ORtera Atlas 1.1.12 Release Notes
Introduction
These release notes describe changes in this release compared
to previous releases, as well as known issues. For
installation and operation instructions, please see the
README file and the User Guide, available online at
http://ortera.com as well as in the Compass GUI.
Known Issues
- When tens of thousands of files are being accessed
during a monitoring session, processing the result may take
very long time, as the filename reconstruction and mapping
algorithm is ineffecient at handling such a large number of
filenames.
-
When tens of thousands of files are being accessed
during a monitoring session, a Java 1.4.2 internal error
may cause the JVM to exit. Upgrading to Java 5 solves this
problem.
-
The Managed Host software must run as root.
-
Compass can get completely stuck when it can't communicate with the
server, e.g., because the server is shut down or because of network
problems. As a work-around, kill the Compass process and start a
new one.
-
On very busy systems, the user may experience a delay
between scheduling a monitoring session and receiving
confirmation that the monitoring session has been
scheduled. One work-around, to continue scheduling
more monitoring sessions, is to open a second Compass
window. Occasionally the confirmation never appears
although the monitoring session has been scheduled.
To continue scheduling kill and restart Compass, or
refresh that Compass window.
-
Under very rare circumstances, for instance, when discovery analysis
data is being saved at exactly the same time as the monitoring or
heuristics analysis data for the same application or filesystem
is being saved, one of the database operations (and hence the
analysis phase it is part of) may fail. As a work-around, rerun the
analysis job.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.11
- Support for files greater than 2GB has been added.
In the process of monitoring filesystems each active file is checked to match its device to
the device of the monitored filesystem. The stat() system call was failing for files larger than
2 GB causing the file to be excluded from analysis. The stat64 () system call is now
used to ensure all files are included when they are active on a monitored filesystem.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.10
- A few potential stability-related problems have been fixed
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.9
- Under rare circumstances, the atlasanalyze command (used to process
the monitoring data) could fail with a core dump. This problem has
been corrected and the code has been optimized for faster processing.
-
The processing of monitor data in atlasagentd has been optimized
for faster processing.
-
ORtera performs an automatic analysis of I/O intensive processes
when the Managed Host process is started for the first time, see
the User Guide for details. Under certain circumstances, the
job counters displayed in Compass were not reset when this job
finishes, resulting in one job incorrectly shown as staying in
the Discovery phase. This problem has been corrected.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.8
- Links in /dev/rdsk that point to non-existing targets are now
ignored instead of causing "discovery" to fail.
- The Summary Report is now generated as HTML, and includes
heuristics information. It opens in the default web browser,
and can be saved and printed using the standard browser features.
- Additional status information for the "monitoring" phase has
been added. A new "Processing monitoring data" event is logged
to the Event Log when the actual monitoring is completed, and
the Status Bar now shows counters for both "monitoring" and
"processing."
- A job progress indicator has been added to the Status Bar. It
is active as long as at least one job on a Managed Host is in
an active state.
- The $ATLAS_HOME/bin/atlas_start.sh script now verifies that
the database is working before starting ORtera Atlas.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.7
- The bandwidth figures in the Compass Performance ->
Bandwidth and Response Time tab have been refined for
certain types of workload, and the instantaneous
interarrival time in the Compass Workload -> Time
Utilization tab calculation has been refined.
Note! The ORtera Atlas server part is unchanged and
does not need to be upgraded for this version.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.6
- Analyzed nodes for which there was no I/O activity
during the monitoring session are now shown with gray
icons in the Compass tree, to make it easier to find
the relevant processes with data in the tree. Note!
The ORtera Atlas server part is unchanged and does not
need to be upgraded for this version.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.5
- The monitoring phase could fail for short monitoring sessions
on a very busy server. This issue has been fixed.
- The error messages in the Event Log and the server log file now
contain text explaining the failure in addition to the return code.
- The startup time for Managed Hosts has been reduced.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.4
- Temporary instrumentation data files were left in the
$ATLAS_VAR/wfns-root/raw directory when running the Managed Host
software on Solaris 8. These files are now removed correctly for
all Solaris versions, unless they are explicitly requested to be
kept with the atlasagentd "-kwf" option.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.2
- The atlasanalyze command has been extended to produce information
about mmap() activity, and to correctly handle the case where all I/O
activity consists of mmap() calls. See the atlasanalyze man page
for details.
- A new heuristic has been added to indicate that lack of
regular I/O requests at the filesystem level of the
storage infrastructure may be because memory mapping
is used by the application being monitored. The ORtera
atlasanalyze command line tool can be used to analyze
the amount of latency caused by memory mapping in your
configuration.
