BVQ OS Agent for AIX

• Brief description
• Licensing
• Information gathering
• Object types
• Predefined Alert Rules
• Predefined Web Dashboards
• Predefined reports
• BVQ Expert GUI representation

Brief description

BVQ 2021.H2 supports a new platform which is actually an extension to the already existing PowerVM platform: A BVQ OS agent for AIX systems, VIOS and LPARs which collects performance and topology information that aren't available via HMC.

Licensing

Please review BVQ License Information Page or ask your sales contact for more information.

Information gathering

Unlike all other scanner types in BVQ, the BVQ OS Agent for AIX  is the first one to receive data from the scanned systems rather than pulling the data from them. An RPM package including the agent has to be installed on each partition. This agent is responsible for collecting data, packaging the data and sending the package to the BVQ server using scp once a minute.

The data that is collected contains topology information coming from several AIX commands as well as performance data gathered with NJMON.

Which information is collected?

• Topology configuration information
  • collected every minute (default) on each partition and sent to BVQ serve
  • 16 object types containing a total of ~155 attributes
• Performance statistics
  • collected every minute (default) on each partition and sent to BVQ server
  • 12 objects types containing a total of ~300 performance statistics

Additional information:

• See Supported AIX systems (SW)  for more information about which HW/SW versions are supported.
• See Scanner for more Information about BVQ Scanner configuration
• See BVQ Agent for AIX preparation for BVQ Agent for AIX installation instructions 
• See /wiki/spaces/~557058f85a2b71be2d496e8e4575a825a92089/pages/13839463 about scanned information.

Object types

A bunch of new object types come along with the BVQ Agent for AIX. Several of them are closely related to objects in the PowerVM module and have the same meaning. The following table provides an overview of those new object types, their meaning and whether they offer performance information.

Grouping	BVQ Name	Description	AIX device	PVM OT	Performance OT?
System	AIX Instance group	The AIX Instance group is the BVQ master grouping object. This means, all partitions running the BVQ OS Agent are grouped under this object
	AIX Instance	OS instance running the BVQ Agent for AIX (either LPAR or VIOS)
	AIX Managed system	Hardware that is hosting the AIX instance		PVM Managed system
	AIX Virtual CPU	Virtual processors in an AIX instance	procX
	AIX Logical CPU	Logical processors in an AIX instance	cpuX
Storage	AIX Disk adapter	An AIX Disk adapter is either a FC adapter or a virtual SCSI adapter. This object type contains all adapters that have block storage attached. Adapters with tape connection are not included.	fcsX / vscsiX	PVM vFC client adapter / PVM vSCSI client adapter
	AIX FC adapter	Fibre Channel Adapter	fcsX	PVM vFC client adapter
	AIX Disk	Storage volume	hdiskX	PVM VIOS PV / PVM VIOS LV
	AIX Disk path	Path between AIX Disk adapter and AIX Disk
LVM	AIX Volume group	Volume group	rootvg, etc.
	AIX Logical volume	Logical volume in a volume group
	AIX Paging space	Paging space - typically a logical volume (hd6)
	AIX Filesystem	Filesystem on a logical vollume
	AIX LV2PV	describes the relation between logical volume and physical volume, for example on which disk resides a partition copy of a logical volume?
Network	AIX Network adapter	Network adapter	entX	PVM Network client adapter
	AIX Network interface	Network interface	enX, lo0

The following graphs show the AIX object types and their connections to existing platforms:

Predefined Alert Rules

Coming soon... Not yet available (2021.H2.1)

Predefined Web Dashboards

Coming soon... Not yet available (2021.H2.1)

Predefined reports

Coming soon... Not yet available (2021.H2.1)

BVQ Expert GUI representation

All objects, attributes and statistics of this platform can be interactively browsed within the BVQ Expert GUI. 

Where to find IBM AIX objects?

Similar to all other objects, they show up in the Path browser inside the property panel of the BVQ Expert GUI or can be opened as a Table view from the Favorite browser. Several AIX objects can be combined in an end to end relation to objects of other platforms.

AIX objects in Path browser	AIX object Table views in BVQ Favorites

Object attributes

BVQ displays a lot of interesting attributes provided by AIX. Please explore the BVQ AIX table view favorites to get an impression of the most important attributes.

Performance and error statistics

The BVQ Agent for AIX collects many performance statistics from a partition using njmon.

