NetApp Performance Monitoring: How to view the CPU status on a NetApp

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility if you screw up, or otherwise render your system unusable.  That being said, if you aren't a moron, this works every time.

If you're curious how busy your NetApp is, there are a variety of tools you can use, as well as  performance counters you can review on the command line.

Sysstat is one of the most common commands I use to troubleshoot performance issues, or just leave open to watch

usage: sysstat [-c count] [-s] [-u | -x | -m | -f | -i | -b] [-d] [interval]
-c count        - the number of iterations to execute
-s              - print out summary statistics when done
-u              - print out utilization format instead
-x              - print out all fields (overrides -u)
-m              - print out multiprocessor statistics
-f              - print out FCP target statistics
-i              - print out iSCSI target statistics
-b              - print out SAN statistics
-d              - print HDD and SSD stats seperately
                      for default, -u and -x formats
interval        - the interval between iterations in seconds, default is 15 seconds

Well, you can just run it without any parameters and still get some decent data.

NETAPP-CLI> sysstat

 CPU     NFS    CIFS    HTTP     Net   kB/s    Disk   kB/s    Tape   kB/s  Cache
                                  in    out    read  write    read  write    age
  9%    1072       0       0    9814   1842    5080  11828       0      0     6 
 34%    4558       0       0   57324  44511   64167  58019       0      0     1s
 45%    6227       0       0   74712  67513   94815  88040       0      0     0s
 34%    2521       0       0   62385  51200   65610  73314       0      0     7 

By default, this will output a basic set of stats - CPU, NFS Ops, CIFS Ops, network and disk throughput at 15 second intervals.

If you want more data more often, add a -x 5.  The -x provides many more columns of data for your to analyze.

NETAPP-CLI> sysstat -x 5

This will give you CPU, NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FCP, and iSCSI Ops.  this will also give you a cache hit ratio, and CP times and types.  

if you are more curious about the CPU, you can go deeper.  sysstat -m 5 will show each CPU core and its level of activity

NETAPP-CLI> sysstat -m 5
 ANY  AVG  CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3
 24%  10%    9%  11%  11%  10%
 11%   4%    4%   5%   4%   5%

 11%   5%    5%   5%   5%   6%
 17%   7%    6%   8%   8%   8%
  9%   4%    3%   3%   4%   5%
 18%   8%    7%   9%   8%   7%

 12%   4%    4%   4%   4%   5%

Do you wonder what the CPU is doing?  

But first, you must change to diag mode.  Use at your own risk!

NETAPP-CLI*> priv set diag
NETAPP-CLI*> sysstat -M 1

This will show what percentage of the CPU is being dedicated to what process.  You will see RAID, network, storage, etc.  You will also notice something called Kahuna - this is the special NetApp "black box" process that houses everything from dedupe, WAFL block reclamation, and all sorts of other goodies.  If you're suffering from high CPU/controller bottleneck, there's a good chance the Kahuna domain is eating up a good portion of your CPU.

Don't forget to exit out of diag mode

NETAPP-CLI*> priv set
NETAPP-CLI>