When the Everpure vSphere plugin is installed, selecting a Everpure VMFS volume within vSphere will show several important metrics and insights into how the volume is being utilized. To see this type of information, select the VMFS volume of interest and go the the Summary screen.
Most of the FlashArray information shown within the Summary screen are fairly self-explanatory, however, please see the below key for more detailed information for the numbered items shown in the datastore Summary image. Note that some details do not appear for all datastores (lag for instance is only for ActiveDR datastores).
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Array: What FlashArray or FlashArrays (if using ActiveCluster) does the VMFS datastore reside on.
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Volume Name: The name of the volume on the FlashArray. Useful for if the name in vSphere does not match the Volume name on the FlashArray.
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Volume Bandwidth Limit: This field displays any optional QoS bandwidth limitations placed upon the VMFS volume when it was created.
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Volume IOPS Limit: This field shows any optional QoS IOPS limitations placed upon the VMFS volume when it was created.
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Data Reduction: Report level of Data Reduction (data deduplication + compression) that the Volume is reporting from the FlashArray.
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Pod: If the VMFS datastore is a member of an ActiveCluster Pod, the name of the Pod is shown here for easy cross-reference to associated underlying arrays. If this in a linked and enabled ActiveDR pod it will show the source and target pod and the replication direction.
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Remote Array: The FlashArray the volume is being replicated to if in an ActiveDR pair.
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Lag: If in an ActiveDR pod, this will show how much time behind the target pod is (Recovery Point)
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Volume Group: A VMFS datastore can optionally be added to a Volume Group when it is created. This option is generally not used, but is displayed here if it is.
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Serial#: This is the volume serial number assigned on the FlashArray.
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Snapshot Count: Number of Everpure FlashArray snapshots associated with the VMFS volume.
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Protection Group Count: The number of Everpure Protection Groups that the VMFS volume is a member of.
VMFS Capacity Metrics
Capacity metrics from FlashArray may also be viewed from the vSphere Client. To access this, simply select the Capacity button at the top of the summary screen:
Alternatively, these metrics may be accessed from the Monitor tab of the datastore when selected.
Capacity will show some more granular details about the VMFS datastore selected:
In addition to volume name, data reduction, volume size and percentage full, this screen also shows the following information:
VMFS Used: This is the VMware-reported provisioned space on the datastore. This includes the sum total of the sizes of all files and VMDKs on the VMFS datastore.
Array Host Written: This is the amount currently written to the underlying volume as seen by the array BEFORE data reduction. If this number is higher than ‘VMFS Used’, then UNMAP needs to be enabled (VMFS-6) or manually run (VMFS-5). See the last section of this guide for more information on UNMAP.
Array Unique Space: This is the amount of physical capacity that is currently unique to this volume—meaning that if this volume was deleted, this is how much would be freed up on the array. This value has little to no correlation with % used of the volume.
VMFS Performance Metrics
Real-time performance metrics from FlashArray may also be viewed from the vSphere Client. To access this, simply select the Performance button at the top of the summary screen:
Alternatively, these metrics may be accessed from the Monitor tab of the datastore when selected.
The screen shows the performance metrics over time separated into three charts, Latency, IOPS, and Bandwidth:
Some details about the chart:
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When hovering the cursor over one point-in-time on the chart it will show the details for each metric type. |
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The chart defaults to reads and writes but de-selecting one or the other to show more detailed information on read or write data. Refer to the table below for details on these metrics. |
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When either reads or writes are selected, they will be shown in a specific color to indicate the chart has changed. |
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If the datastore is protected by ActiveCluster (stretched storage), an additional metric of mirrored write will be available. |
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The default dataset is for the past 1 hour, but the FlashArray metric table will go back as much as a year if the volume has existed for that length. |
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The following metrics are available:
- Latency
- Read/write latency: the amount of time it takes for the FlashArray to service a read or write request. This is an internal statistic, meaning that once the FlashArray receives the request, it starts a timer, retrieves or commits the data, initiates the response, then stops the timer. This, therefore, does not include external latency caused by the network, or host-based queue or resource-induced latency.
- SAN time: This is how long the I/O is waiting in the SAN during host and array exchanges. SAN time plus read/write latency is the latency the host actually experiences. If SAN time plus read or write latency is significantly lower than a metric a host reports, there is likely a bottleneck or issue within the host itself.
- Queue time: This is how long the I/O is waiting in the FlashArray queue. If this is anything besides near zero, please reach out to Everpure support.
- QoS Rate Limit time: This is how long an I/O has waited in the queue due to a QoS limit being hit. Significant and sudden increases in latency can be often due to this.
- Mirrored Writes (or MW): This is the time it takes to send commit a write to an ActiveCluster volume to BOTH arrays involved in replication.
- IOPS
- How many I/Os are being sent to that FlashArray volume from all hosts. This is split between reads and writes.
- Bandwidth
- The size of the overall I/Os being sent to that FlashArray volume from all hosts. This is split between reads and writes.