Tech ONTAP Articles

Unified Manager and Performance Manager go Streamline

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February 2016

 
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Kristina Brand
Senior Product Marketing Manager, NetApp
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Dhiman Chakraborty
Technical Marketing Engineer, NetApp
 

This article is the third in a four-part series focusing on NetApp storage management as an integral part of our Data Fabric story.

 

Think about your biggest concerns about storage management today. Are you most focused on managing data growth, or increasing server or desktop virtualization? Are you planning a tech refresh or a data center consolidation? Do you have a highly virtualized environment, or are you moving to a hybrid cloud environment?

 

NetApp has a portfolio of management solutions to help you meet your particular business requirements. In this article, we focus on some of the improvements in Unified Manager and Performance Manager—NetApp recommended tools for day-to-day operational management.

 

With NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager 6.4, you can monitor the capacity and performance per cluster in a single UI. With OnCommand Unified Manager 6.4 and OnCommand Performance Manager 2.1 coupled together in a single UI, there is seamless navigation between both products for the first time.

 

The new single interface approach further streamlines how administrators manage their clustered Data ONTAP environment. This latest release allows administrators to add a cluster resource on the Unified Manager interface only once, the cluster is added automatically to the Unified Manager instance and its respective Performance Manager instance simultaneously, thereby preventing administrators from performing repetitive tasks. Plus, administrators don't have to remember each cluster's association to its particular performance manager instance.

 

We have also made scaling even easier for administrators because the Unified Manager and Performance Manager backends handle scaling requirements automatically. You can also measure clustered data ONTAP performance through the single interface thus enabling you to troubleshoot issues and isolate potential problems when searching for a concrete solution to your performance issues.

 

Moving to a single interface also empowers the OnCommand Administrator because they can now access Unified Manager 6.4 features (alert scripts, annotations, capacity information, and reporting) and Performance Manager 2.1 capabilities (explorer and analytics to optimize performance) using one user interface (UI).

Inside the Toolset

There's now a tighter coupling between Unified Manager 6.4 and Performance Manager 2.1 which simplifies management and streamlines root cause analysis and related tasks because administrators don't have to consult multiple tools like they had to historically. An example of the tighter integration between Unified Manager and Performance Manager is the Performance view.

 

 

Figure 1) The Performance View shows the tight coupling between Unified Manager and Performance Manager.

 

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Source: NetApp, 2016

 

 

The single interface also adds Favorites where you can monitor up to twenty critical storage objects in a single window. Favorites give you a better view of your critical resources including capacity, uptime, and performance. This new view can assist in reactive monitoring scenarios.

 

 

Figure 2) Monitor up to twenty critical storage objects in a single window using Favorites.

 

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Source: NetApp, 2016

 

 

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.4 includes new features such as:

 

  • Copy Free Transition (CFT) allowing admins to distinguish between aggregates in transition and in pre-commit phase so it will prevent you from writing to an aggregate in the pre-commit phase as it migrates, while maintaining data integrity.
  • Manual annotations through drag and drop, to facilitate reporting, allowing users to manage resources according to particular business function, department or business unit.
  • Best practices for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) installers, which allows admins to specify their own data directories while guiding through the installation.
  • SnapLock and Non-SnapLock resource identification in the clusters with reporting capability.

 

Storage Automation Store

The Storage Automation Store includes NetApp custom report packs. You can download these reports and import them into your OnCommand Unified Manager instance. The Storage Automation Store is the one stop location for all NetApp custom report packs. The store allows you to download latest report packs, workflow automation packs, and Performance Manager dashboard templates.

 

You can import report packs directly into your OnCommand Unified Manager instance. Performance Manager dashboard templates are also available for download and import into the Performance Manager instance.

 

 

Figure 3) The Storage Automation Store includes workflows, reports, and performance tools.

 

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Source: NetApp, 2016

 

 

Learn more about OnCommand Unified Manager and explore the packs and templates in the Storage Automation Store.

 

 

Kristina Brand, a NetApp senior product marketing manager, supports a number of OnCommand products including Unified Manager, Performance Manager, Workflow Automation, and API Services. She conducts product training sessions and meets with customers regularly, learning about their storage management challenges and educating them on solutions available to them.

 

Dhiman Chakraborty is a NetApp technical marketing engineer with the Manageability Products Group, supporting OnCommand Unified Manager. Dhiman has over 13 years of experience in enterprise IT infrastructure working with global companies, most recently with Thomson Reuters. He creates technical content such as technical reports and how to videos. He also conducts product training sessions educating customers on available solutions.

 

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Replies

Question -

 

Since the IMT isn't yet updated with 6.4RC1 solutions - will OnCommand Unified Manager 6.4 / Performance Manager 2.1  be fully supported with OC-API 1.1?  I ask in particular because when OPM 2.0RC1 was released, it worked just fine with OC-API 1.0.  Then when OPM 2.0 went GA, integration with OC-API 1.0 was broken and there was a decent gap before OC-API 1.1 became available to support OPM 2.0.

 

Can anyone speak to OC-API compatibiliy for the new versions?

 

 

Thanks!

 

Bob Greenwald

Lead Storage Engineer | Consilio LLC

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your question. I have asked a subject matter expert to direct message you via the community.

Kristina

hello,

im tying to integrate performance manager to unified manager and get throw all the stages but get this message at the end:

failed to communicate with the unified manager proxy.....exiting.

 

versions:

esxi 5.1 

vcenter 5.1

on command performance manager - 2.1.0RC1

on command unified manager - 6.3

 

got the dns records as well.

the instances are up and running but only when i try to integrate between them(options 5 in opm) i get the error message.

 

please advise.

 

thank you.

Hi Miller,

 

Thank you for your comment and question about integration. I have asked a subject matter expert to direct message you via the community.

Kristina

hi kristina,

did you manage to get hold of the export ?

i still didnt hear from him.

can you please check this issue for me?

thank you very much.

Hello Miller,

I did contact them, I'll follow up again now.

Kristina

Hi Miller,

 

I am looking into this now. Hope you have followed "full integration" feature for integrating with OCUM 6.4. I will be sending you a message with all the details.

 

 

Thanks,

Dhiman

Is there effort underway to boulster the reporting functionality in OCUM/OCPM? Having used the 5.2 version which had great reporting functionality I find the current version lacking greatly...

OCUM 6.4rc1

OCPM  2.1rc1

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Seriously though... I like the direction of the tool but the reporting functionality was always one of it's best features and it seems like an afterthought in the current version.

 

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