1 SolarWinds Technical Reference Planning and Scaling Storage Manager Component Overview... 3 Storage Manager Architecture... 4 Storage Manager Server... 4 Storage Manager Agents... 4 Storage Manager Proxy Agents... 4 Architecture Diagram... 6 Deploying Storage Manager... 7 Minimum Requirements for the STM Server... 8 Minimum Requirements for the Agents and Proxy Agents... 10 Recommended Number Agents and Proxy Agents... 12 Sample Deployment... 12 Appendix... 15 This paper examines how to measure and optimize the performance of a SolarWinds Storage Manager installation based on environment size.
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3 Component Overview
4 Storage Manager Architecture Storage Manager is comprised of a Server /Agent architecture: Storage Manager Server collects data from agents, traps, pollers, and saves the data to a central database and distributes information to users via the web interface. Storage Manager Server also allows the user to manage the Storage Manager Agents and Storage Manager Proxy Agents remotely. Note: The Storage Manager Server can also serve as a Storage Manager Agent or Storage Manager Proxy Agent. Storage Manager Agents provides the framework to gather storage, server performance and file analysis information from the local device and transmit it to the Storage Manager Server. Storage Manager Proxy Agents provides the framework to gather storage, server performance and file analysis information from local devices and collect Storage, Application, Virtual and Server information from external devices. Architecture Diagram illustrates the relationship between the proxy agents and the STM server. Storage Manager Server The Storage Manager Server consists of a Database, Web Server, Collector, Poller, Event Receiver, and a Maintenance process. Storage Manager uses a variety of methods to collect data, both local and remote. Storage Manager can collect most data remotely, including storage arrays (NAS and SAN), VMware hosts and virtual machines, Fibre Channel switches, databases (SQL and Oracle ) and file analysis. For physical servers, agents are required on those servers. Some of the methods that Storage Manager uses to collect data includes: SMI-S, Telnet/SSH, SNMP, CIFS/NFS, API, WMI, SQL queries, Web Services, command line, and log parsing. Primary communication between the Storage Manager Server and Agents occurs on ports 4319 TCP (HTTP) and 162 UDP (SNMP). Storage Manager Agents Storage Manager Agents reside on operating systems and monitors statistics about the operating system they are installed on The Storage Manager Agent will pull CPU, Memory, Disk (storage and speed), Network Values and File Analysis from the server it is installed on. The Storage Manager Agent can also alert on events generated from the server. Storage Manager Proxy Agents Storage Manager Proxy Agents perform the same task as the Storage Manager Agent yet also include collecting Storage, Application, Virtual and Server information from external devices. Note: To use the Storage Manager Agent as a Storage Manager Proxy Agent, you must install the Agent software on either a Windows or Linux platform. Also note that the Storage Manager Agent and Proxy agent uses the same installer software. In summary the Storage Manager Agent and Storage Manager Proxy agent are the same software. The naming convention comes from how the customer decides to deploy the agent software in their environment. If you want the agent software to just monitor the server it is installed on, this will be considered an agent. If you want the agent software to monitor external devices such as SAN, NAS, Fibre Channel Switches, etc., then we consider this a proxy agent. The following illustration shows, Storage Manager Proxy Agents collecting information from two VMware Virtual Centers and one EMC VNX/Clariion via its SMI-S Provider.
5 Once the Storage Manager Proxy Agent has collected enough data it will send a SNMP trap (UDP port 162, 10162 or 20162) to the Storage Manager Server notifying it of data waiting to be received. After receiving the trap, Storage Manager Server, will establish a connection via HTTP or HTTPS Port 4319 to the Storage Manager Proxy Agent and retrieve the data. Once all information has been retrieved, the Storage Manager Proxy Agent deletes the information from its temporary data sub directories and the process starts over again. The Storage Manager Server will take all retrieved information and store it in the Storage Manager database. The following tables summarize the differences between Storage Manager Agents and Storage Manager Proxy Agents.
