Users Guide

Table 13. Sensor information using web interface and RACADM (continued)
View sensor information For Using web interface Using RACADM
Removable Flash Media Overview > Hardware > Removable
Flash Media
Temperature Overview > Server > Power/Thermal
> Temperatures
Voltage Overview > Server > Power/Thermal
> Voltages
Monitoring performance index of CPU, memory, and
I/O modules
In Dell’s 13
th
generation Dell PowerEdge servers, Intel ME supports Compute Usage Per Second (CUPS) functionality. The
CUPS functionality provides real-time monitoring of CPU, memory, and I/O utilization and system-level utilization index for the
system. Intel ME allows out-of-band (OOB) performance monitoring and does not consume CPU resources. The Intel ME has a
system CUPS sensor that provides computation, memory, and I/O resource utilization values as a CUPS Index. iDRAC monitors
this CUPS index for the overall system utilization and also monitors the instantaneous utilization index of the CPU, Memory, and
I/O.
NOTE: This feature is not supported on PowerEdge R930 servers.
The CPU and chipset have dedicated Resource monitoring Counters (RMC). The data from these RMCs is queried to obtain
utilization information of system resources. The data from RMCs is aggregated by the node manager to measure the cumulative
utilization of each of these system resources that is read from iDRAC using existing intercommunication mechanisms to provide
data through out-of-band management interfaces.
The Intel sensor representation of performance parameters and index values is for complete physical system. Therefore, the
performance data representation on the interfaces is for the complete physical system, even if the system is virtualized and has
multiple virtual hosts.
To display the performance parameters, the supported sensors must be present in the server.
The four system utilization parameters are:
● CPU Utilization — Data from RMCs for each CPU core is aggregated to provide cumulative utilization of all the cores in
the system. This utilization is based on time spent in active and inactive states. A sample of RMC is taken every six seconds.
● Memory Utilization — RMCs measure memory traffic occurring at each memory channel or memory controller instance.
Data from these RMCs is aggregated to measure the cumulative memory traffic across all the memory channels on the
system. This is a measure of memory bandwidth consumption and not amount of memory utilization. iDRAC aggregates it for
one minute, so it may or may not match the memory utilization that other OS tools, such as top in Linux, show. Memory
bandwidth utilization that the iDRAC shows is an indication of whether workload is memory intensive or not.
● I/O Utilization — There is one RMC per root port in the PCI Express Root Complex to measure PCI Express traffic
emanating from or directed to that root port and the lower segment. Data from these RMCs is aggregated for measuring PCI
express traffic for all PCI Express segments emanating from the package. This is measure of I/O bandwidth utilization for
the system.
● System Level CUPS Index — The CUPS index is calculated by aggregating CPU, Memory, and I/O index considering a
predefined load factor of each system resource. The load factor depends on the nature of the workload on the system.
CUPS Index represents the measurement of the compute headroom available on the server. If the system has a large CUPS
Index, then there is limited headroom to place more workload on that system. As the resource consumption decreases, the
system’s CUPS index decreases. A low CUPS index indicates that there is a large compute headroom and the server can
receive new workloads and the server is in a lower power state to reduce power consumption. Workload monitoring can then
be applied throughout the data center to provide a high-level and holistic view of the data center’s workload, providing a
dynamic data center solution.
NOTE:
The CPU, memory, and I/O utilization indexes are aggregated over one minute. Therefore, if there are any
instantaneous spikes in these indexes, they may be suppressed. They are indication of workload patterns not the amount of
resource utilization.
The IPMI, SEL, and SNMP traps are generated if the thresholds of the utilization indexes are reached and the sensor events are
enabled. The sensor event flags are disabled by default. It can be enabled using the standard IPMI interface.
The required privileges are:
102
Viewing iDRAC and managed system information