SSP Monitoring using Insomnia:

IBM's Shared Storage Pools (SSP) monitoring is essential for safeguarding the health, performance, and reliability of storage infrastructure.

The REST API for the Shared Storage Pool (SSP) monitoring enables users to customize data collection settings and obtain raw performance statistics collected in an interval of every couple of minutes.

HMC (Hardware Management Console) provides detailed data about SSP (Shared Storage Pool) environments in IBM Power Systems. It serves as a central interface to view, collect, and monitor SSP-related data across the entire infrastructure.

We can read the REST API by using multiple tools like postman, Insomnia, Grafana, Zabbix etc

Insomnia is one of the API client. By using this interface we can easily interact with API for read, write and modify things. It has an easy interface for debugging, documentation, Authentication Management, and more.

With features like request organization, environment management, and easy visualization of responses, Insomnia enhances the efficiency of monitoring and managing SSP data.

IBM’s Hardware Management Console (HMC) offers a REST API that lets you to:

• Retrieve the status of the SSP cluster health
• Gather performance data from VIOS nodes
• Monitor the capacity and health of pools
• Access disk and tier statistics

Insomnia allows you to send authenticated API requests to the HMC and easily visualize the responses.

Prerequisites:

1.     HMC Version:

·       To support SSP with advanced features like vDisk mapping, cluster management, and REST API access, HMC must be at least V9 R1 M920 or a later version.

2.     VIOS Version:

·       To enable SSP (Shared Storage Pool) monitoring, VIOS (Virtual I/O Server) version must be 2.2.3.50 or higher.

3.     Install Insomnia App (link) using any email id.

Insomnia GUI:

Set Up the Authentication (Logon Request)

To carry out the configuration, follow the steps below:

1.     Open Insomnia and Click on Create collection from home page and name it as “SSP Monitoring”

2.     Select the New Request ( Cntl+N) to open a new collection request:

3.     To Configure the PUT Request from the drop down select method to “PUT” 

·       Set URL in below format to authenticate and establish a session:

“https://<hmc_hostname>/rest/api/web/Logon”

Set Up the Session Header for Subsequent Requests:

·       Goto Headers -> Select Add -> Enter Content type from the suggestion.

·       Example:

Content-Type: application/vnd.ibm.powervm.web+xml

4.     Select xml from the Body tab :

Paste this code in body by validating password:

<LogonRequest

   schemaVersion="V1_0"

   xmlns="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/systems/power/firmware/web/mc/2012_10/"

   xmlns:mc="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/systems/power/firmware/web/mc/2012_10/">

   <UserID>your_username</UserID>

   <Password>your_password</Password>

</LogonRequest>

Note: This is for the first time use:

Goto Application -> preferences.

Disable validate certificates if its enabled

5.     Click Send to execute the request in Insomnia.

·       Verify the response to ensure the SSP monitoring data was retrieved or updated successfully.

·       When the response is “200 ok” it means the resource was successfully updated.

Set Up the POST Request to monitor SSP

Steps to configure SSP Monitoring with POST in Insomnia

1.     Select the “+” button to create a new request, choose to “Add it to an existing collection” to organize the request in a collection, and set the method to POST.

2.     Set URL in below format

·       “https://<hmc_hostname>/rest/api/pcm/preferences/SSP”

3.     Under the Headers tab, set the following headers:

·       Content-Type: application/xml

4.     Open the Link provided in POST method and Get the Contents

• Open the provided URL in any browser.
• Retrieve the content (xml) from the response body or from the API documentation. This should contain the current configuration of the SSP cluster.
• Paste the XML content copied from the browser into the Body tab in Insomnia

5.     Update the XML to enable the MonitorEnabled setting:

• Edit the value of “MonitorEnabled” from false to true for the SSP cluster you wish to update.
• Verify you are updating the details of the correct SSP cluster

<SharedStoragePool>

    <name>SSP1</name>

    <capacity>1024</capacity>

    <free>512</free>

    <MonitorEnabled>true</MonitorEnabled>

</SharedStoragePool>

6.     Send the Modified Request

·       Once the XML is updated, click Send to submit.

·       A 200 OK response indicates that monitoring is now enabled for the specified SSP cluster.

7.     Manually extract the “associatedSharedStoragePool”

·       Select the href link and open in browser.

Example: https://<hmc_hostname>/rest/api/uom/SharedStoragePool/b3f15415-bf9d-3ca0-8a2c-ccac9d68391f

·       Edit the link by changing uom to pcm and suffix “RawMetrics” and load again

https:// <hmc_hostname>/rest/api/pcm/SharedStoragePool/b3f15415-bf9d-3ca0-8a2c-ccac9d68391f/RawMetrics

·       In the generated new page Select the href link (the cluster which was marked as true )from the loaded browser page and open it in the new browser.

8.     Once the JSON file is downloaded, validate it using an online tool such as JSONLint.

9.     Copy the validated JSON and paste it into a Word document to verify the metrics.

Verify nodes, state, failure group, IDs, disks size etc.

Conclusion

Monitoring SSP (Shared Storage Pools) is crucial for ensuring the reliability, performance, and optimal use of storage resources. By tracking key metrics such as pool health, disk performance, and virtual disk mapping, administrators can prevent issues, reduce downtime, and maintain system stability in a virtualized environment.

With Insomnia, SSP monitoring becomes simple and efficient. It provides an easy-to-use interface to interact with the HMC REST API, allowing administrators to quickly retrieve and analyze SSP metrics, automate tasks, and integrate monitoring with minimal effort.

References

·       https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power10?topic=monitoring-shared-storage-pool

·       https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power8/8286-42A?topic=monitoring-raw-metrics-ssp-preference

·       https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power8/8286-42A?topic=monitoring-json-specification-ssp-raw-metrics

·       https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power8/8286-42A?topic=monitoring-json-specification-ssp-processed-aggregated-metrics

·       https://insomnia.rest/

·       https://docs.insomnia.rest/insomnia/get-started

Reviewed By,

RAGHAVENDRA PRASANNAKUMAR