Chapter 5. Advanced DMF Monitoring and Management
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Chapter 5. Advanced DMF Monitoring and Management

This section discusses the following:

Accessing DMF Manager

To access DMF Manager, do the following:

  1. Click the Open DMF Manager button in the DMF Services page, shown in Figure 5-1, which is available from the following selection:

    Management -> Storage -> DMF Services

    Figure 5-1. Accessing DMF Manager

    Accessing DMF Manager

  2. If necessary, accept the DMF Manager security certificate.

    Note: The certificate warning is safe to ignore because DMF Manager generates its own SSL certificates, rather than having the SSL certificates signed by a commercial certificate authority.

If you need help using DMF Manager, select the following from the DMF Manager menu bar:

Help -> Getting Started

Monitoring DMF Status

When you initially open DMF Manager, you will see the Overview page, which displays a high-level logical view of the SGI InfiniteStorage Gateway environment, including the relationships and status of components.

With a glance at the DMF Manager Overview page, you can see if the system is operating properly. An icon in the upper-right corner indicates if DMF is up (green) or down (upside down and red). If DMF requires attention, DMF Manager makes actions available to identify and resolve problems. The tool volunteers information and provides context-sensitive online help. DMF Manager also displays performance statistics, allowing you to monitor DMF activity, filesystems, and hardware.

Figure 5-2 is an example of the Overview page. It shows that DMF is up (green icon), there are some informational messages, and there are some unacknowledged alerts.

Figure 5-2. DMF Manager Overview

DMF Manager Overview

If you suspect a problem with DMF, see “Contacting SGI Support and Collecting Data for Problem Analysis ” in Chapter 7.

For more information, access the DMF 6 Administrator Guide for SGI InfiniteStorage by selecting the following in DMF Manager:

Help -> Admin Guide

Monitoring Capacity of the Secondary Storage

To determine the available space on the secondary storage, do the following:

  1. Select the following DMF Manager menu, as shown in Figure 5-3:

    Statistics -> DMF Resources

    Figure 5-3. Accessing Statistics for DMF Resources

    Accessing Statistics for DMF Resources

  2. Select Volume Groups and the particular volume group that you want to monitor.

  3. Examine the display.

    Figure 5-4 shows an example.

Figure 5-4. Volume Group Statistics in DMF Manager

Volume Group Statistics in DMF Manager

Note: Some DMF configuration parameters use multipliers that are powers of 1000, such as KB, MB, and GB. However, the DMF Activity, DMF Resources , and DMF I/O pages use multipliers that are powers of 1024, such as kiB, MiB, and GiB. For example, this means that 1 MiB/s is 220 = 1048576 bytes per second.

Acknowledging DMF Alerts

To acknowledge DMF alerts, log in as the DMF Manager admin user and choose the following from the menu bar:

Messages -> Alerts

For more information about an alert, select it and choose Help on this alert, as shown in Figure 5-5.

Figure 5-5. DMF Manager Alerts Page with Additional Help

DMF Manager Alerts Page with Additional Help

To acknowledge one or more alerts, select them and choose Acknowledge selected alerts, as shown in Figure 5-6. For more information about filtering, sorting, and acknowledging alerts, see the chapter about DMF Manager in DMF 6 Administrator Guide for SGI InfiniteStorage.

Figure 5-6. Acknowledging DMF Alerts

Acknowledging DMF Alerts

Monitoring the Status of OpenVault Libraries

To determine the status of the OpenVault libraries on a physical/logical library or COPAN MAID shelf, do the following:

  1. Select the following DMF Manager menu:

    Storage -> Libraries

  2. Select the particular library that you want to monitor or use the scroll bars.

  3. Examine the display.

For more information about status, right-click in the Status column header and select What is “Status”, as shown in Figure 5-7.

Figure 5-7. OpenVault Library Status

OpenVault Library Status

Determining the Migration State of a File

To determine the migration state of a given file, do the following:

  1. In a shell on the MIS server, use the dmls(1) or dmfind(1) commands, which are similar to the Linux ls(1) and find(1) commands.

For example, the following command displays the files in the /dmi4/abc directory: 

mis#  dmls -l /dmi4/abc 
total 68584
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  16373855 2006-07-22 15:01 (OFL) dmf_tst.00005
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  26362860 2006-07-22 15:02 (OFL) dmf_tst.00015
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  36199305 2006-07-22 15:03 (OFL) dmf_tst.00025
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  39310090 2006-07-22 15:04 (OFL) dmf_tst.00035
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  51488786 2006-07-22 15:06 (OFL) dmf_tst.00045
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  16373855 2006-07-22 15:52 (OFL) dmf_tst.00163
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  36199305 2006-07-22 15:53 (UNM) dmf_tst.00183
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  39310090 2006-07-22 15:55 (OFL) dmf_tst.00193
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  17829904 2006-07-22 15:59 (UNM) dmf_tst.00223
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  14572782 2006-07-22 16:06 (UNM) dmf_tst.00233
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  16373855 2006-07-22 16:08 (OFL) dmf_tst.00246
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  27294750 2006-07-22 17:12 (DUL) dmf_tst.00606
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  72121722 2006-07-22 17:17 (OFL) dmf_tst.00616
-rw-r--r-- 1 abc   sys  22807602 2006-07-22 17:24 (DUL) dmf_tst.00636

DMF regards files as being of one of the following types:

  • Regular files (REG) are user files residing only on the DMF-managed primary filesystem on MIS disk.

  • Migrating files (MIG) are files whose copies in secondary storage are in progress.

  • Migrated files are files that have one or more complete migrated copies and no pending or incomplete migrated copies. Migrated files are one of the following types:

    • Dual-state files (DUL) are files where the data resides both on primary filesystem on MIS disk and on the secondary storage

    • Offline files ( OFL) are files where the data is no longer on the DMF-managed primary filesystem on MIS disk (however, the data is always available online from the user perspective)

    • Unmigrating files (UNM) are previously offline files in the process of being recalled to the DMF-managed primary filesystem on MIS disk

    • Partial-state files (PAR) are files with some combination of dual-state, offline, and/or unmigrating regions

Note: DMF does not migrate pipes, directories, or special files.

Like a regular file, a migrated file has an inode. An offline file or a partial-state file requires the intervention of DMF to recall its offline data; a dual-state file is accessed directly from the DMF-managed primary filesystem on MIS disk.

The operating system informs the DMF daemon when a migrated file is modified. If anything is written to a migrated file, the offline copy is no longer valid, and the file becomes a regular file until it is migrated again.

For more information, see the man pages and the DMF 6 Administrator Guide for SGI InfiniteStorage.

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Chapter 4. Basic DMF Monitoring and Management  Chapter 6. Using LiveArc AE Digital Asset Management