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What is the Node Utilization Stress Index in Data Infrastructure Insights, and why is it used?

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Applies to

  • Data Infrastructure Insights (DII) (formerly Cloud Insights)
  • NetApp Data ONTAP Node Utiilization

Answer

NetApp Data ONTAP performance metrics schema is vast and there are hundreds of counters available.
  • Most of these counters are specific to ONTAP, many of which are designed for internal performance workflows.
  • While these metrics can be used to manually determine node health, a high degree of specialization may be needed to fully understand node utilization when viewing individual metrics.

DII intelligently combines several metrics into a single Node Stress Index to represent ONTAP Node Utilization.
  • This index uses a complex formula that takes into consideration multiple components that are potential contributors to node performance bottlenecks.
  • It was designed to represent the current stress state of the node based on user workload and foreground processes.
    • Foreground process examples: User IO, web services, etc.
  • Background processes do not factor into this index.

ONTAP background processes perform housekeeping activities that consume node resources.
  • These background processes are opportunistic, can be aggressive, and can consume high amounts of CPU and or disk resources.
  • However, they are automatically throttled as needed by ONTAP, based on system load.
  • These processes are not considered in the Node Utilization Stress Index.
  • This prevents misrepresentation of node stress.
  • Without this consideration, monitoring applications would generate false positive utilization alerts due to the opportunistic nature of these processes.

Additional Information

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