Managing Shared Disks

Monitoring Virtual Shared Disks

The objects to be monitored are virtual shared disks on nodes. There are subjects of interest to monitor which are always available to virtual shared disk nodes as conditions and you can just start monitoring them on a per node basis. There are other subjects which you can choose to monitor but you must first prepare them for monitoring. You must make them available for monitoring on a node each time you monitor them. You must also create conditions for them the first time you decide to monitor them.

The subjects are called resource variables. Resource variables are based on the same information that is displayed by the lsvsd -l, lsvsd -s, and statvsd commands. Some of the information from these commands is available as static attributes which you can only view. Resource variables are dynamic attributes that might change over time due to events and are suitable for monitoring.

Conditions are based on resource variables. The resource variables that are always available for all virtual shared disk nodes are:

IBM.PSSP.VSDdrv.num_suspended

IBM.PSSP.VSDdrv.num_active

IBM.PSSP.VSDdrv.num_not_active

IBM.PSSP.VSDdrv.num_stopped

IBM.PSSP.VSDdrv.RVSD_status

There are many other virtual shared disk resource variables which you might want to prepare for monitoring. You can see a complete list when you are using the Event Perspective to create a condition (see Preparing to monitor Virtual Shared Disk statistics).

The conditions that are provided by default in the IBM Virtual Shared Disk Perspective graphical user interface are:

hasInactiveIBMVSDs

rvsdInRecovery

This rest of this section tells you how to:

• View virtual shared disk dynamic attributes using the IBM Virtual Shared Disk Perspective table view.
• Prepare to monitor virtual shared disk and device driver statistics that are not always available.
• Monitor virtual shared disk conditions on nodes.

viewing dynamic attributes

Though using the IBM Virtual Shared Disk Perspective table view is technically not monitoring, some virtual shared disk attributes can change dynamically as a result of events and can be interesting to watch. By having the Nodes pane in table view, you can keep an eye on dynamic attributes while you continue with other virtual shared disk activities.

To view counts of active, suspended, or stopped virtual shared disks on each node in table view, do the following:

1. Click on the Nodes pane
2. Click on View>Show Objects in Table View or click on the table icon in the tool bar
3. Click on the VSD Node tab in the Set Table Attributes for Nodes dialog
4. Click on the attributes you want to view while pressing the <Ctrl> key
5. Click on OK

For example, Figure 13 shows a pane in table view with the following attributes:

Host responds

Switch responds

Active VSDs count

Suspended VSDs count

Stopped VSDs count

RVSD subsystem

After you have the Nodes pane in table view, you can toggle between icon and table view by clicking on the table icon in the tool bar. If you decide you want to see other attributes in your table view, click on View>Set Table Attributes... and change your selections.

However, the number of dynamically changing attributes available for table view is limited. For more in-depth monitoring, see Preparing to monitor Virtual Shared Disk statistics.

Preparing to monitor Virtual Shared Disk statistics

More in-depth monitoring is available after using the PSSP Event Perspective to create the additional conditions you want to monitor.

To prepare for monitoring virtual shared disk and device driver statistics that are not always available, you must:

1. Enable monitoring of virtual shared disks on a node by the PSSP Event Management services.

   Do this by running the monitorvsd command on each node you want to monitor. More specifically, the command makes available the statistics returned from the lsvsd -s command. You can enable monitoring of up to 300 virtual shared disks on one node.

2. Use the Event Perspective graphical user interface to create the virtual shared disk conditions to be monitored.

To create a monitoring condition, do the following:

1. Start the Event Perspective using the spevent command
2. Click in the Event Definitions pane
3. Click on Actions>Create...
4. Click the Definition tab on the right to make that page current
5. Specify an event definition name
6. In the Condition box, click on Create Condition...
7. Specify a name and description
8. Under Resource variable classes, click on IBM.PSSP.VSD
9. Under Resource variable names, click on a resource variable on which to base the condition to monitor (Show Details has a description and an example)
10. Specify an Event expression
11. Click on Create
12. In the Condition box, select the name of the condition you just created
13. Select appropriate items under Resource ID
14. To begin monitoring, be sure Register the event definition is checked
15. Click on the Notifications tab and the Actions tab to specify, on each page respectively, the notifications and actions that you want to take place when the condition is triggered
16. Click on Create

You can create conditions for virtual shared disk statistics and others for virtual shared disk device driver statistics by varying what you select under Resource variable names. See the online help in the Event Perspective for details on creating event definitions and conditions. You can also view the default conditions to see examples of how conditions are defined.

After event definitions have been created and registered, each time the event or the rearm occurs, it is posted in the Global View of Event Notification Log in the Event Perspective. You might find it useful to analyze this log as a history of where and when events occurred.

After the conditions have been created, they are available to be used for monitoring in the IBM Virtual Shared Disk Perspective.

Monitoring conditions

In the IBM Virtual Shared Disk Perspective, monitoring means that selected objects are continually watched for changes in state. After a change in state occurs, the appearance of the object in the pane changes. For example, the object icon is shown with green when a condition being monitored has not triggered while a red X on the icon means a condition has triggered.

To monitor conditions that are available by default or that you have created, use the IBM Virtual Shared Disk Perspective graphical user interface to do the following:

1. Click on the Nodes pane
2. Click on View>Set Monitoring...
3. Click on the IBM VSD Node tab
4. Select the conditions you want to monitor (to select more than one, hold down the <Ctrl> key)
5. Click on OK

The icons in the Nodes pane will change color based on the aggregate state of all of the conditions being monitored. To see details about the state of each condition for a particular node, do the following:

1. Click on the node's icon in the Nodes pane
2. Click on Actions>View and Modify Properties...
3. Look at the Monitored Conditions page

After you have the monitoring results, stop monitoring the condition. If you used the monitorvsd command to enable monitoring, use it again to disable monitoring.