StorADE - what does it monitor
Hi
I was trying to find the information what StorADE software can monitor. I found installation guides, general guidelines but not, lets say a table, with all possible events it can monitor. I am looking for something like this:
StorADE can monitor and detect:
1) controller failur
2) disk failure
3) FC channel problem
4) FC channel errors, retries etc
The documentation in this area is ... deficient.
Has anybody of you, great admins, came across such document?
Regards
Piff-Paffcio
# 1
did you happen to find this?
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0104/817-5205.pdf
looks like it is limited to Solaris 9. StorAde 2.4 supports Solaris 10...
http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=41c884fa
Google is your friend.
haroldkarl
Message was edited by:
haroldb
# 2
Storade is a wonderful product. I swear by it. At least 2.4 that is. Previous versions may had have more bells and whistles but I like the current version.
It is primarily for Sun Storage so do get your hopes up high with your HDS/EMC/HP systems. It monitors switches via SNMP walks and will let you know some good things depending on what your switch is. Pity it does not work with Cisco SAN switches.
Check out:
http://docs.sun.com/source/819-0432-17/relnote.html.
If you have lots of SAN attached systems, it is sometimes worthwhile putting Storade on each system as it gives some really interesting information about the fabrics.The Storade GUI will present all that information in a java applet that is great for determining your network.
It gets a bit carried away with large numbers of SAN devices. Between the Switch snmpwalks, the 3000 sccli walks, the http gets on the T3s and looking after itself, some of the information can get a bit late. I cant tell you the optimal number of master hosts to use but probably keep it down to 50 or so and use slaves if you can.
I rate Storade 2.4 as one of the best free programs that Sun has ever produced.
So to answer your original question. It will do almost everything that you need to know about your Sun storage. Crappy 3510 controller failures and failed disks are its speciaility. HBA failures on the actual Storade hosts will raise alarms as it scans the /var/adm/messags file among other things. It will let you know your 3510 battery is about to expire but it wont tell you your T3 battery is older than its two years. If you use Sun switches, it will let you know ports have gone offline, error count warnings, retry warnings, lip resets (perhaps). It does not do everything but it will give you enough rope to hang yourself.
Some information is not exactly worth the effort but you will learn to love it and rely very heavily on it in any sized environment.
Lets put it this way, I can do a better job looking after a Sun host )with FC disks and SAMFS - Sun switch - Sun 3510 with Storade than anything else on the market that is free.
HTH!!
Stephen
# 3
Hi Stephen
thanx for that. I've just installed it yesterday - looks nice :-). I wanted to get information what exactly parameters are monitored. To be honest I don't want to test and sometimes I cannot do that (how to test the controller or cache failure?). I hope StorADE covers all or 90% of failures but who can name them? I hope for example that cache failure is detected, but where is it written? The docuemntation for StorADE and SunMC is ... let say limited.
P.S. Anyway your response is great and I can see that your experience with StorADE is quite extensive.
Regards
Paul
# 4
Paul,
I would say that if you have any of the devices that are included in the release notes that I posted earlier than you will be satisfied with the results that Storade can deliver.
You must understand that Storade is basically a front end to a number of standard processes that are available with most products. EG, 3510 uses sccli to get info.sccli is not the be all end all of super duper diag systems. I have so many storage devices to look after that we are talking about similiar figures to most third world economies GDP.Your Tivolis and Openviews (which is my speciality) cannot manage Sun Storage equipment like Storade.
You could install Storade and then inspect all the perl scripts that come with it and see what it does. I understand that you would like details on what to expect and as you have not mentioned what systems you want to manage, I am unable to offer any details of what I have found with Storade.
SunMC and T3 storage.. don't get me started on that. The stats and details are wonderful but it does not provide good event management to systems like Netview or Openview. It expects that you are using a TEC (there goes hundreds of thousand of dollars) or even worse, Unicenter TNG...
Cheers
Stephen
