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  1. Concepts
  2. Implementation Requirements
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Implementation Requirements

This section describes the additional requirements that went into the actual management and operations architecture. These requirements are in addition to the inherent requirements described in the previous sections.

Management At All Layers

TABLE 3 describes the aspects the M&O architecture manages per layer. Note that the layers follow the execution architecture cube as described in "IT Management Framework" on page 6. The execution architecture also implies that this requirement must be considered at all tiers (client through resource). The developers did not make this distinction because the complete managed architecture required the same visibility at all implemented tiers.

Facilities management is beyond the scope of this project. It is however an essential component of IT management.

TABLE 3 Managed Aspects By Layer

Layer

iForce Implementation

Fault

Configuration

Accounting

Performance

Security

Business application

IPlanet Message Server 5.10

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Yes

Next phase

Mail MultiPlexer (MMP)

Yes

Next phase

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)

Yes

Next phase

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Application infrastructure

iPlanet Directory Server 4.13

Yes

Next phase

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

DNS

Yes

Next phase

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Firewall

Yes

Next phase

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

NTP

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Next phase

Next phase

Computing and storage platform

Netra_ T1 server

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Netra 1405 server

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Sun Fire_ 6800 server

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Netra X1 server

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Sun StorEdge_ T3 array

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Sun Enteprise_ A1000 server

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Ancor Switches

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Sun_ Cluster 3.0 software

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Solaris_ OE

Yes

Yes

Yes

Next phase

Next phase

Facilities infrastructure

iForce lab

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A


Yes: Management capability is included in current architecture.

Next phase: Management capability is to be included in a subsequent architecture.

N/A: Management capability is considered beyond the scope of this project.

Security management is planned for a subsequent phase. At this time the IDC Mail and Messaging Architecture facilitates security with a firewall complex at the entrance. A Security assessment will be scheduled to determine gaps and next steps. However, the tools currently deployed can facilitate security event management.

Accounting is currently under consideration because of its importance in an ISP/ASP environment. However the scope of this effort is well beyond the current efforts and is still being defined.

The capacity planning aspect is an extension of performance management and affects multiple layers. It requires a complete process and the inclusion of variables that help anticipate future needs. The iFRC has done extensive sizing tests using the tools deployed in the M&O architecture. The results are published in the Server Sizing Guide related to the IDC Mail and Messaging Architecture project.

Performance Data Collection, Metrics and Thresholds

This section contains more details on the selected measurements and thresholds for performance tuning and capacity planning that are the main objectives of the IDC Mail and Messaging Reference Architecture project.

This section describes the baseline performance monitoring metrics as defined in the SunPS performance tuning and capacity planning methodology. Based on this information, the developers can identify and locate potential problems. In addition, provides the basic data to start the capacity planning process.

Every system's behavior depends on what application it is supporting. Therefore, you should do a detailed requirement analysis on a system and application pair basis. The information that follows, however, is a good baseline set of requirements.

The actually implementation of the concepts described in the preceding section was influenced by pragmatic constraints. The following are the major constraints considered.

  • Cost
  • Ease of deployment and availability
  • Installation and configuration time

At all times, the important consideration was the ability of the tools to perform the required tasks. The following section lists those requirements.

Performance information is summarized in the following categories:

  • CPU
  • Disk
  • Memory
  • Network
  • NFS (if applicable)
  • Workloads (if possible)

The format and organization of information is identical for all six categories listed and presented in subsequent sections. Information for each category is tabulated under the three columns:

  • Parameter

    Lists the parameters considered in the monitoring requirements for each of the six categories listed above.

  • Description

    Describes the parameter.

  • Expected Value

    Lists the acceptable value for each of the above parameters. If there is no threshold of acceptance for the parameter, this column will indicate "Relative or Informational".

NOTE

Some of the expected values listed may need adjustment based on individual characteristics. (For example, CPU utilization must be normalized for the number of CPUs or percent of disk full relative to the total size of available space.)

