datastore performance reporting only keeps 1 hour

[was98strat]

I'm trying to track down what I think are disk latency issues in mt Dell MD3000i  but the performance reporting for datastores in vcenter only seems to keep 1 hour (and can't be changed)  I can view space utilization statistics for any time period i want (not very useful as we don't add or remove vm's very much)  but who was the bright spark that thought 1 hour was enough performance data!  means I have to watch the thing constantly to try and "catch" any latency periods.  pleae tell me there is a way to change this!!!

Help.

<rant mode on>

Oh and who ever changed the way you post and navigate the forums needs to get fired!!!  this is brutal.  almost makes me not want to bother with the forums!  why can't you just navigate to a forum and create a thread there like ever other forum software on the internet!  must be inhouse programmers!!

<rant mode off>

[AndreTheGiant]

You have this problem only for datastore report?

Or all graphs in vCenter have the same issue?

Andre

[was98strat]

This problem is only for the datastore performance reports. If I examine the datastore storage reports I can choose time periods.  1 hour 1 day, etc.  but when I switch the drop down to "PERFORMANCE"   the time period dialogue disappears completely! 1 hour of performancereports is not useful at all!

[seniornwb]

Did you ever get this solved ? We are seeing the same symptom. Perhaps it is "by design" ?

regards,

Hen

[mwolfemasd]

I have the same "problem."

I changed the vCenter statistics level from 1 to 2.  Not sure if this will allow us to see datastore performance beyond one hour or not, but I'll reply with an update.

[mwolfemasd]

I can confirm that changing the statistics level from 1 to 2 now allows me to view datastore performance older than one hour.

Here are two documents with more information about the statistics levels and what counters are contained in each level:

- Understanding VirtualCenter Performance Statistics

- vCenter Performance Counters

I imagine that if you are not using vCenter this data is not available to you beyond one hour.

[seniornwb]

Hi,

I changed the statistics level from 1 to 2 also, but I still cannot select any other than Last hour on datastore performance tab.

Anything other you have done to get it working besides changing from 1 to 2 ?

Regards,

Hen

[mwolfemasd]

I changed the statistics level to 2 for the five minute interval first, and after confirming that it provided the additional data, changed it for the other three intervals (30 minutes, 2 days, and 1 week) as well.

Did you wait some time after making the change, as vCenter will need to collect new data with the increased statistics logging level?

I was not able to select an option other than last hour until vCenter had gathered the new data (>1 hour).

I didn't make any further changes.  Hope this helps.

[seniornwb]

Hi,

I changed all the logging levels to level 2 last week and stil cannot see datastore performance longer than an hour ago.

Regards,

Hen

[mwolfemasd]

Are you logging in to your vCenter server and not logging directly into your hosts?  I imagine that you are, but I can't think of anything else to suggest.

[seniornwb]

Hi,

Yes I am using vcenter. I doubt there is a datastore performance view in the hosts interface.

Kind regards,

Hen

[mwolfemasd]

There is, but it only displays realtime data.

Not sure what else to suggest other than to open a ticket with support.  Good luck.

[seniornwb]

I opened a ticket with Vmware support, but they state that the one hour datastore performance is by design and that I have to upgrade to vsphere 5 to see more then 1 hour of datastore performance.

Does anyone have a screenshot (full vcenter screen) of the datastore performance graph showing more then 1 hour or showing the option to change it into something other then 1 hour ?

Kind regards,

Hen Savelkoul

[mwolfemasd]

Here's a screenshot of datastore performance over the last week on one of our VMs.

[seniornwb]

Hi,

I did not mean the datastore perfomance from a vm perspective, but from a datastore perspective (see screenshot)

Anyone has any like this on vcenter 4.1 that is showing more than the last hour ?

Kind regards,

Hen

[mwolfemasd]

Ah, now I know why changing the logging level did not work for you - we were not talking about the same thing.

I don't even have the option to see what you are seeing for datastore performance - my only option is to view space on the performance tab for our "real" datastores (probably because they are NFS and not block level).

The local disk datastores for each host show performance stats only going back one hour - exactly what you see.