# Performance Monitoring

## Understanding Performance Monitoring

Scope: Object Storage Administrator

This section contains a high-level overview for monitoring the storage
performance.
The Object Storage Performance Monitor allows you to check and monitor
the behavior of each element that can affect the overall storage performance,
from a single drive, user, account, or controller to the whole Object Storage
system.

Each element of the data path can impact the overall performance if not
configured and operated properly.
The Object Storage performance Monitor is a tool for pinpointing
storage performance bottlenecks. The following metrics are of interest to
measure the performance of a storage system:

- **Bandwidth (Throughput):** This value is how much read or write
  throughput a certain Resource (disk, policy etc.) delivers, usually
  expressed in Megabytes/Second (MB/s)
- **OPs:** IO operations per second, which means the amount of HTTP operations
  done in a single second interval. A certain amount of IO operations will
  also give a certain throughput of Megabytes each second, so these two
  are related.

  *Average Object Size x IOPS = Throughput*
- **Response time (Latency):** is the time it takes each IO operation to
  complete. Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) and should be as
  low as possible.

<a id="understanding-performance-monitor"></a>

## The Performance Monitor

To open the Object Storage Performance Monitor, in the left menu navigate to
**System > Performance** section.

The performance monitor view consists of the following elements:

![ngos-performance-dashboard](media/ngos-performance-dashboard.png)

1. **Resources Tree:** The Resources Tree lists all the data path objects
   that currently exist in the NextGen Object Storage:
   - Policies (data policy and metadata policy including their respective
     drives)
   - Virtual Controllers (grouped by their type)
   - Accounts
   - Users
   - Container Replication
2. **Resource Tile:** The Performance Monitor has 1 to 9 resource tiles
   depending on the chosen layout. Each tile contains either a table or a chart.
3. **Layout Selector:** Select from the supported tile layouts, with
   choices of one, two or three rows, and one, two or three columns of
   tiles.

1. **Interval Selector:** Allows switching between different intervals.
   The interval is a sampling period. Each interval is a single point in
   the chart. This point represents the average value during that interval.

   For examples:
   If 1 minute interval was selected, 60 points are displayed. Each one is
   the average value for that specific minute. In total the last 1 hour is
   displayed.

   The interval selection affects all tiles.

## Customizing the Performance Monitor

### Customizing the Layout

- Go to **Object Storage GUI > Performance** and click the **Layout** selector.
- Select the layout of your choice. Note that if the selected layout has
  fewer tiles than the previously displayed layout, the other tiles will
  be lost, and should be selected again.
- Drag the object of interest from the Resources tree, and drop it into a tile.
  Do the same for all tiles.

### Customizing a Tile

Each tile represents a single resource, and provides a number of display options
related to the specific resource. The display can be either a table of the
most current performance figures, or a chart over time of the recent history.

- To display a chart, click the **Charts** button on the top right corner of
  the tile, and select the metric of interest.