The following sections list the various requirements for performance monitoring

CPU Metrics

To determine system performance health, you should monitor the CPU parameters listed in TABLE 4. TABLE 4. lists the CPU-related metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 4 CPU Metrics

Parameter

Description

Expected Value

Percent CPU utilization

Total for all CPUs. Any utilization imbalance among CPUs identified.

<80 percent per CPU

User CPU

Percent CPU power spent on running user programs, libraries, and so forth should account for most of the CPU usage.

<90 percent

System CPU

Percent CPU power spent on executing system, kernel and administrative code (for example, device drivers, I/O handling and so forth).

<USR CPU

Run queue

Number of processes waiting to run on the CPU. UNIX uses the run queue to determine which process gets to use the CPU next. If the run queue exceeds two processes per processor, it may indicate a bottleneck.

< 2x CPU

Wait for I/O

Percent time CPU has to wait for disk to respond. High values could indicate a disk bottleneck (if disk busy and service times are high), otherwise could indicate a controller bottleneck.

<30 percent


References:

I/O Metrics

To determine system performance health, you should monitor the I/O related parameters listed in TABLE 5. TABLE 5 lists the I/O-related metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 5 I/O Metrics

Parameter

Description

Expected Value

Low activity disks

It is important to balance the load on disks. This list indicates disks with low or no activity that may be available for load balancing.

 

Disk space used by files system

Indicates the file systems are running short of disk space.

<85 percent

Inode usage

Shows when space allocated for i-node entries is running short.

<20 percent

Percent busy (top 10)

Indicates the percent of time the disk is actually doing work. High values may indicate a disk or controller bottleneck.

<35 percent

Average service time

Indicates the time it takes the disk to complete a request. High values may indicate a disk or controller bottleneck.

Note—Some lightly used disks may exhibit long service times. This is a well-known anomaly and should be taken into consideration during performance analysis.

<30ms

Queue length

Number of jobs waiting to be processed by the I/O system.

<1


References:

Memory Metrics

The memory metrics are divided into four subcategories:

  • Paging
  • Buffers
  • Swap
  • Kernel
Paging

Paging moves data or individual pages of a process between disk and memory. A high page-out rate (move to disk) could be due to heavy writing of data to disk and does not necessarily indicate a memory shortage. However, it is an important metric to collect. TABLE 6 lists the memory-paging metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 6 Memory Paging Metrics

Parameter

Description

Expected Value

Scan Rate

This parameter is used as a clear indication of memory shortage. A value higher than 320 per second may mean that the processes do not have enough memory in which to run.

<200 pages per second


References:

Buffers

In Solaris OE version 2 and above, cache buffers are used to cache inode, indirect block, and cylinder group information. A default value of percent of physical memory for buffers is generally considered too high for systems with large memory and can be reduced if the hit rates warrant it. TABLE 7 lists the buffer-related metrics te monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 7 Buffer Metrics

Parameter

Description

Expected Value

Percent Write Cache

System write percentage that is cached in buffers (instead of to disk)

>50 percent

Percent

Read Cache

System read percentage that comes from cache buffers (instead of from disk).

100 percent


References:

Swap Areas

Swap areas should be distributed across many fast disks. Avoid placing them on disks used for OLTP databases. TABLE 8 lists the swap-related metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 8 Swap Area Metrics

Parameter

Parameter Description

Expected Value

Swap rate

Lack of memory can result in a whole process moving from memory to disk, called swap-out. This process should be very infrequent. Swap-ins indicate recalling of a swapped-out process, that is disk thrashing.

1 per day

Available swap

Low numbers indicate memory shortage and can cause processes to thrash to disk rather than perform their task.

