topic Re: How to understand performance in Active IQ Unified Manager Discussions

How to understand performance

bader — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:15:21 GMT

Hi,

My storage admin duties are growing and I need to understand performance and how to trouble shoot performance issues. I found tr-3525 but it is a little dated, and does not cover ops manager 4.0. I keep asking this question and people say it is an art and a science. Does anyone have any good resoruces for how to learn more on understanding and troublshooting performance?

I do have operations manager 4.0 and with NetApp Management console I get all the info I need, I just need to learn how to use.

Thanks

Bob

Re: How to understand performance

adaikkap — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:46:16 GMT

Did you take the NetApp university courses? For DFM 4.0 and its suite of products?

Regards

adai

Re: How to understand performance

bader — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:18:13 GMT

Adai,

Have you seen a specific course? I looked at university and I found
Operations Manager 3.7, Protection Manager 3.7 and Provisioning Manager 3.7 AdMinistration --- which is not for version 4 and also not being offered.

I also did the web based Getting Started with NetApp Software: Manage Efficient Storage Growth --- but it did not cover performance.

Bob

Re: How to understand performance

rbalaji — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:51:43 GMT

Hi Bader,

We have created a new TR-3836 (INTERNAL ONLY) on "Performance Diagnosis using Performance Advisor". This document provides best practices for using Performance Diagnosis feature available through Operations Manager 4.0. It is intended for Storage Administrators/NGS who want to troubleshoot the storage system for performance related issues.

Currently this TR is available from fieldportal (https://fieldportal.netapp.com/default.asp).

Regards

Balaji Katika

Re: How to understand performance

amiller_1 — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 04:54:36 GMT

Would it be considered all right to pass along to sufficiently technical customers and/or customers under NDA?

I really like the ability in Performance Advisor now (given OM 4.0) to track aggregate disk busy-ness from a historical perspective.

Re: How to understand performance

harish — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 07:32:40 GMT

What counters do you use to track aggregate disk busy-ness ?

Re: How to understand performance

lwei — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 05:03:37 GMT

You can use statit, disk utilization. -Wei

Re: How to understand performance

rbalaji — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 17:10:05 GMT

Do you mean this TR can be shared with external customers ?

Answer is yes. But any modifications to the diagnosis configuration (including adding new rules) are recommended to be done under the guidance/supervision of NGS.

Re: How to understand performance

amiller_1 — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:55:51 GMT

In the Performance Advisor section of NetApp Management Console 3.0 (come with Operations Manager 4.0), I specifically like to make a custom historical graph tacking aggregate:pa_avg_disk_busy, aggregate:pa_max_disk_busy, aggregate:pa_min_disk_busy.

I'm also experimenting with some alerts around aggregate:pa_mix_disk_busy if stays above 90% for more than 10 minutes (for example).

See attached screenshot....

Re: How to understand performance

amiller_1 — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:59:51 GMT

Hmm....searching on "Performance Advisor" or "tr-3836" in Field Portal doesn't turn up anything. Is this available to partners?

Re: How to understand performance

harish — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 03:08:10 GMT

aggregate:pa_*_disk_busy counters were added in DFM 4.0 along with

system:pa_concurrency that gives the queue depth. Please let us know if

you face any issues accessing data for these counters in views,

thresholds, metrics, etc.

Regards

Harish

Re: How to understand performance

anantha_dommeti — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:29:08 GMT

pa_concurrency that gives the queue depth ? What does the queue depth over here represent ?

I see pa_concurrency around 1300, when we see latencies during writes.

Re: How to understand performance

netappsanadmin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:34:14 GMT

if we can't get the performance advisor(for internal only document)

can we have other document which is related to performance advisor.

Thanks

.....

Re: How to understand performance

harish — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:49:40 GMT

Queue depth of 1300 means there are 1300 operations being processed

inside the filer. Note that the number itself does not represent

anything (good/bad), but the variations in the number might be useful...

If the number increases, it means that lot more operations are now

inside the filer that might impact latency.

Queue depth = ops (ops/sec) * latency (milli or micro second) and hence

has no units. The formula used by performance advisor is as follows:

system:pa_concurrency = nfsv3_avg_op_latency * nfsv3_ops +

nfsv4_avg_latency *

nfsv4_ops +

cifs_latency * cifs_ops +

iscsi_read_latency *

iscsi_read_ops +

iscsi_write_latency *

iscsi_write_ops +

fcp_read_latency *

fcp_read_ops +

fcp_write_latency *

fcp_write_ops

Regards

Harish

How to understand performance

jeff_spiegel — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:32:43 GMT

Does system:pa_concurrency exist in 5.0? My charts are blank now that we upgraded. I was looking at queue depth just fine before we upgraded. Thanks.

Re: How to understand performance

reide — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:59:47 GMT

Harish,

Any idea why pa_concurrency is not enabled in OnCommand 5.0? All of the counters used in its calculation are being collected for my controllers. But this particular counter is always in italics and its description states, "...(Data collection currently disabled.)"

I've seen other users stating the same issue in other threads.