Monitoring Global Mirror performance with the IBM System Storage Productivity Center

You can use the IBM® System Storage® Productivity Center (SSPC) to monitor key Global Mirror performance measurements.

It is important to use a Storage Area Network (SAN) performance monitoring tool to ensure that all SAN components are performing correctly. This is particularly important when you use an asynchronous copying solution such as the SAN Volume Controller Global Mirror feature. SSPC monitors key performance measures and alerts you when thresholds are exceeded.
Note: If your VDisk or MDisk configuration changes, restart the SSPC performance report to ensure that performance is monitored for the new configuration.
Use SSPC to check the following measurements:
  • The Port to Remote Node Send Response Time measurement is less than 80 milliseconds. If this measurement is greater than 80 milliseconds during monitoring, the long-distance link has excessive latency. Ensure that the link is operating at its maximum bandwidth.
  • The sum of the Port to Local Node Send Response Time measurement and the Port to Local Node Send Queue measurement is less than 1 millisecond for the primary cluster and the CPU Utilization Percentage is below 50%. A value that exceeds these amounts can indicate that an I/O group is reaching the I/O throughput limit, which can limit performance.
  • The sum of the Backend Write Response Time measurement and the Write Queue Time for Global Mirror MDisks measurement of the secondary cluster is less than 100 milliseconds. A longer response time can indicate that the storage controller is overloaded.
  • The sum of the Backend Write Response Time measurement and the Write Queue Time for Global Mirror MDisks measurement of the primary cluster is less than 100 milliseconds. If the response time is greater than 100 milliseconds, application hosts might see extended response times when the SAN Volume Controller cluster cache is full.
  • The Write Data Rate for Global Mirror MDisk groups measurement of the secondary cluster indicates the amount of data that is being written by Global Mirror operations. If this value approaches either the intercluster link bandwidth or the storage controller throughput limit, further increases can cause overloading of the system. Monitor for this condition in a way that is appropriate for your network.
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