Every Infratire has backend as a different storage system and key challenges we face, especially in larger environments is managing systems from multiple vendors. Every organization has the same situation, and monitoring all of the different systems and keeping track of their performance and health are challenging because every vendor has its own set of tools.

Now we have a solution to this challenge, Xorux has a single product, STOR2RRD will provide you a single web-based interface where you can view the performance of all your different systems.  STOR2RRD is one of the best tools offers you end-to-end views of your storage environment including LAN and SAN. It can save you significant money in operation monitoring and by predicting utilization bottlenecks in your virtualized environment. In this post, we will share the procedure to install and configure STOR2RRD Virtual Appliance with 3PAR  storage for real-time performance monitoring.

Also, you can generate policy-based alerts, view the overall health status of your systems, provide capacity reports and forecasting data.

• Real-time storage, SAN and LAN performance visibility in multi-vendor environment
• Historical reporting (graph, CSV, PDF, XLS)
• Alerting based on performance thresholds
• Event monitoring

The full list of supported systems is significant and includes both storage systems and switches which you can find here – supported systems

STOR2RRD  is free software which you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For customers, under support, there is distributed the enterprise edition with additional benefits.

Download STOR2RRD  Appliance

You can use VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V image for fast start or for product evaluation purposes.It contains installed and configured LPAR2RRD and STOR2RRD products with all their prerequisites.It is distributed in OVF or Hyper-V format easily importable in your infrastructure

Download

Virtual Appliance can be installed on below options

• As a virtual machine in your vCenter or ESXi
• On VMware player. A free non-commercial version.
• As a virtual machine in your Microsoft Hyper-V server

The acquired IP address will be visible on the console after the appliance starts up. Navigate to the web browser to the address shown on the welcoming screen.  http://<appliance IP>/

Product webs are accessible with these credentials:

System Defaults

Virtual Machine settings

The VMware image should work on recent VMware products as well on other virtualization software that support OVF (Open Virtualization Format). The image has been successfully installed on at least:

• VMware player 6
• VMware ESX 4.1 or Higher

Recommended HW sizing:

• Evaluation purposes:
  • 6GB RAM
  • 2 CPU
  • 100GB disk space (thin provisioning)
• Production with 1000 VMs and 10 storages
  • 12GB RAM
  • 4 CPUs
  • 100GB disk space (thin provisioning)

STOR2RRD OVF Deployment

Right-click the data center and select Deploy OVF Template.

Browse the file and Click Next

Review the details and Click Next

Provide a name for VM and Select the Folder and Click Next

Select the Esxi Host and Click Next

Select the Datastore and Click Next

Select the Network and Clik Next

Review the Details and Finish, select the power on after deployment option

Once VM is powered on you can view the IP of the machine in the console.

Verify that Application is working by Open: https://<appliance IP>/ from browser

Login to the STOR2RRD console using  url  ” https://ip_or_fdqn/stor2rrd/ ”  and you have to enter the username and password (admin/admin)

NOw you are logged to the first-time console look like below

Virtual Appliance contains all required software except 3rd party storage APIs which cannot be freely distributed, they must be installed manually, refer to your storage installation.

Note: STOR2RRD is installed under user lpar2rrd in Virtual Appliance.

Configure the Storage

Now we have set passwordless ssh access to storage from our STOR2RRD appliance

• Do all actions below under stor2rrd account (lpar2rrd on the Virtual Appliance) unless is explicitly specified root in the procedure, here use lpar2rrd since we use the virtual appliance
• Create user stor2rrd on the storage with browse role and allow it for all domains.

Login to 3PAR Storage using putty and create using below command

# createuser -c "password" "username" all browse

Under lpar2rrd account create config entry

# su - lpar2rrd (user stor2rrd if it is not an Appliance)

#vi /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd/etc/storage-list.cfg

$ perl /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd/bin/conntest.pl "3PARIP" 22
  Connection to "3PARIP" on port "22" is ok

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -N ""
  Generating public/private rsa key pair.
  Enter file in which to save the key (/home/stor2rrd/.ssh/id_rsa):

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

# ssh lapr2rrd@3par_storage stor2rrd@3par_storage password: "password"

 sshrsa AF5afPdciUTJ0PYzB6msRxFrCuDSqDwPshqWS5tGCFSoSZdE= stor2rrd pubic key
 SSH public key successfully set!

$ ssh stor2rrd@3par_storage

$ cd /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd
$ ./bin/config_check.sh 
  =====================
  STORAGE: 3par01: 3PAR
  =====================
  ssh -o ConnectTimeout=15 -i /home/stor2rrd/.ssh/id_rsa  lpar2rrd@3PARIP  "showuser"
  connection ok

$ crontab -l | grep load_3parperf.sh
$

$ crontab -e

# HPE 3PAR storage agent
0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd/load_3parperf.sh > /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd/load_3parperf.out 2>&1

$ crontab -e

# STOR2RRD UI (just ONE entry of load.sh must be there)
5 * * * * /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd/load.sh > /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd/load.out 2>&1

$ cd /home/stor2rrd/stor2rrd
$ ./load.sh