STOR2RRD – Free Storage Performance Monitoring Software

Having worked in storage for some years I know one of the key challenges especially in larger environments is managing systems from multiple different vendors. Most companies end up in the same situation, with changing purchasing policies and objectives over the years resulting in having storage systems from a number of different Vendors. Monitoring all your different systems and keeping track of their performance and health can be a challenge, since each vendor has its own set of tools.

This is where Xorux is aiming to help administrators with a single product, STOR2RRD. By using STOR2RRD you can get a single web based interface that allows you to view the performance of all your different systems. Check out the graphic below, which displays a significant number of different storage systems being monitored by a single STOR2RRD server.

If you want to see if your storage system is supported you can read the full list of supported storage systems, the list of systems is significant and includes both storage systems and switches.

Deployment

The traditional deployment model for STOR2RRD is a web server and application server both on a Linux or Unix OS. If you are allergic to black and white do not fear as a simple deployment method is available in the form of an appliance. The appliance comes in Hyper-V and VMware flavours and handily contains the webserver and application components i.e. you only need to deploy one appliance. The product is open source and distributed for free download . Also available is a SAAS hosted version of the product.

Adding in Storage Systems

Once you have completed the deployment you can then add in the storage system you need to monitor. The method to add in your storage system varies by Vendor. I will run through adding a 3PAR at a high level as an example:

• Create read only account on 3PAR
• Add storage system to the STOR2RRD application config
• Create SSH key pair using ssh-keygen utility

What do I get

Great so you have gone to the effort to deploy it, now what? The dashboard view again gives you a good feel for the fact you can monitor a large number of products from one place.

If you want to take to take the product for a hands on spin you can have a look at this interactive online demo

3PAR Stuff

Given that many 3PAR owners frequent this blog I wanted to give a demo of some of the charts available for the 3PAR system.

The following charts show the cache performance for the system. You access the performance monitoring via a web browser. The interface is tabbed so I am looking at the read tab in these screenshots but there is also a write tab. It also shows multiple time frames in a single window, so you can spot trends. In the below screenshot for instance we are looking at the time frames last day, week, month and year

Port stats are similar you see a view with multiple time frames, I have just chosen to zoom in on the last days stats. You see the aggregated IO patterns plus a table showing the busiest ports.

It’s a similar story for volumes you can see IO and response time stats for a range of time frames. What is nice is that you can also chose top to see the busiest volumes, you can sort the order on a range of different measures including IO/throughput and response time. I am looking at the daily view but you will see the top stats are available for a range of time frames from daily to weekly.

If you are interested you can download a fee copy of STOR2RRD.