Typical questions around performance, load and utilization are answered by BVQ:

• Is the LPAR performance negatively affected by the SAN congestion or storage latencies?
• Which LPAR puts a heavy load on a storage volume?
• Does an latency peak have influence on the performance of an LPAR?
• Does LPAR load generate latency peaks in storage
• Is the LPAR or host performance affected by slow drainers in the SAN?
• How is the LPAR connected to the SAN?

To view performance statistics for one or multiple objects, simply select the object(s), right-click and select the performance object type you are interested in.

In the performance chart view, open the properties panel to select the metrics you are interested in:

Grafana 8 support

BVQ finally updated from Grafana 6.4 to Grafana 8.1 to fix several security vulnerabilities and support many new Grafana features. As the Grafana project changed its internal plugin architecture the BVQ Datasource plugin was rewritten and extended.

Depreciations and fundamental changes prevent a migration of Grafana 6 dashboards. Therefor all Dashboards have to be rebuilt or manually migrated.

To support this migration process BVQ has an option to install Grafana 6 and 8 side by side. The installer will provide the following option:

Grafana 8 will use the configured Grafana port and Grafana 6 will switch to "configured Grafana port" + 1 (e.g. Grafana was installed on port 3000. After an upgrade to BVQ 2021.H2.2 Grafana 8 will use port 3000, Grafana 6 will still be accessible through port 3001)

BVQ Datasource Features

The BVQ Datasource plugin allows to connect Grafana to a BVQ Server and to visualize its data. Hence, the BVQ Server must be up and running.

QUERY MODE "Chart"

This mode is designed to get historical data in timeseries format that can be used in all panels supporting this format. Primarily the Timeseries panel. QUERY MODE "Chart" has six options:

Important: Based on the requested time range, interval, objects and metrics data load can cause higher BVQ Server load and longer response times!!!

QUERY MODE "Topology table"

This mode is designed to get tabular data for a specific point in time without a history. The point in time is calculated form the TO date of the chosen time range. QUERY MODE "Topology table" has three options:

The Topology mode is much faster as it only shows a point in time. It is suitable for stats and table panels.

The Topology table is a replacement of the BVQ Favorite Datasource and removes the requirement of creating a favorite in the BVQ Expert GUI prior to launching the information within Grafana.

QUERY MODE "Event table"

This mode is designed to get tabular data for system events and has three options:

As some platforms provide a massive amount of events the output is limited to 1000 events!!!

BVQ default Dashboards

The BVQ default Dashboards have been migrated and improved for Grafana 8. 

New Grafana Features

As the update from Grafana 6 to Grafana 8 skips multiple major and minor versions with plenty of new features, please take a look at the Grafana website to review all details: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/next/whatsnew/

Grafana itself improved in many different areas; especially the UI was redesigned for better usability. The following links provide an overview of the most BVQ relevant changes:

• Panels: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/next/panels/
• Transformations: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/next/panels/transformations/
• Visualizations: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/next/visualizations/
• Templates and Variables: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/next/variables/

Brocade FOS 9 support

BVQ now supports Brocade switches running Fabric OS 9.x and there are some enhancements in the Brocade (REST) module:

• new attributes for objects type Brocade switch and Brocade switch port
• new metrics for object type Brocade switch:
  
  
• two new object types to visualize Brocade's Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS): Brocade Policy and Brocade Rule.
  BVQ displays all Brocade Rules which either belong to the active Brocade Policy or are not predefined.

Systems Health Map performance improvements

In large environments, loading time for the Systems health map was unacceptably slow. To speed it up, the way of calculating alert rule results and display them in the Systems health map has been changed.

As a result, BVQ no longer displays absolute numbers in the Systems health map but percentages.

The absolute numbers of objects in each state can still be seen in the detail view of each alert rule:

In addition, the presentation of the Systems health map on the Home-screen has been changed from sunburst to stacked bar chart. Again, this change has the advantage of loading the data much faster than before. The numbers shown here represent the amount of objects per alert rule in a certain state.

Call Grafana directly from BVQ Server

There is a new menu option in the BVQ WebUI which allows you to jump to Grafana directly.

The URL is dynamically created from the URL the user is using to access the BVQ server and the Grafana port selected during setup. If this URL needs to be adjusted, navigate to Adminstration → Grafana configuration and enter the correct URL for your Grafana setup.