SAN Module Enhancement: Access Gateway & NPIV

When Access Gateway mode is configured on a switch, the F-ports connect as N-ports on the fabric instead of E-Ports. Switches in AG Mode are logically transparent to hosts and fabric which simplifies configuration and management in a large fabric by reducing the number of domains and ports.

To support Access Gateway mode in BVQ, two new object types have been introduced:

• SAN AG logical identity
• NPIV port dependency

SAN AG logical identity describes the connection between Access Gateway and switch port. This means that every F-port on an Access Gateway represents its own SAN AG logical identity in BVQ. The naming convention is as follows:

AGname@fabric.AGport ← switchname.switchport

Example:
fcs17@Fabric-A.Ext5 ← fcs23.port16

NPIV port dependency represents the association between a physical N-port and a virtualized N-port. Syntax for NPIV port dependencies is as follows:

Virtual ← Physical

Example:
fs9100_n1_p1 ← 50050768101101D0

Note: If available, alias names are used to display virtual and physical N-port. If none is defined, the WWPN will be shown.

VMware Module Enhancement: VSAN

The existing VMware module has been enhanced by supporting vSAN Disk group objects.

• End to end embedded into VMware object topology
• Capacity metrics
• Performance statistics

Predefined System Alert Rules

BVQ now delivers a set of predefined system alert rules which can easily be imported and customized using the BVQ Server Web UI.

Open the Manage Alert rules option in the BVQ Server Web UI and select “Create from template”.

The simple editor wizard open and leads you through the rest of the process:

1. Select one alert rule template from the tree.
2. Choose an existing folder to copy the alert rule to and optionally change the name of the rule
3. Adjust metrics and filters according to your needs
4. Import the new alert rule

Now the alert rule is active and monitors your system health.

Fur further editing of the alert rule, you can decide whether to use the simple editor again or the complex (default) one. Once the decision was made to use the complex editor, there is no way to return to the simple one.

MongoDB backup via BVQ Server

MongoDB Backups and Exports can now be taken using the BVQ Sever Web UI which has multiple advantages over Mongo CLI:

• It eases backup and data export handling
• Backup tasks can be sheduled
• A timeframe can be specified for performance data so there is no need to take a full backup (File size much smaller and easier to send to your support partner)

Filtering Enhancement: Allow simple mathematics

Filtering in BVQ has been enhanced and now allows to perform simple mathematics in filter expressions.

Supported operations are:

Here are some use cases to demonstrate the advantages of this new feature that can be used in the GUI (Path filtering, Alerting) or Web UI (Alerting).

1. Compare the percentage of two attributes: Did VDisk IO density reach 90% of design io density?

   PI_vdisk_shortterm_io_density = 0,9 * design_io_density

2. Is an even number of host ports connected?

   host_port_count % 2 = 0

3. Can the number of MDisks in an MDisk group be divided by 8?

   mdisk_count % 8 = 0

PBC Charts as Excel data source

Chart data in GUI favorites can now be accessed as Excel data source.

Go to Reporting > Datasource and select the All User-favorite in the BVQ Server Web

Select the output Format:

• Chart data optimized for MS Excel access (XML) or
• Table + Chart data optimized for application program access (JSON) 

Select a start and end date and a sample interval, then copy the datasource URL into your external application (e.g. Microsoft Excel) to access the data.

Grafana: Table support

BVQ Table views can now be displayed in Grafana. A new datasource has been added to the BVQ Grafana Plugin which can read data from a BVQ Favorite in the BVQ Server

Topology Charts

This feature has been added in 5.7.1 and allows to create charts using topology attributes. In other words: BVQ now allows any attribute or metric to be visualized in charts - no matter if performance, capacity, or topology.

It is now possible to display attributes like

• counters (host logins or VDisks per system, etc.)
• enclosure temperature
• cost & price grow
• and many more

Simply select one or more objects in the treemap, right-click and choose Capacity / Topology

In the property panel, select the attribute(s) you want to see in the chart. Click on the attribute itself to get another dialogue window that allows you to change the colour of the selected attribute.

New performance metrics (Single Object Peak)

In 5.7.1, new metrics have been added to BVQ. They display the single object peak average and are available for various SVC, SAN and VMware metrics:

SVC: Object Type VDisk, MDisk, Node, SVC Node port, Lower cache, Upper cache

SAN: Object Type SAN Switch port

VMware: Object Type VM Virtual machine, VM Host & VM LUN

Enhanced Favorite Chooser & Event View

It‘s much easier now to find often used favorites in the Expert GUI.

The Favorites menu offers 3 new options:

Flag your most popular favorites as „Is starred“ in their information dialog:

Last used and Most used will be filled automatically according to your usage.

This is a per user option.

System Favorites also can be flagged as "Is loaded at start" or "Is starred".

Another improvement in the GUI affects the SVC Event view table which has some new functionality:

1. Multi column sort &  filters
2. Custom column order & size
3. Configure via property panel
4. Recall config from Favorites