Linux monitoring

Linux  monitoring

Linux is monitored via the OS agent
If it is being monitored under virtualisation technologies such as VMware, Proxmox, IBM Power Systems, RHV, oVirt, OLVM or Nutanix, then the Linux OS agent data is mapped to the virtual machine (VM).

OS agent metrics and features

  • OS CPU usage of user/sys/IO wait/idle in %
  • CPU queue: load average, blocked processes
  • Memory usage of used/FS cache/free memory in MB
  • Paging rate in MB/sec
  • Paging space usage in %
  • SAN (FC adapters ) throughput per adapter
    • data in MB/sec
    • IO/sec
    • response time (latency)
    • error
  • LAN (ethernet) throughput per adapter
    • data in MB/sec
    • packet count
    • error
  • Total IO throughput (Linux)
    • IOPS
    • Data in MB/sec
    • response time (latency)
  • Filesystem capacity usage
  • SAN multipath monitoring
  • JOB TOP, CPU and Memory tracking of running processes visually over time
  • ZFS cfg & performance
  • NFS performance
  • Filesystem usage
  • Error log
  • Logical Volume Manager
  • CPU/IO/Mem pressure
  • NVIDIA GPU

Operating systems

  • Linux on Power
  • Linux x86
  • Linux ARM

Implementation

There is XorMon daemon listening on the host where XorMon server is running on port 8162.
Each LPAR has a Perl-based agent installed. This agent is started every minute from the crontab and retrieves performance and other data.
The agent contacts the XorMon server every 10-15 minutes and sends all locally stored data for that period.

Agent prerequisites

  • Perl interpreter. All Unix/Linux systems contain Perl in basic installation.
  • It may run under any user account, it does not need any special privileges in the OS.
  • Opened TCP communication between each LPAR and XorMon server on port 8162.
  • Connections are initiated from the monitored Linux only.

Examples

Latency:
Linux  monitoring : Latency

JOB CPU:
Linux  monitoring : JOB CPU

Topology:
Linux  monitoring : topology

Metric list

OS CPU CPU sys, user, IO wait
CPU queue Load avrg, Blocked processes
JOB CPU, Memory
Memory usage Used, FS cache
LAN (ethernet adapters) MB/sec, packet count
SAN (FC adapters) MB/sec, packets/sec, Latency
Paging space usage Usage in %
Paging rate MB/sec
Filesystem usage Usage in %, GB
Error log dmesg
LVM filesystem, VG, LV, disk, storage, volume
Disk multipath disk
NFS performance data, IOPS, retrans, latency, error, queue
ZFS performance Pool, VDEV, Cache, Disk