, you need to issue the following command:

    createuser -c john@123 john NAS Browser

  • Once the user is successfully created, specify the credentials of the user while configuring the tests in the test configuration page.