Notes

Highlights

• Full support of SVC / Storwize version 7.3 including the new cache statistics
• Displays now the node port performance statistics of types: FC, IPREP, iSCSI, SAS and PCIe
• Multi screen support. Tabs can now be distributed in different windows on the desktop
• New start screen allows selection of multiple BVQ installations on one host
• Object type 'Disc type' now has an optional name and comment

Highlights details

SVC 7.3 cache metrics

Now the performance view additionally shows the new SVC 7.3 cache statistics. Only this allows a full analysis of the system's performance.
Particularly important advantages of the new 7.3 metrics are:

• Real IO sizes: all IOs are counted in real transaction sizes and not, as before, limited by 32KiB cache tracks.
• Upper / lower cache: they are displayed separated in upper cache and lower cache. All remaining 7.2 cache metrics are exclusively related to the upper cache.   
• VDisk copy metrics: now statistics are available at the level of VDisk copy. Thus, the load which is caused by a VDisk competing with others of the pool (MDisk group) can be determined exactly.
  Previously this was not possible especially in cases when VDisk mirroring, space efficiency, compression or flash copy were used. Please note: the object type VDisk  inherently contains only the upper cache metrics.
  The matching lower cache metrics can be found in the correlating VDisk copy of a VDisk.

• End to end: the active chains in 7.3 can be represented as follows:

  Reads	VDisk SCSI layer	→ VDisk upper cache	→ VDisk copy lower cache	→ MDisk queue outbound	→ Node port
  Writes	VDisk SCSI layer	→ VDisk upper cache partiton	→ VDisk copy lower cache partition	→ MDisk queue outbound	→ Node port

The new 7.3 metrics can be selected in a third tab in the options dialogue of the performance view. Here, for example, the metrics for object type 'Node':

It can be recognized that they are now differentiated in upper and lower cache .

Port statistics for SAS, PCIe, FCoE, iSCSI, IPREP

Now BVQ additionally displays the node ports of not-FC types like SAS, PCIe, FCoE, iSCSI and IP replication in the treemap and in the performance view.  

This completes the analysis options in the port area.

Here is a look on the node ports of a first generation V7000 :

Here the appropriate options-dialogue of the performance view, which allows the access to appropriate metrics:

Some port types like FC & FCoE, SAS and IP replication have specific metrics which are visible at the bottom in the metric selection.

Multi window docking

Tabs can now be converted into window areas. These areas can be extracted from the main window and be placed on the desktop or they can also be ordered  within a window next to or above each other .

Here, for example, two treemaps next to each other with transferred selection :

Or multiple performance views of different types with identical time axis within one analysis.

DB connection profile

BVQ DB connection profiles include the access data to BVQ databases. BVQ client tools (currently GUI and reporting) use these whe establishing a connection and enable their management. The profiles are stored in '.bdp' files centrally within the installation directory and can be exchanged throughout the company. All locally installed client tools are using the same .bdp files.

A BVQ GUI or BVQ Reporting GUI can thus be easily switched on all configured BVQ databases.

The following screenshot shows the GUI's selection dialogue:

Encrypted passwords are stored in the .bdp files.

Please note: license-fees have to be paid for each additional BVQ DB.  

Disk type name and comment

The BVQ object type Disk type now has got an optional name and a comment field. With this   subtle differences between two similar disc types can be expressed better (for example: '3.5' vs '2.5', or SAS vs SATA  vs FC or even different transmission speeds).

The name is optional. If not specified, or an existing name is cleared, BVQ derives automatically a new one based on the configured attributes .

If the name is entered  , for example, in BVQ CLI scripts it can later be used for the allocation of disk arrays. As a result, scripts can be created  containing a complete image of a disk subsystem. The previously necessary query of the BVQ ID after creating the disc types is no longer needed. So this script can also be created offline ( for example from tables).

New functions

Improvements

Bug fixes

Critical

Important

Recommended

Known problems

DB schema changes

Requirements and restrictions

Notes

• When configuring a topology scanner interval >30 min an adaptation in a GUI configuration file is necessary, concerning the scanner status checks. In this case please contact BVQ support.  
• The Excel format generated by the BVQ Reporting is compatible with the Excel version of 2003 and higher.  
  
  This is the format 'XML spreadsheet 2003' (please see this Microsoft article for more information).
  The standard file extension for this format is '.xml'. If it is despite  saved with '.xls', a warning message appears when it is openend with Excel.
• License changes only take effect after about 2 hours or after restarting the scanner and scheduler.
• Currently not supported VMware functions:
  • Partitioned VM SCSI volumes, whose partitions are assigned to multiple VM datastores.
  • VM SCSI volumes whose UUIDs are not unique.

Summary: update steps

1. Preparations
   
   • Checking for correct function of the environment, in particular function of the scanner.
   • Manual stop of BVQ Scanner and Alerting-service, Scheduler-services and also of all GUIs and reporting-clients
   • Backup of BVQ installation directory and BVQ DB (e.g. DB offline backup with DB2 CMD) 
   • Starting again the BVQ Scanner
2. Update BVQ Install Package Repository: bvq-package-repository-installer-x64-V3.3.exe
   1. DB Schema update
   2. BVQ GUI update
   3. BVQ Reporting Engine update
   4. BVQ Report Module update
   5. BVQ SVC Scanner update *

   6. BVQ VMware Scanner update
   7. BVQ Scheduler update
   8. BVQ Alerting update
3. Performing functional tests
4. If necessary inform colleagues about the need to update locally installed BVQ GUI / report clients. 
   

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