VMware platform

Brief description

The BVQ VMware platform is the continuation of the existing BVQ VMware package. It introduces support for VMware performance metrics and enables you to interactively explore your VMware configuration, check all kind of performance metrics and alert on metrics, create reports and drill through all the layers between SVC, BVQ, and VMware objects in end to end views.

As BVQ will now support a 'new' platform completely, customers will be able to use this VMware platform as a standalone solution. So you don't need to license IBM Spectrum Virtualize or Storwize (but a combination of both platforms are possible to get an end to end view of the environment). A combination of the SAN package with the new VMware platform is also possible.

Licensing

Customers using the current VMware package (topology & capacity data) will be able to upgrade to the new VMware platform now including performance data as well.

The VMware platform is licensed by the number of Virtual machines (VMs) running in the environment. Customers will have to license packs of 25 VMs (sum of VMs in the envrionment divided by 25 = number of packs to license) 

Please contact your SVA sales representative for pricing information.

Information gathering

To collect information a BVQ VMware scanner needs to be configured to connect to a vCenter. If a VMware scanner already exists to scan topology data, performance data collection can be enabled easily in the scanner configuration.

See Supported Environments for more details and the supported versions of the VMware vCenter versions.

Supported VMware objects

The first version of the BVQ VMware Performance supports most elements of a VMware environment. The following overview depicts the elementary relationships of these objects and their link to connected BVQ objects:

Where to find VMware objects?

Similar to the already known VMware Topology package all available objects show up in the BVQ Path browser inside the view property panel or can be opened as a table from the favorite browser. All VMware objects can be combined in an end to end relation to all other objects.

Performance metrics

The BVQ VMware Performance Package gathers statistics delivered from the VMware performance API. Similar to all other statistics, you can simply drill into a chart with the statistics related to an object with a simple click on the VMware entry in the context menu of this object:

That opens our well known BVQ Chart view, where you can select metrics in the selection panel. The following screenshots shows the full set of available metrics in the expert tab for each object type:

Performance Indicators (PI)

The VMware Performance Package also take full advantage of the new BVQ Feature: "Performance Indicators for all performance metrics" which enables the use of all performance metrics as PI.

This finally allows a PI based treemap sizing as well as the usage of PI in a table for VMware objects.

Thereby it is much easier to find "High Performer" and Bottlenecks.

---

SAN Zoning

The BVQ SAN Package which was introduced in version 5.5. has now been enhanced to support zoning. Once a valid SAN license is installed, advantage can be taken of this new feature.

The following Object Types have been added to the existing SAN Model:

• SAN Alias
• SAN Zone
• SAN Zone member

A SAN Alias is a substitute name for a SAN Switch port (Port ID) or SAN Node port (WWPN). An Alias can contain one or more Port IDs and/or WWPNs.

A SAN Zone defines which devices are allowed to communicate with each other in an active zone set. It consists of multiple SAN Aliases, SAN Switch ports and/or SAN Node ports.

A SAN Zone member is one of those devices which is part of a zone.

FOS 7.4 and later supports a new zone type called Peer Zoning. It is based on WWPN zoning (Aliases are supported in FOS 8.1 and above) and defines a principal and its members within the zone. All members can communicate with the principal but cannot communicate with any other member in the same zone. This zone type is supported by BVQ as well.

Example: Path /BVQ/SAN Agent/SAN Fabric/SAN Zone/SAN Zone member/SAN Alias

---

New System Favorites for SAN & VMware

(introduced in v5.6.3)

A new set of systemfavorites for SAN (incl. Zoning) and VMware have been added. If a valid license is available, those can be found in Favorites > System:

For more information about the new SAN favorites, detailed description and usage, please visit the BVQ Customer Center at SAN Analysis with the Brocade Integration Package.

For more information about the new VMware favorites, detailed description and usage, please visit the BVQ Customer Center at VMware Analysis.

Performance Indicators for all performance metrics

The concept of a "Performance indicator" (PI) is well-known in BVQ history to express a performance metric over a longer period of time inside a single value. These indicators have been available for some pre-selected performance metrics in the past.
With version 5.6 all available performance metrics are available as PI - no matter if originated from SVC, SAN or VMware.

As the number of available performance indicators has been increased dramatically we changed the selection options.

Display PI inside a table

The way to select the PI within a table changed fundamentally.

The former "Table" tab has been replaced by a table tab for the last object type in the topology path (VDisk in this example).

The second row of tabs allows you to select table columns , PI columns for the object type in the PI time interval and table options .

If you like to change the PI interval, click on the "PI Timing" icon.

If you like to change the object type to display metrics for, click on the "PI source object" icon.

