Custom UI - Best widgets, metrics and interactions to analyze storage capacity and peaks

[DarkPassenger]

Hi Community,

I'm trying to create a custom dashboard which gives me a complete overview of my datacenter storage resources and peaks (Latency, IO, Usage,...).

I already build one with a Metric Graph (IOs,Latency, Usage rate kbps), Health Status of all Datastores and two Scoreboard widgets, which is quite informative but not exactly what I desired.

basically I build something like this (8.1.5.6 Storage Dashboard):

http://download3.vmware.com/vcat/vcat31_documentation_center/index.html#page/Implementation%2520Exam...

My goal is to have a single point of view that informs me about the current level of resource usage to recognize when my resources are exhausted and I better attach another storage array...

I also would like to see IO and latency peaks over a defined laps of time.

There are a lot of possibilities to set up interactions and pipe metrics through several widgets. I hope you can support me with some suggestions.

Thanks!

[mark_j]

A top-n is useful for displaying datastores with high iops and high latency and they'll tell you when you're hitting your SLA thresholds and storage capabilities. Usually I'll start with a top-n or heatmap to call out problem, then pass them to other widgets via interactions for further drilldown or a sparkline/metric graph with res int files to show specific metrics. Sometimes I'll have multiple receiving sparkline widgets, one with 6hr, another with 24hr or 7-day to give you some sense of short-term activity and longer-term activity. I say just do what works for you and your people.. it's a subjective thing and it takes a little time to mature a dashboard.