- Compass has been improved to handle errors during CSV Import
correctly, and to label all Resource Set nodes in the tree with
the resource type name.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1.1
- A serious bug in the ESFS, affecting operation on Solaris 8 only,
has been fixed. The du(1M) command would incur an endless loop if
applied to the ESFS mount point. This condition is detected and
avoided in later version of Solaris, but not on Solaris 8. The fix
allows the du(1M) command to work properly on the ESFS mount point
even on
Solaris 8. ESFS is a pseudo file system, so the output of the
du(1M) command is not of interest, but automated scripts checking disk
usage in general may check the ESFS mount point because it is there.
- Monitoring duration time has been limited to 30
minutes in Compass. Monitoring sessions exceeding 30
minutes rarely have any incremental information value beyond shorter
durations, and data for such long sessions can take a very long
time to process on some systems. Monitoring sessions
of any duration can still be performed using the
command-line interface.
- The root filesystem is no longer available for analysis in the
Filesystems tab, because it typically does not hold data of
interest for ORtera analysis, and monitoring the root filesystem
slows processing of monitoring results.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.1
- The port number for atlasagentd reported at start-up was
incorrect on Solaris 8. This has been corrected.
-
atlasagentd could core dump on shutdown in some circumstances on
Solaris 8. This has been corrected.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.0.2
- The Heuristics analysis now detects the following additional
conditions:
- Unused Physical Devices
- Over-Allocation of Physical Resources
See the corresponding sections in the User Guide for details.
- The Heuristics analysis now provides different recommendations
depending on resource type (files, logical or physical devices)
for the following conditions:
- High Peak Load
- Large I/O Size Variation
- Unbalanced Data
- Unbalanced I/O Operations
- Unbalanced Response Times
See the corresponding sections in the User Guide for details.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.0.1
- Under rare circumstances, I/O for certain files was not recorded.
This has been fixed.
- I/O request records for the same file could in some cases be split
between records registered under the real filename and an encoded
filename. This has been fixed.
- Some users reported that heuristics failed occasionally on
high-end servers (more than 30 CPUs) for analysis sessions of a
longer duration (e.g., 10 minutes or more), reported as a
NullPointerException in the Compass Event Log. We have changed
the software to prevent this from happening.
- Refreshing the Discovered Resources node in Compass didn't get
the most up-to-date data. This has been fixed.
- The Time column values in the I/O Per Resource tab are now
formatted consistently to always have 3 decimal places.
- The I/O Per Resources and the Resources tabs now show the
total number of resources.
- The script usage messages shown during installation of the
server part, and when the user provides incorrect server type
options to the atlas_start.sh script, incorrectly stated that
the "ah" option requires root privileges. This has been fixed.
Now they state that it is the "mh" option that requires root
privileges.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 1.0
- A bug in the Compass Import CSV Files feature, causing the
Properties tabs for the imported Application and Application
Partition nodes to be blank and the imported node to appear
directly under the root note instead of under the Imported Results
node, has been fixed. Note! The ORtera Atlas server part is unchanged
and does not need to be upgraded for this fix.
-
The ORtera Atlas x86 server code now supports both 32 bit and
64 bit processors. This change only affects the x86 server
part.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 0.38 (Beta 5)
- Partial support for NFS has been added, making it possible
to monitor I/O activity for the NFS mount point. If the NFS server
is also an ORtera Atlas Managed Host, the I/O activity through
all storage resource layers for the exported filesystem can
be monitored on the NFS server, and the I/O for the mount point
on the remote server can then be manually compared to the I/O at
the NFS server.
- The installer for the server software (pkgadd) now creates
Bash and C shell profiles for the
ortera account,
setting all ORtera Atlas environment variables and creating
useful aliases.
- The atlas_startup.sh script now requires the server type
(
mh, ah or both) to be
specified explicitly, to avoid starting the server as the default
type by mistake.
- The Heuristics analysis condition and recommendation texts
have been clarified and edited for readability. Links to
sections in the User Guide, describing each heuristics in detail,
have also been added to the heuristics list in the Heuristics
tab in Compass.
- Help buttons have been added in the Processes, Filesystems and
Analyze tabs, launching the User Guide with the appropriate
section selected.
- The User Guide has been updated to cover all features, with
new sections describing all heuristics in detail. All
screenshots have also been replaced with up-to-date versions,
and the Installation section has been updated to reflect the
current distribution file structure and naming conventions.
- Clicking on a link to an external web site in the User Guide
now launches the native web browser, so that the site can be
viewed with a full-featured web browser.
- Compass on Mac OS X can now launch the native web browser for
accessing web sites through the Help menu and the User Guide.
This feature was previously only available for Windows, Solaris
and Linux.
- The Properties tab for imported Application and Filesystem
nodes now shows the name of the imported file.
- Various minor bug fixes in both Compass and the server code.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 0.37 (Beta 4)
- The number of Managed Hosts and the total number of
scheduled and running jobs in different phase are now shown
in the Compass Status Bar
- When Atlas is started on a Managed Host for the first
time, it now automatically performs an initial analysis of
the filesystems used by the most I/O intensive processes,
in addition to the analysis it previously did for the
most I/O intensive processes.
