Nexenta Volume Performance Test

NexentaStor enables you to aggregate the available disks in the system into logical data volumes, and then to allocate file or block-based storage from the data volume. The data volume provides a storage pooling capability, so that the file systems, or blocks, can expand without being over-provisioned.

If one/more of these data volumes are slow in processing I/O requests, storage I/O performance may deteriorate, thereby adversely impacting the user experience with the storage device. If this is to be avoided, storage administrators should quickly isolate latent volumes and investigate the reasons for the slowness, so that the problem is fixed before end-users notice the slowdown. The Nexenta Volume Performance test helps administrators with this!  

This test auto-discovers the volumes in the NexentaStor device and reports how well each volume handles the I/O requests it receives. In the process, the test points administrators to those volumes that are slow in I/O processing.

Target of the test : A NexentaStor appliance

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each volume that is to be monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port number at which the specified Host listens to. By default, this will be NULL.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Reads	Indicates the rate at which read operations were performed on this volume.	Reads/sec	Ideally, the value of this measure should be high. A steady dip in this measure value could indicate a potential reading bottleneck.
Writes	Indicates the rate at which write operations were performed on this volume.	Writes/sec	Ideally, the value of this measure should be high. A steady dip in this measure value could indicate a potential writing bottleneck.
Read I/O	Indicates the rate at which data is read from this volume.	KB/sec	Comparing the value of these measures across the volumes will clearly indicate which volume is the slowest in I/O processing, and when exactly the slowdown occurred - when reading data? Or when writing data?.
Write I/O	Indicates the rate at which data is written to this volume.	KB/sec
Read latency	Indicates the time taken to read the data from this volume.	Millisecs	Compare the value of this measure across volumes to know which volume is the slowest when processing read requests.
Write latency	Indicates the time taken to write the data to this volume.	Millisecs	Compare the value of this measure across volumes to know which volume is the slowest when processing write requests.