Viewing Reports and Logs : Viewing Blockstore Metrics Reports
  
Viewing Blockstore Metrics Reports
The SteelFusion blockstore is a feature of the SteelFusion Edge device installed at the branch-end of the WAN connection (typically included inside a SteelFusion licenses SteelHead EX appliance at the branch site). The blockstore is an on-disk local cache that mirrors the complete persistent storage on the SteelFusion Core-side LUNs. The blockstore manages the block pages in the system. It reads block pages as needed, and writes block pages as they are scheduled to flush back through the SteelFusion Core.
The blockstore metrics report provides information on how well the SteelFusion Edge keeps up with the SteelFusion Core blockstore transfers, both in terms of time as well as the amount of uncommitted bytes. blockstore metrics appear only on a SteelFusion Edge appliance.
What This Report Tells You
The Blockstore Metrics report answers the following questions:
•  How many read hits and misses were recorded for the blockstore for the selected LUN for the specified period?
•  How many uncommitted bytes were recorded for the blockstore for the selected LUN for the specified period?
About Report Data
The Riverbed system reports on performance for periods up to one month. Due to performance and disk space considerations, the display granularity decreases with time passed since the data was sampled.
About Report Graphs
Use the mouse to hover over a specific data point to see what the y values and exact timestamp were in relation to peaks.
To view the Blockstore Metrics report
1. Choose Reports > SteelFusion Edge: Blockstore Metrics to display the Blockstore Metrics page.
Figure: The Blockstore Metrics Page
2. Use the controls to customize the report as described in the following table.
Control
Description
Time Interval
Select a report time interval of 5 minutes (5m), 1 hour (1h), 1 day (1d), 1 week (1w), All, or type a custom date. All includes statistics for the last 30 days.
Time intervals that do not apply to a particular report are dimmed and unavailable.
For a custom time interval, enter the start time and end time using the format YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS.
Because the system aggregates data on the hour, request hourly time intervals. For example, setting a time interval to 08:30:00 to 09:30:00 from 2 days ago does not create a data display, whereas setting a time interval to 08:00:00 to 09:00:00 from 2 days ago will display data.
When you request a custom time interval to view data beyond the aggregated granularity, the data is not visible because the system is no longer storing the data. For example, the following custom time intervals do not return data because the system automatically aggregates data older than 7 days into 2-hour data points:
•  Setting a 1-hour time period that occurred 2 weeks ago.
•  Setting a 75-minute time period that occurred more than 1 week ago.
LUN
Select the LUN whose statistics you want to see from the drop-down list or select All to view all LUNs.
Blockstore Report
Select one of the following data series from the drop-down list:
•  Read Hit/Miss - Select to view the total data read hits and average miss rate between the blockstore and the SteelFusion Core-side LUN(s). If no I/O occurs during a time period, the report does not include the idle time when calculating the hit rate.
•  Uncommitted Data - Select to view the amount of data committed, data written, and data uncommitted between the local SteelFusion Edge blockstore and the SteelFusion Core-side LUN(s).
Data committed is new data written to Edge and then written through Core to the back-end SAN array. The system commits all writes to Core in the order they were received.
Data written is new data written to the Edge blockstore.
Uncommitted data is new data written to Edge but not written through Core to the back-end SAN array.
Because each Edge appliance is linked to a dedicated LUN at the data center, the blockstore is authoritative for both reads and writes, and can tolerate WAN outages without worrying about cache coherency.
•  Commit Throughput - Select to view the amount of data throughput between the blockstore and the Core-side LUN(s).
•  Commit Delay - Select to view the average time delay, in seconds, between a request to commit data to the blockstore and the time the data is actually committed.