Java 10 Migration

BVQ is no longer dependent on the Java version that is installed on the server and/or client it is running on.

With the release of BVQ 5.6, Java JRE is now bundled with BVQ which means it is part of the Repository and GUI installer packages. There is no need to install or up-/downgrade Java prior to installing BVQ because the correct Java version - Java 10 in version 5.6 - is delivered together with the product.

With the migration to Java 10 BVQ is able to use system resources much more efficient.

High DPI Support finalized

High resolution monitors (UHD, 4k, 5k, 8k, ...) are often used with a scaling factor higher than 100%. We addressed most of that requirement in earlier version of the BVQ GUI. But Java 10 introduced a new mechanism to also scale the standard UI elements. The BVQ GUI now takes advantage of this to scale all UI very well. We also polished the window handling and got rid of some other optical glitches. In addition a new "Dark" variant of the "Plain" Look & Feel is introduced which gives BVQ a very modern look. Have fun to use that.

Reporting Improvements

(introduced in v5.6.1)

Link to Latest Report

Usually, only the latest report of a certain report template is of interest to the user. It might also be required to use the report elsewhere or send it to somebody. To get to this latest report has now been made easier by generating a URL that always links to that one.

In the WebUI, go to Reporting → Scheduling and select the Download-Button of the required report template

You will get the link to the latest report. Select (1) to copy the URL to clipboard or (2) to view or download this report.

Automatic Notification for Reports

Scheduling allows reports to be generated regularly at a desired time. But up to now it wasn't possible to get an automatic notification when a report was finished.

In v5.6.1, you can now configure reports - scheduled reports or ad-hoc generated reports - to send a notification once the report is available. All notification types supported by the BVQ Web UI in Administration → Notifications can be usconfigured (Email, Slack, File, or Web).

• For scheduled reports, go to Reporting → Scheduling and select the required report template. Enable NOTIFICATION and select the notification type from the drop-down list.
  .

• For ad-hoc generated reports, go to Reporting →Reports and run the required report template. Enable NOTIFICATION and select the notification type from the drop-down list.

Restructured Path Browser

(introduced in v5.6.1)

With the introduction of the SAN and VMware Performance Modules, more object types have been added to BVQ. As a result, the list of objects in the path browser grew very long, became confusing and were hard to display on the screen.

To improve the usability of the path browser it has been restructured. The new layout is now very clear and groups the object types into main categories:

Not only the object types have been reorganized but also the handling of objects within the path (e.g. adding, deleting, inserting) has been made easier:

• Click on an object type to add filters, remove it from the path or replace it by another object type
  

• Click on a "/" or "BVQ/" to insert an object type or to remove all preceeding or following object types from the path
  

Copy Sync Quality Monitoring

(introduced in v5.6.1)

In SVC environments using (Enhanced) Streched Cluster (=VDisk Mirroring) or replication with Global Mirror with Change Volumes (GMCV) it is important to have confidence that mirrors are in sync and remote copies meet their Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Unfortuntely, SVC does not log events if those criteria are not met..

By scanning the freeze_time from VDisk copies and RC relationships every minute, BVQ stores the information in MongoDB that is required to calculate and monitor the quality of the mirrors.

No additional configuration is required to make use of this new feature. However, the MAXIMUM CYCLE OVERDUE TIME can be configured in the Scanner section in the BVQ Web UI. By default, it is set to 20 seconds, meaning that a deviation of 20 seconds from the configured cycle_period_seconds for each RC Relationships or RC consistency groups on the SVC is still acceptable. This additional time is required because the cycle period is alway inconstantly overdue due to

• overdue data synchronization time
• FC map preparation phase
• FC map start coordination (RC consistency groups only)

The configuration of MAXIMUM CYCLE OVERDUE TIME avoids reporting false positives in BVQ.

New Metrics for this feature can be found for each RC relationship:

For further information (customized Grafana dashboards, predefined Alert Rules, Whitepaper, etc.) please contact bvq@sva.de.

Improved Table Column Attribute Chooser

(introduced in v5.6.2)

Finding and selecting attributes that should be displayed in BVQ tables has been made easier in this release.

Right-click on any column in the table view and select Table columns to open the attribute chooser:

A search bar is shown on top of the attribute chooser. Insert your keyword and press Enter to highlight the first occurance of the selected key word. Press Enter again to highlight the next occurance.

The check box next to a category allows you to select all attributes within this category at once. A dash in this checkbox inidicates that only some of the attributes in this category have been selected.

Click on the folder icon left of the searchbar to toggle between "Expand selected", "Expand all" and "Collapse all".