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Question: Monitoring volumes on a NetApp SAN....

Can anyone recommend to me a good way to monitor volume statistics for SAN-attached volumes?

It's possible that there is a really simple way to accomplish this, but I am new to Solarwinds, so please forgive me my ignorance.

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Yann

Hi,

ATM, I see two way of monitoring Network Volumes. If anyone has different ways of monitoring its SANs please share your knowledge .

First, you can monitor the volumes on the clients that use a mounted volume.
Second, you can monitor the SAN volumes on the server itself.

For the first solution, try to list the resources on the client and see if the volumes are there. On windows network drives are not populated in the HrStorage mib which means the second solution will be preferred.

For the second solution, Identify the vendor/model of the SAN and do a MIB walk on it, you should be able to find out if a MIB lists all the Volumes Statistics and then be able to create some Universal Device Pollers with the utility of the same name.

Any information about the SAN (Vendor/Model) and the clients/servers (Windows/Linux/Unix/Mac) that are using the network volumes would be great to better understand the environment and provide you the best way to start monitoring them.

Thanks

Yann

lukezra

Hey Yann,

many thanks for the reply. i will provide some more details for you and let you know where things currently stand...

- the SAN is a NetApp 3140, with two filers and 4 disk shelves.

- I mapped the volumes to a monitored Windows server, but the discovery only sees local volumes (no network attached shares)

- I mapped the volumes to our management server (which is running Solarwinds), but the discovery still only sees local volumes.

- Auto Discovery sees both NetApp filers, but "list resources" only returns the interfaces and shows none of the volumes defined on the SAN

- I have done a MIB search and assigned the correct NetApp MIB (volumeNearlyFull), but it is not collecting any data. I suspect there is some config on the NetApp side that I am neglecting to finish.

Can you help me move forward on this? Maybe it's a simple matter of properly configuring the MIB's. If so, what is the best resource for those steps....Admin manual?

Yann

Hi,

I think you might need to setup some Universal Device Poller which could poll the following MIB tables:

NETWORK-APPLIANCE-MIB:dfEntry - 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.4.5.1

I am not sure if this is the most relevant MIB, I would advise you to do a MIB walk on the whole NETWORK-APPLIANCE-MIB to see which table returns the most relevant information for your volumes or directly contact NetAPP.

Also if someone has some UnDPs monitoring a NetAPP please share them :-)

If you have engineer's Toolset you can use the SNMP MIB Browser to walk that MIB. Select a device, search the MIB, right-click on the table and select GET TABLE, this should list you the results.

If you do not have Engineer's Toolset, you can use the snmpwalk utility part of Net-SNMP to retrieve the results.

http://www.elifulkerson.com/articles/net-snmp-windows-binary-unofficial.php

X:\ snmpwalk.exe -v $SNMPversion -c $CommunityString $IP_Address $OID

Replace:

$SNMPversion by the SNMP version supported by your device (1 or 2c).
$CommunityString by the SNMP community string (e.g. public)
$IP_Address by the IP address of your device
$OID by the OID or the MIB you want to walk (e.g. 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.4.5.1)

Once you located which column lists your volumes status you will have to create a Universal Device Poller:

How do I create a custom MIB Poller in Orion 9?

In Orion 9, the new Universal Device Poller replaces the "Custom MIB Poller" from previous versions. The new Universal Device Poller will allow you to create Custom Pollers based on your devices as you did before, but also introduces new features such as the ability to poll tables, and the ability to "transform', or perform arithmetic operations, on your pollers.

Steps to create a new poller:

Open the Universal Device Poller, under start -> Programs -> Solarwinds Orion.
Click "New Universal Device Poller"
Enter the OID that you need to poll. Alternatively, cilck "Broswe MIB Tree" and select the OID from here. If you select a table, you will be prompted to choose a column to monitor from that table.
Expand "Advanced Options" if you need to change the type of MIB value that this poller will be polling, or if you need to define the Units / time frame.
If you need to keep historical statistics for this poller (for graphing / gauge purposes) ensure that Keep Historical Data has been enabled.
Choose a group to store your new poller under. Once done, then click Next.
Choose the device or devices to apply this custom poller to. Click "Test" to ensure that all of these devices support the OID that you are polling for.
Click Next. If you are creating a Table poller, you will be given the option to choose a label for each entry in the table. Click Next
Here, you will be able to choose which web pages you can automatically assign the custom poller resources to. Simply check the boxes next to the view you would like to add each type of resource to. Views will be greyed out if adding the resource to those pages is not possible.

Assign your poller to other devices:

If you need to add your poller to other devices, click on the "Assign Pollers" button.
Proceed through the Wizard to choose the poller you would like to assign, and which nodes you would like it assigned to.

"Transforming" your pollers:

The transform wizard allows you to define a formula, which can perform arithmetic calculations on your custom pollers. You can create a transform to perform a calculation based on one or more pollers from the same device.

Click the Transform Results button to start the Wizard.
Choose a Name and description for your transformed poller, and whether you will need to keep historical statistics for it.
Enter in the Formula that you require for the transformation. This can include the standard maths symbols, and you can also use some additional function by clicking on "Functions".
Test your Transformation by choosing a node to run the poller and transformation against. The results will be displayed in the box below, showing the results of each poller, and each transformation. If there is an error in your formula, you will see the message "Evaluation error" under the "Transform Results" column.

Universal Device Poller Tutorial

HTH,

Yann

ctschap

Is there any way we can get this added as a feature request to make NetApp volume monitoring native to NPM like was done with VMWare? I would be willing to bet that plenty of us would like to see this happen.

ctschap

Can we add this as a feature request? That is, to include native NPM monitoring for NetApp volumes, similar to what was done with VMWare.

jhowe

I know this thread is pretty old at this point, and I know that Solarwinds has a dedicated suite for storage monitoring, but have you consitered using the netapp powershell toolkit? I don't have the exact link for the download, but if you can log into the NetApp Now site, you should be able to find it. The Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit | NetApp Community

I currently run a powershell command using the toolkit to monitor my volumes, luns and snapmirror relationship lag times. Hopefully this helps. If you need help setting this up, let me know, as it's still pretty fresh in my head.

jhowe

I wrote a guide on how to do this with SAM and the data ONTAP powershell toolkit. Monitor NetApp SAN via Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor | Cit3.net

Let me know if you have any questions.

edsando

Yeah, what happened to your guide?