32 Mbytes


References:

Kernel

This section lists the essential metrics to collect regarding the performance of processes in the kernel as they may indicate memory related issues. TABLE 9 lists the metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 9 Kernel Metrics

Parameter

Description

Expected Value

Memory failures

Memory failures indicate that permanent and huge kernel memory allocation failed. This metric is highly critical

0

File access

This category reflects the amount of activity spent in locating files through directory block reads, i-node searches and file system path searches. It is good for establishing baselines.

Relative


References:

Network Metrics

While these requirements do not focus on the network, Sun servers do provide some general statistics, derived from the network cards, which can indicate performance issues.

TABLE 10 lists the network metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 10

Parameter

Parameter Description

Expected Value

Collisions

Used as a measure of network congestion. Not relevant in switched segments. High values usually indicate mis-configured interfaces.

<15 percent

Errors in/out

This statistic usually indicates hardware/driver problems.

<0.02 percent

Bytes in/out

Used as a baseline.

Relative

No. of connections

(For example, ftp, rlogin, telnet). Used as a baseline.

Relative


References:

NFS Metrics

NFS is often the cause of performance issues. On systems that run NFS, the following parameters and values for this category should be monitored as they indicate potential performance issues. TABLE 11 lists the NFS metrics the monitoring tool must be able to collect.

TABLE 11 NFS Metrics

Parameter

Parameter Description

Expected Value

Calls

Used as a baseline.

Relative

Bad Calls

Used as a baseline.

Relative


References:

Workloads

This category of metrics characterizes workloads by the extent they use general resources of the server. Mainly, this category is used for capacity planning purposes but it can also be used to see where, from a business perspective, issues might come from. Defining a workload is a way of grouping resource usage to create a logical unit of work. For example, in one company the number of users in the sales department may be increasing by threefold, while marketing and finance, which also access the same server, may be expected to grow only twofold. In this case, you can define three workloads, each including users from a different department. In this way, resource usage by each department can be tracked and the appropriate factor for growth can be applied.

Or, it could be that a company that is running two applications on a single server is planning to increase the total number of users accessing application A by a factor of two and the total number of users accessing application B by a factor of three. To assess resource usage by each application, the processes associated with each application are included in a separate workload, and the appropriate growth factor can then be applied to each.

TABLE 12 lists the workload-related metrics the monitoring tool must be able to define and collect.

TABLE 12 Workload Metrics

Parameter

Description

Expected Value

Percent CPU per workload

Used as a baseline

Relative

Physical I/O per workload

Used as a baseline

Relative

No. of processes per workload

Used as a baseline.

Relative

Resident set size per workload

Memory occupied by each workload. Used as a baseline.

Relative


Tool Selection

This document described the SLM management concepts, implementation requirements and management metrics. TABLE 13 shows the tools that were selected as a result. The implementation of these will be discussed in the next article.

TABLE 13 Tools Distribution by Layer

Layer

iForce Implementation

Fault

Config

Accounting

Performance

Security

Business application

iPlanet Message Server 5.1

SunMC/Micromuse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuestMicromuse

TBD

MMP

SunMC/Micromuse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuestMicromuse

TBD

MTA

SunMC/Micro-Muse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuestMicromuse

TBD

Application infrastructure

iPlanet Directory Server 4.13

Micromuse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuestMicromuse

TBD

DNS

Micromuse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuestMicromuse

TBD

Firewall

Micromuse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

NTP

Micromuse

TBD

TBD

TeamQuestMicromuse

TBD

Computing and storage platform

Netra T1 server

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Netra 1405 server

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Sun Fire 6800 server

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Netra X1 server

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Sun StorEdge T3 Array

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Sun Enterprise A1000

SunMC

N/A

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Sun SAN Switches

SunMC

TBD

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Sun Cluster 3.0 software

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Solaris OE

SunMC

SunMC

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Network Infrastructure

Foundry NetIron

Foundry

Foundry

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Foundry ServerIron

Foundry

Foundry

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Foundry BigIron

Foundry

Foundry

TBD

TeamQuest

TBD

Facilities Infrastructure

iForce Lab

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A


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