- The Compass Event Log window now pops up automatically when you
connect to an Aggregator Host, and its initial location
is maintained between Compass sessions.
- Compass now provides helpful hints about what the different
nodes represent and what you can do at each level in the Compass
tree.
- The Compass Help menu now contains direct links to various
pages on the ORtera web site.
- System error messages in the Compass Event Log now contain
a reference to the analysis job that failed.
- An issue with the Heuristics analysis that caused it to fail
(reported as a NullPointerException error message in the Event
Log), in some environments under certain circumstances, has been
corrected.
- Various stability-related bug fixes
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 0.36 (Beta 3)
- Extended the Export to XML File feature to also work on
individual Application Partition nodes. See the User Guide for
details.
- The default path for the dynamic ORtera Atlas data is
now /var/opt/ortera/atlas instead of /var/ortera/atlas
- Fixed various stability issues in the ORtera backend
- Fixed problems with lost data at the filesystem level for
processes with gaps in the file descriptor list (typical for
Oracle processes when using filesystems for the database).
- Fixed problems with attribution of I/O to the wrong filesystem
when using a subdirectory in one filesystem as the mount point
for another.
- Fixed a problem where KB values in the Resource Set Properties
tab and the I/O Size tab in Compass ended up as 0 instead of as
a fractional number for small values.
- Added a clarification label for Load Level in the Load Level tab
in Compass
- Fixed refreshing of Application Partition nodes in Compass so
that the Last Monitored field gets updated correctly.
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 0.35 (Beta 2)
-
The result of each analysis job is now saved as a separate
Application Partition, with the name prepended
with a timestamp. Along with this change, we also made the
discovery phase mandatory (can't be deselected) because
it's the phase that creates the default partition. The
Analyze tab was moved from the Application Partition
node to the Application/Filesystem node, since that is
actually what we analyze today.
-
Individual Application/Filesystem and Application Partition
nodes can now be deleted; just select one or more nodes
and choose Delete Nodes in the Edit menu.
-
Added View Summary Report for Application Partition nodes,
see the User Guide for details.
-
Added a Rename menu item in the Edit menu and a right-mouse
click pop-up menu.
-
The Resource Set name is now displayed instead of the ID in the
Heuristics tab Owner column (now renamed to Category), and
this column is now only present in the Heuristics tab for
Application Partition nodes
-
Added I/O Per Resource sub-tab under the Workload tab, showing
Ops/Data/Time per used resource.
-
Added sorting for all tables except the Event Log table, with
a sort-order indication in the column header. It's now also
possible to sort on multiple columns: click on the main column
and then Ctrl-click on the additional columns.
-
Compass errors are now reported in pop-up in addition to the
status bar message.
-
Fixed the inconsistency in the Workload and Performance tabs
layout of the statistics with regards to the order of
Min, Max, Avg, etc. (reported by Dominic Kay, Sun Microsystems).
The order is now Min, Max, central tendencies, variations in all cases.
-
The Properties tabs for Aggregator and Managed Host nodes
now show the OS, Java and Atlas versions
-
PID and Host info added to the Application/Filesystem
Properties tabs
-
Added scrollbar to the Properties tab
-
Added a Properties tab for Imported Results
-
Changed the size unit from bytes to KB (with 3 decimals) in all tabs.
-
The ORtera Atlas, Java and OS versions are now included
in Java log files on both the server and the client.
-
The
df command output for the ESFS pseudo filesystem
now shows Used as 0% instead of 100% (reported by Dominic Kay,
Sun Microsystems).
-
Updated and expanded the User Guide content to accurately describe
the functionality available in the current version, and addressed
the issues reported by Dominic Kay, Sun Microsystems.
-
Various minor adjustments and bug fixes
Changes Since ORtera Atlas 0.33.14 (Beta 1)
- Added support for Solaris 10
- Replaced the numbers in the Compass Workload tab columns with
node names
- Modified the default URLs for the Aggregator/Managed Hosts
to use IP addresses instead of host names, to allow for
access to an Aggregator Host from Compass in another domain
by default.
- Modified all Compass Properties tabs to contain customized data
for the selected node type, for instance, an analysis result
summary for Resource Set nodes, alias only for node types
that can be renamed, and more detailed type information for
Resource nodes.
- Added an Imported Results top-level node to group all
imported XML/CSV files in Compass, and changed the Compass behavior to
not remove the imported results when connecting to a new
Aggregator Host.
- Added a Remove From Tree menu item in the Compass Edit menu, for
selective removal of imported results.
- Added more threads for processing the raw instrumentation
data resulting in a performance improvement when monitoring
many processes/filesystems at the same time.
- Various stability-related bug fixes