Fwd: [ceph-users] Ideas on the UI/UX improvement of ceph-mgr: Cluster Status Dashboard

* Fwd: [ceph-users] Ideas on the UI/UX improvement of ceph-mgr: Cluster Status Dashboard
       [not found] ` <CALe9h7fn_GWnqEcAP_RcRJhNyLc6sjmWY+N68mng508nSfVzZw@mail.gmail.com>
@ 2017-06-26 14:05   ` John Spray
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: John Spray @ 2017-06-26 14:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Ceph Development

Original mail had the wrong ceph-devel address, forwarding .

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Spray <jspray@redhat.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: [ceph-users] Ideas on the UI/UX improvement of ceph-mgr:
Cluster Status Dashboard
To: saumay agrawal <saumay.agrawal@gmail.com>
Cc: ceph-devel@ceph.com

On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 5:49 AM, saumay agrawal
<saumay.agrawal@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone!
>
> I am working on the improvement of the web-based dashboard for Ceph.
> My intention is to add some UI elements to visualise some performance
> counters of a Ceph cluster. This gives a better overview to the users
> of the dashboard about how the Ceph cluster is performing and, if
> necessary, where they can make necessary optimisations to get even
> better performance from the cluster.
>
> Here is my suggestion on the two perf counters, commit latency and
> apply latency. They are visualised using line graphs. I have prepared
> UI mockups for the same.
> 1. OSD apply latency
> [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXy5gIBzlhYNS1MbTJJRDhtSG8]
> 2. OSD commit latency
> [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXy5gIBzlhYNElyVU00TGtHeVU]
>
> These mockups show the latency values (y-axis) against the instant of
> time (x-axis). The latency values for different OSDs are highlighted
> using different colours. The average latency value of all OSDs is
> shown specifically in red. This representation allows the dashboard
> user to compare the performances of an OSD with other OSDs, as well as
> with the average performance of the cluster.
>
> The line width in these graphs is specially kept less, so as to give a
> crisp and clear representation for more number of OSDs. However, this
> approach may clutter the graph and make it incomprehensible for a
> cluster having significantly higher number of OSDs. For such
> situations, we can retain only the average latency indications from
> both the graphs to make things more simple for the dashboard user.

When reducing the data across a large number of OSDs, remember that
the min and max is just as interesting as the mean, and sometimes even
more interesting.

Presenting the data for a lot of OSDs is hard, but the most important
thing is that outliers are not just visible, but identifiable -- being
able to hover on a spike to see the OSD ID might be enough.

> Also, higher latency values suggest bad performance. We can come up
> with some specific values for both the counters, above which we can
> say that the cluster is performing very bad. If the value of any of
> the OSDs exceeds this value, we can highlight entire graph in a light
> red shade to draw the attention of user towards it

Perhaps, but this needs to be worked out dynamically somehow --
there's no fixed value that constitutes "bad" latency.  You might find
it useful measure the standard deviation of the latencies of the OSDs,
and detect "bad" as anything outside a certain number of standard
deviations from the mean.

> I am planning to use AJAX based templates and plugins (like
> Flotcharts) for these graphs. This would allow real-time update of the
> graphs without having any need to reload the entire dashboard page.

Sounds good, have a look at an example on the filesystem page of doing
this with Chart.js.  There isn't any fundamental reason for preferring
one library over another, but let's see if we can use just one in the
dashboard if possible.

BTW I have some other changes that aren't in a PR request yet, which
include doing some doughnuts too:
https://github.com/jcsp/ceph/commit/f756114ecda933d1241add454addb8dc2f1679b2
(this will be a PR/master as soon as I get myself organised)

> Another feature I propose to add is the representation of the version
> distribution of all the clients in a cluster. This can be categorised
> into distribution
> 1. on the basis of ceph version
> [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXy5gIBzlhYYmw5cXF2bkdTWWM] and,
> 2. on the basis of kernel version
> [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXy5gIBzlhYczFuRTBTRDcwcnc]
>
> I have used doughnut charts instead of regular pie charts, as they
> have some whitespace at their centre. This whitespace makes the chart
> appear less cluttered, while properly indicating the appropriate
> fraction of the total value. Also, we can later add some data to
> display at this centre space when we hover over a particular slice of
> the chart.
>
> The main purpose of this visualisation is to identify any number of
> clients left behind while updating the clients of the cluster. Suppose
> a cluster has 50 clients running ceph jewel. In the process of
> updating this cluster, 40 clients get updated to ceph luminous, while
> the other 10 clients remain behind on ceph jewel. This may occur due
> to some bug or any interruption in the update process. In such
> scenarios, the user can find which clients have not been updated and
> update them according to his needs.  It may also give a clear picture
> for troubleshooting, during any package dependency issues due to the
> kernel. The clients are represented in both, absolutes numbers as well
> as the percentage of the entire cluster, for a better overview.
> An interesting approach could be highlighting the older version(s)
> specifically to grab the attention of the user. For example, a user
> running ceph jewel may not need to update as necessarily compared to
> the user running ceph hammer.

I'm not sure where we would naturally display a version pie chart --
it seems like something that probably doesn't belong on the front
page, because it's comparatively unusual for the system to be in this
state.

We will soon add a health warning (independent on the dashboard) that
complains about version mismatches: it would be neat if you could
create a separate page in the UI (including your chart) that shows a
full version report, so that when the dashboard sees that health
warning it can link to that page.

Cheers,
John

>
> As of now, I am looking for plugins in AdminLTE to implement these two
> elements in the dashboard. I would like to have feedbacks and
> suggestions on these two from the ceph community, on how can I make
> them more informative about the cluster.
>
> Also a request to the various ceph users and developers. It would be
> great if you could share the various metrics you are using as a
> performance indicator for your cluster, and how you are using them.
> Any metrics being used to identify the issues in a cluster can also be
> shared.
> _______________________________________________
> ceph-users mailing list
> ceph-users@lists.ceph.com
> http://lists.ceph.com/listinfo.cgi/ceph-users-ceph.com

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread