Technical Report

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

Deployment and Best Practices Guide
Shiva Raja, NetApp
May 2014 | TR-4241

Abstract
This technical report provides basic deployment and best practice guidelines for NetApp
OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1. This document is for users who are already familiar with
the fundamentals of the clustered Data ONTAP operating system and OnCommand Unified
Manager 6.1.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Resource Allocation ........................................................................................................................ 3

2.1 CPU and Memory ..................................................................................................................................... 3
2.2 Disk Space ............................................................................................................................................... 3

Architectural Overview .................................................................................................................... 3

3.1 Basic Components ................................................................................................................................... 3
3.2 The Server Architecture ............................................................................................................................ 4

Database .......................................................................................................................................... 5
4.1 The ocum_view Schema........................................................................................................................... 5

Logs ................................................................................................................................................. 7

Ports................................................................................................................................................. 8

Backup and DR of OnCommand Unified Manager Server ............................................................. 8

Virtual Appliance Backup and Restore Process Overview ................................................................................. 9

Maintenance User ............................................................................................................................ 9

Alerts ................................................................................................................................................ 9

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1) Component dependency. ........................................................................................................................... 5
Table 2) ocum_view schema. .................................................................................................................................. 6
Table 3) Ports used. ................................................................................................................................................ 8

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1) Server architecture of OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1. .......................................................................... 4

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

1 Introduction
OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 is supported on the VMware virtual appliance, with the underlying OS
being Debian 6.0.7. Currently OnCommand Unified Manager is supported only on the VMware ESX
platform. For further details about platform support, see the NetApp Interoperability Matrix.

2 Resource Allocation
2.1

CPU and Memory

By default, the OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 virtual appliance is assigned four vCPUs and 12GB of
RAM. This enables OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 to monitor up to 24 clusters (with as many or as
few member nodes as necessary) with up to a million objects (which include but are not limited to disk
shelves, storage virtual machines, aggregates, volumes, qtrees, LUNs, and exports).
This configuration is the one most recommended to effectively monitor your clustered Data ONTAP
resources. For more details on system requirements, refer to the installation and setup guide from
support.netapp.com.

2.2

Disk Space

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 has four VMDKs:

OS disk: 60GB

Data disk: 50GB

Swap disk: 12GB

Jail disk (which is meant to store the Support Bundle): 30GB

Hence, the space requirements under the following conditions are:

Thin provisioning: 2GB

Thick provisioning: 152GB

3 Architectural Overview
The architecture of OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 is significantly different from that of its
predecessor, OnCommand Unified Manager 5.x (previously known as DFM). The architecture primarily
focuses on improving the scalability, performance, maintainability, and modularity of the product.

3.1

Basic Components

Following is a brief look into the basic components of OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1.

The Acquisition Unit

The acquisition unit is responsible for discovering and monitoring the clustered Data ONTAP systems and
their resources.

The OC-IE Component

The OnCommand Insight Essentials (OC-IE) application component is responsible for collecting
configuration and capacity information from the acquisition unit and enables that information to persist in
a relational database. This component resides within the JavaBeans Open Source Software (JBOSS)
application server.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

The OC-UM Component

The OnCommand Unified Manager (OC-UM) application component is the core component responsible
for processing information from OC-IE, storing it in its relational database, and presenting it to the frontend UI. This component resides within the JBOSS application server.

Integration with OPM and WFA

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 provides the ability to consolidate performance incidents from multiple
OnCommand Performance Manager 1.0 servers. This allows a user to view and manage performance
incidents from multiple OnCommand Performance Manager 1.0 servers from a single location.
OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 provides protection configuration workflows such as setting up
SnapMirror and SnapVault, including all of the commands that operate on a protection relationship in
clustered Data ONTAP. These features depend upon OnCommand Workflow Automation 2.2, which
needs to be paired with OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1.

3.2

The Server Architecture

Figure 1) Server architecture of OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1.

Here is a brief description of how the server architecture works:

1. The acquisition unit discovers the clustered Data ONTAP system and its resources with a hard-coded
polling interval of 15 minutes.
2. After the system is discovered, the acquisition unit writes the information in XML files.
3. OnCommand Insight Essentials then collects the information from the XML files and enables the
information to persist to the MySQL relational database.
4. The OnCommand Unified Manager component acquires the information from OC-IEs read-only
database views.
5. OnCommand Unified Manager then enables the information to persist to its MySQL relational
database. This information includes additional data processed by the OC-UM component.
6. The respective information is exposed using the API servlet and the web UI servlet to the end user.
7. OnCommand Performance Manager 1.0 forwards performance incidents to OnCommand Unified
Manager server every 5 minutes. Note that the OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 and OnCommand
Performance Manager 1.0 (separately) monitor the same cluster. You can have multiple
OnCommand Performance Manager 1.0 servers forward performance incidents to a single instance
of OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

8. OnCommand Workflow Automation 2.2 serves as the back-end engine for handling protection
management. OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 communicates to OnCommand Workflow
Automation 2.2 through REST-ful interface to execute protection management workflows. You can
have multiple OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 servers communicate to a single Workflow
Automation server.

Component Dependency
As we can see, several components are involved for OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 to function
properly. The following table describes the impacts if any of the major components are down within
OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1.
Table 1) Component dependency.

Impact

JBOSS Acquisition Unit

MySQL Database

No GUI response

Down

GUI available but unable to log in

Up

Down

GUI available but no updates to

clustered Data ONTAP resources

Up

Down

Up

Solution

Reboot the virtual

appliance

4 Database
From the previous information you can see that OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 uses a MySQL
relational database to enable information to persist. The version of the MySQL database is 5.5.30enterprise-commercial-advanced MySQL Enterprise Server - Advanced Edition (Commercial).
Note:

In MySQL the terms schema and database are used interchangeably.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 primarily uses four databases:

4.1

netapp_model. This is where the OC-IE component puts data from Data ONTAP controllers. These
tables are accessed directly only by the OC-IE component.
netapp_model_view. The netapp_model_view database contains the database views that OC-IE
publishes for the OC-UM applications to read the data populated by the OC-IE collection (gathered
from the acquisition unit). The view definitions select data from the netapp_model tables.
ocum. This is where OC-UM stores its data from OC-IE- and OC-UM-specific data. Some of the
tables store additional fields for objects collected from the OC-IE. These tables are known as sidecar
tables and contain OC-UM-specific values and data processed from OC-IEs collected objects.
ocum_view. The ocum_view holds the read-only views that are exposed to the database users (refer
to the User Management section for more information on database users) for integration with other
products such as OnCommand Workflow Automation.

The ocum_view Schema

The ocum_view database is the only database exposed to OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 database
users. You can access this database using the JDBC/ODBC interface. The following is information about
the ocum_views schema.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

Table 2) ocum_view schema.

Table Name

Number of
Columns

Column Names

Column Type

aggregate

id

bigint

bytesUsedPerDay

double

daysUntilFull

double

annotationName

varchar

annotationTypeName

varchar

resourceId

bigint

resourceType

varchar

resourceName

varchar

id

bigint

name

varchar

resourceKey

varchar

description

longtext

capacityTotal

bigint

capacityUsed

bigint

capacityUsedPercent

decimal

capacityAvailable

bigint

capacityAvailablePercent

decimal

resourcePool_id

bigint

aggregate_id

bigint

id

bigint

bytesUsedPerDay

double

daysUntilFull

double

annotationresourceobjectview 5

resource_pool

resource_pool_aggregates

volume

snapshotBytesUsedPerDay double

vserver_destination

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

snapshotDaysUntilFull

double

id

bigint

sourceVserverId

bigint

destinationVserverId

bigint

connectionType

varchar

5 Logs
OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 has a number of log files that can be used for troubleshooting. The
logs are collected from the OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 server using the following methods:

AutoSupport. The AutoSupport (aka ASUP) feature sends diagnostic data to NetApp. There are
two ways of generating AutoSupport messages:
Periodic. When enabled, ASUP sends information every week.

Note:

On demand. As the name implies, ASUP information can be generated on demand. This can be
done through the web UI or the maintenance console.
You can send on-demand ASUP information to an e-mail address through the maintenance
console.

Support Bundle. The Support Bundle is an archive of files (logs, configuration) from OnCommand
Unified Manager 6.1. It is intended to replace the dfmdc script used with OC-UM 5 installations. The
Support Bundle is useful to troubleshoot and debug customer issues that cannot be reproduced with
the information received from periodic AutoSupport messages. The Support Bundle is packaged as a
.7z archive file.

Notable Log Files

ocumserver.log. This file contains general logs from the OC-UM server (example: alerts triggered,
reconciliation started, AutoSupport sent/posted). Glancing through this log, you get an idea of what
was going on with the OC-UM server during a given time period. Log messages with a severity of
INFO and above are logged here. This file is rolled over on a daily basis or when the size exceeds
100MB. A history of 28 days is maintained, with the date in yyyy-mm-dd format in between the prefix
and log file name.
ocumserver-debug.log. Like ocumserver.log, this log file contains messages with a severity of
DEBUG in addition to INFO and above. Hence, the ocumserver-debug.log file is considerably larger
than the ocumserver.log file. If trace logging is enabled, this log also contains messages with the
severity of TRACE. TRACE logs can be used to debug a problem. Similar to ocumserver.log, this log
file is also rolled over on a daily basis or when the size exceeds 100MB. A history of 28 days is
maintained, with the date in yyyy-mm-dd format in between the prefix and log file name.
stopwatch.log. This is a TRACE-level log with timing information about a particular task and a brief
description of the task. Timing information is useful to discover if a task is taking an unusual amount
of time to complete. Typical tasks are inventory data acquisition, reconcile data based on an OC-IE
change request, and Manage ONTAP calls to the cluster.
dbsetup.log. This file contains logs from the database setup procedure.
Install_Upgrade.log. This file contains logs related to the installation of OnCommand Unified
Manager.
firstboot.log. This file contains logs from when OnCommand Unified Manager boots for the first time.
jboss.log. This log file is used by the JBOSS web server. jboss.log can be used to troubleshoot
problems with the web server.
acq.log. This file contains logs from the acquisition framework during the inventory data acquisition
process of all data sources (clustered Data ONTAP) added to OnCommand Unified Manager. It also
contains logs from the periodic acquisition process of data sources that runs in the background. If
there are exceptions during the acquisition process, then this log can be used for troubleshooting.
Acquisition recordings. The acquisition unit runs as a daemon, periodically collecting data on data
sources (clustered Data ONTAP) that are added to OnCommand Unified Manager. At the end of each
such data acquisition, a set of logs is produced that can be used to trace through the acquisition
process.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

Notable Object Count and Object Detail Files

managed-object-count.xml. This file contains object count of clusters, nodes, SVMs, volumes,
qtrees, LUNs, SnapMirror relationships, and SnapVault relationships managed by OnCommand
Unified Manager.
ocum-cluster-identity-data.xml. This file contains cluster names, cluster serial numbers, node
names, node serial numbers, node HA partners, node system IDs, node locations, cluster licenses,
node models, node versions, cluster versions, cluster management IPs, node management IPs, and
cluster UUIDs managed by OnCommand Unified Manager.
volume-relationship-count.xml. This file contains object count of protected volumes, unprotected
volumes, and managed and unmanaged (SnapProtect) SnapMirror and SnapVault relationships.
relationship-data.xml. This file contains the object count of cascaded and fan-out relationships.

Note:

The preceding .xml files are only available through periodic ASUP.

6 Ports
The following is a list of ports used by OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 and other applications.
Table 3) Ports used.