6 Operating Systems Windows 32/64 bit Linux 32/64 bit AIX (PPC 32/64) HP_UX (Itanium) Solaris (SPARC or Intel 32/64 bit) Agent Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Proxy Agent Yes Yes No No No Resources Monitored Server (Disk, Memory, CPU, Network) SAN/NAS Virtual Fibre Channel Switch Agent Yes No No No Proxy Agent Yes Yes Yes Yes Architecture Diagram The Storage Manager Architecture Diagram illustrates the relationship between sources, the Storage Manager Proxy Agent, and the Storage Manager Server.
7 Deploying Storage Manager This section covers recommendations for deploying Storage Manager to small, medium, and large environments. Minimum recommendations for server hardware and memory are also discussed in this section. We will cover the following in this section: Minimum Requirements for the STM Server Minimum Requirements for the Agents and Proxy Agents Recommended number of Agents and Proxy Agents Sample Deployment
8 Minimum Requirements for the STM Server The following table explains the minimal hardware and memory requirements for Storage Manager Server and Services based on your environment size.
9 Environment Size Resource Monitored Disks/LUNs Total Small Medium Large Up to 500 Up to 3000 Greater than 3000 Physical Servers Up to 100 Up to 300 300 to 500 Virtual Machines 100 500 1000 + Fibre Channel Switches 10 20 30 Minimum Recommendations for Server Hardware Environment Size Operating System Small Medium Large Windows or Linux Windows or Linux Linux Architecture x64 x64 x64 Server Platform Physical or Virtual Physical or Virtual Physical CPU 2 Cores 4 Cores 8 +Cores Physical Memory 8GB 16 32GB 32 64GB Free Disk Space 40GB 100-300GB 500GB Proxy Agents Required No **Yes **Yes Minimum Memory Recommendations for Storage Manager Services Environment Size Small Medium Large Collector Service 1024MB (1 GB) 4096MB (4 GB) 8192MB (8 GB) Event Receiver Service Maintenance Service 1024MB (1 GB) 4096MB (4 GB) 4096MB (4 GB) 512MB 2048MB (2 GB) 4096MB (4 GB) Poller Service 512MB 2048MB (2 GB) 4096MB (4 GB) Web Service 1024MB (1 GB) 4096MB (4 GB) 8192MB (8 GB) Database 2048MB (2 GB) 8192MB (8 GB) 8192MB (8 GB)
10 Storage Manager Proxy Agents are required for collecting information from external resources across multiple servers thus reducing workload to the Storage Manager Server. Resources Monitored should be interpreted as XX Virtual Machines and XX Fibre Channel Switches and XX Disk/LUNs before adding proxy agents. See Sample Deployment. It is recommended that you perform maintenance on the Storage Manager database using the dbutil tool. This tool will allow users to run maintenance routines keeping the database running smoothly and make backups of the database. For more information on using this tool see dbutil. Note: For virtual machines reserve 100% of the CPU and RAM for the virtual environment hosting the Storage Manager software. For example, if the virtual machine hosting Storage Manager has 2x 2GHz CPUs, reserve 4GHz to Storage Manager. Minimum Requirements for the Agents and Proxy Agents This chart explains the Recommended Server and Resources for Storage Manager Proxy Agents based on your environment size. Minimum Recommendations for Agent Hardware Environment Size Small Medium Large Server Platform N/A Windows or Linux Architecture N/A x32 or x64 Linux x64 CPU N/A 2 Cores 4 Cores Physical Memory N/A 4GB 8GB Free Disk Space N/A 20GB 20GB Recommended Resources per Proxy Agent Environment Size Small Medium Large Virtual Machines per Proxy Agent N/A x32 bit 200 VM 300 VM x64 bit 300 VM Fibre Channel Switches per Proxy Agent N/A 10 10 Number of Disks/LUNs per Proxy Agent N/A 500 500 Resources Monitored should be interpreted as XX Virtual Machines and XX Fibre Channel Switches and XX Disk/LUNs before adding additional proxy agents. See Sample Deployment
11 If you are running VMware VMotion, Storage VMotion or anything that can cause ESX host to dynamically switch to another ESX server http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/faq/vmware-vmotion-storagevmotion-svmotion.html be aware of how VMware distributes the load dynamically from one ESX server to another. You should allow for additional room for the switch over. For example, if you are currently running 300 virtual machines on one proxy agent and a switchover occurs, this could allow monitoring of 300 plus virtual machines on your Storage Manager Proxy Agent.
