Capacity charting

A highly flexible capacity charting system is finally available inside the BVQ GUI.

In the past, capacity charting was only possible by using predefined reports with a fixed set of object types. It is now possible to chart all capacities the object is aware of. Charting options are provided as absolute and relative metrics for provider and consumer.

The usage is similar to performance charting with some minor differences:

1. Capacity chart will open without any metric selection
2. Default time range is set to 1 week
3. Default interval is set to 6h and minimal time interval is 1h

Capacity charting performance depends on different conditions:

1. Time range: The larger the slower
2. Intervall: The bigger the quicker
3. Selected Metric: If the object knows this capacity by itself, loading is much faster than calculation based on other objects

Major Web Dashboard Improvements

A lot of improvements and new features are introduced and now available for the web dashboard.

1. It is now possible to create, save and customize your own dashboards.
2. Predefined dashboards are still immutable but can be saved as a copy with your own adjustments.
3. The bvq user ist now promoted to administrator rights
4. The object and metric chooser got a lot of usability improvements

Furthermore we introduced the toplology metric type. This allows to chart all topology based values which are represended as number or percent in graphs or single stats widgets.
This also allows you to show capacity charts inside the web dashboard.

For further intormations how to use the grafana based web dashboard please visit:

1. http://docs.grafana.org/

Introduction of Design IO Density for MDisk group & Storage Class objects

With previous versions of BVQ it was difficult to simulate what would happen if an MDisk group had more or less IO density.

The introduction of a "Design IO density" for MDisk groups and Storage class simplifies this simulation.

"Design IO density" (DIOd) co-exists with the already existing "Estimated IO density" (EIOd). While the latter is derived from IO density configured per BVQ Disk Array, the first one is configurable per MDisk group.

Analogue to "Default Design Response Time", a "Default Design IO density" (DDIOd) can be configured per Storage Class. If this Storage Class is defined for the MDisk group, DDIOd is automatically transfered to it as DIOd.

DIOd values can be added and modified using the MDisk group editor:

Or you can define DDIOd in the Storage Class editor:

Multiple DIOd related values and calculations can be displayed in the table views:

The new DIOd parameter is also reflected in the Object Coloring: In addition to the existing EIOd coloring, DIOd can also be displayed using the same coloring rules.

Report scheduling

BVQ Reporting is now enhanced with a powerful scheduling. Each report can be scheduled easily by using the schedule button in the template list.

The schedule will be defined using a cron syntax. To simplify the process a simple and advanced option is availible.

Simple schedule

• Define your schedule execution using dropdown fields

Expert schedule

• Use your custom cron settings to specify more advanced expressions

• An in depth explanation and generator with a lot of examples can be found here:
  Cron Expression Generator & Explainer - Quartz

Range will define the time period the report will be generated for. It is allways the schedule time-range.

Example:

Schedule time: 11.12.2017
Range: 2 weeks

Report timeframe: 27.11.2017 - 11.12.2017

VDisk copy capacity difference

In most cirumstances different configurations of vdisk copies are unwanted. They might occur in historically grown configurations and are difficult to detect.

To make detection easier a capacity inconsistency factor has been added for real, used and free capacities of vdisk copies.

Primary to secondary capacity difference (P2S)

This new attribute can be used inside tables and for any advanced filtering.

Enhanced path based charting (PBC)

While path based charting feature (PBC) was introduced in BVQ 5.3 with some missing objects it is now available for all objects in BVQ. You are now able to create predifined charts with aggregated metrics of your own custom selections.

We added PBC support for the following metrics for all objects which are aware of these metrics:

• MDISK GROUP CACHE PARTITION UPPER CACHE
• MDISK GROUP CACHE PARTITION LOWER CACHE
• SVC NODE CPU CORE

For further informations about PBC see: Release notes BVQ 5.3: Path based charting

PBC Chart report snippets

All PBC chart favorites are now available as snippets for report generation:

Enhanced BVQ Server user roles

To support more dedicated users we extended the user role concept and the predefined user roles. It is now possible to choose out of 10 predefined roles that can be assigned in all kinds of different combinations. This will allow to create read-only users, dedicated users for scanner managementes etc.

To view the detailed permissions of a user role, just click the next to the role name.

BVQ Server Maintenance Mode (v5.4.1)

BVQ Server now has a maintenance mode which is started if essential information that prevents BVQ from operating is missing.

An administrative user is required to login to the server at http://<bvq_server_address> and perform the relevant steps.

The following circumstances trigger BVQ server maintenance mode:

1. First time installation
2. Java version not supported
3. Schema level not compatible with current DB version
4. BVQ scheduler not (yet) configured
5. BVQ license not installed, expired or invalid

Once logged in, the navigation panel on the left shows you which corrective actions need to be taken. Those items are marked with .

Although you will be automatically directed to the first item requiring action (), you can review the other ones ()as well.

Once all steps are completed, BVQ server will leave maintenance mode and restart the server in normal operation.