Port

Source

Target

Secured

Protocol

3306

WFA

OC-UM 6.1 database

Yes

SQL Server over SSL using

JDBC/ODBC

443

OPM 1.0

OC-UM 6.1

Yes

Manage ONTAP over HTTPS

22

Terminal

OC-UM 6.1 sshd

Yes

SSH

443

Web browser, SnapProtect

software

OC-UM 6.1

Yes

HTTPS (APIs over HTTPS)

443

OC-UM 6.1

ASUP, storage system

Yes

HTTPS and APIs over HTTPS

80

OC-UM 6.1

ASUP, storage system

No

HTTP and APIs over HTTP

389

OC-UM 6.1

LDAP/Windows
Active Directory

No

LDAP

465

OC-UM 6.1

Mail server

Yes

SMTP (SSL enabled)

25

OC-UM 6.1

Mail server

No

SMTP (non SSL)

162

OC-UM 6.1

Trap listener/receiver

No

SNMP trap

123

OC-UM 6.1

NTP server

No

NTP

443

OC-UM 6.1

WFA 2.2

Yes

REST over HTTPS

7 Backup and DR of OnCommand Unified Manager Server

Currently, VMware snapshot is the recommended backup approach for OnCommand Unified Manager
server. Capturing VMware snapshots into the hosting storage system and replicating to an alternate
location will make sure of a true backup/DR solution. Do not rely on VMware snapshots alone for backups
of the OnCommand Unified Manager server virtual appliance.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

Virtual Appliance Backup and Restore Process Overview

The backup and restore model for Unified Manager is to capture and restore an image of the full virtual
application.
The following tasks enable you to complete a backup of the virtual appliance:
1. Take a VMware snapshot of the Unified Manager virtual appliance.
2. Take a NetApp Snapshot copy on the datastore to capture the VMware snapshot. If the datastore is
not hosted on a Data ONTAP storage system, follow the appropriate storage vendors guidelines to
create a backup of the VMware snapshot.
3. Replicate the NetApp Snapshot copy or snapshot equivalent to alternate storage.
4. Delete the VMware snapshot.
You should implement a backup schedule using these tasks to make sure that the Unified Manager virtual
appliance is protected if issues arise.
To restore the OnCommand Unified Manager virtual appliance to the appropriate backup point-in-time
state, you can use the backup copy you created.

8 Maintenance User
OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 creates a maintenance user during the initial configuration of the
product. This user is like a super user who has complete control over OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1
This user is one of a kind, has access to the maintenance console, and cannot be modified. Hence, it is
imperative that you do not share the credentials of the maintenance user unless absolutely required to do
so.
For more information on OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 user management, refer to the Administrator
Guide on support.netapp.com.

9 Alerts
The alerting feature in OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1 has unique capabilities when compared to its
predecessor. It gives you:

The ability to set an alert on multiple object types

The ability to set an alert on multiple objects of the same type

The ability to set an alert on multiple events

NetApp highly recommends that you utilize the alerting capability to the maximum. For example, if you
want to set volume and aggregate capacity warning and error alerts, rather than specify them as separate
alerts, specify them under a single alert. This greatly simplifies alert management when you have a huge
number of alerts.

OnCommand Unified Manager 6.1

Refer to the Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT) on the NetApp Support site to validate that the exact product
and feature versions described in this document are supported for your specific environment. The NetApp
IMT defines the product components and versions that can be used to construct configurations that are
supported by NetApp. Specific results depend on each customer's installation in accordance with published
specifications.

NetApp provides no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, reliability, or serviceability of any
information or recommendations provided in this publication, or with respect to any results that may be
obtained by the use of the information or observance of any recommendations provided herein. The
information in this document is distributed AS IS, and the use of this information or the implementation of
any recommendations or techniques herein is a customers responsibility and depends on the customers
ability to evaluate and integrate them into the customers operational environment. This document and
the information contained herein may be used solely in connection with the NetApp products discussed
in this document.

10

2014 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc.
Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, ASUP, AutoSupport, Data ONTAP,
Manage ONTAP, OnCommand, SnapMirror, SnapProtect, Snapshot, and SnapVault are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp,
Inc.Manager
in the United
OnCommand Unified
6.1 States and/or other countries. VMware and ESX are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. Active Directory, SQL
Server, and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. TR-4241-1013