12 Notes: It is recommended to have no more than 500 Disk/LUNs PER SMI-S Provider. The Storage Manager Proxy Agent works directly with the SMI-S Provider. For more information on SMI-S Providers, see SMI-S. When running proxy agents on virtual machines, reserve at least half of the CPU and RAM for the proxy agent software running on the virtual machine host. Recommended Number Agents and Proxy Agents The maximum recommended number of Storage Manager Agents and Proxy Agents per Storage Manager Server is 500. If you choose to go beyond 500 Storage Manager Agents then we recommend that you consider multiple Storage Manager Servers. Sample Deployment This example shows how to load balance external devices using Storage Manager Proxy Agents. The following diagram shows one way of assigning resources to proxy agents. Note the three proxy agents at the bottom are monitoring both ESX servers and Fibre Channel switches. Storage Manager Agents are comprised of modules. Each module is responsible for monitoring a different resource on the external device being monitored. Because of this feature, we are able to monitor multiple functions from different devices via one agent.
13 The table below gives a breakdown of the devices being monitored in our example and the number of agents needed to monitor those devices.
14 Type of Device Number of Devices Proxy Agent to Device Ratio Number of Proxy Agents Needed Symmetrix/VMAX Array VNX/Clariion Array 2 1:1 2 12 1:5 3 NetApp Filers 24 1:10 3 Virtual Machines 600 1:300 3 Fibre Channel Switches 30 1:10 3 All calculations are done using Linux x64 bit agents Since Storage Manager Agents are capable of monitoring multiple resources from different devices, we can go a step further and optimize our setup by spreading the workload out even further thus reducing the number of Proxy Agents needed. Example: The table above can be divided out even further using the Proxy Agent to Device Ratio column in the table above: Agent 1 2 ESX hosts with 200 Virtual Machines, 10 Fibre Channel Switches, 5 Clarrion/VNX arrays Agent 2 2 ESX hosts with 200 Virtual Machines, 10 Fibre Channel Switches, 5 Clarrion/VNX arrays Agent 3 2 ESX hosts with 200 Virtual Machines, 10 Fibre Channel Switches, 2 Clarrion/VNX arrays Agent 4 One Symmetrix/VMAX array Agent 5 - One Symmetrix/VMAX array Agent 6 8 NetApp Filers Agent 7 8 NetApp Filers Agent 8 8 NetApp Filers Note: If you are running VMware VMotion, Storage VMotion or anything that can cause ESX host to dynamically switch to another ESX server http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/faq/vmware-vmotionstorage-vmotion-svmotion.html be aware of how VMware distributes the load dynamically from one ESX server to another. You should allow for additional room for the switch over. For example, if you are currently running 300 virtual machines on one proxy agent and a switchover occurs, this could allow monitoring of 300 plus virtual machines on your Storage Manager Proxy Agent. In summary we can monitor all of the devices in this example with 8 Proxy Agents.
15 Appendix The following provides additional information for configuring Storage Manager: The thwack community has thousands of users who regularly exchange ideas and solutions. Chances are that if you are having network management issues, there are thwack users who have already solved those issues. SolarWinds employees from Development, Support and Product Management regularly interact with SolarWinds product users on thwack, so we may also be able to help you solve your problem there too. To access the thwack website, click here. Additional information specific to Storage Manager can be found here on thwack. The following topics are discussed: o o o o o o Starting with Storage Manager Storage Manager Videos Make the most of Storage Manager Troubleshooting Resources Popular and Most Recent Knowledgebase Article Storage Manager How to articles Advanced information for increasing Storage Manager Memory, modifying database memory settings, anti-virus intrusion detection can be found here. Additional information for configuring your storage arrays and provider can be found here.