[Orca-users] Solaris Zones problem

[A Darren Dunham]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 01:35:51PM -0400, Michael O'Dea wrote:

> Does anyone know if Orca will work on a Solaris zone? 

"orca" probably will.  I'm sure some of the data you're used to
collecting will not be available.

> I get the following error when trying to start it up:
>  
> ./S99orcallator start
> Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.10      Generic January 2005
> Writing data into /opt/orca/orcallator/resin-t1-z1/
> Starting logging
> Warning: Cannot init kvm: No such file or directory
> couldn't map disk instances
> couldn't obtain disk partition usage

Non-global zones have no visibility of the kernel or kerenel modules.
You cannot see physical devices unless they have been explicitly passed
to the zone (via 'match').  So most 'device' monitoring you're going to
want to do in the global zone only.

You can still monitor processes, memory, etc, but you cannot see
processes in other NGZs that may be competing with those resources.  So
a stable load in a zone may look unstable on a graph because the
percentage of the resource available changes as other zones affect the
capacity.  I'd want to be very careful about what I was graphing here.  

Nowe if you were very careful to use exclusive processor sets and memory
caps, then it may be much more useful data.

It would still make sense to monitor apps, processes, maybe even
filesystem capacity in the NGZ itself.

All of the above is based on basic privileges of the zone and not on the
tools used.  Whether or not SEtoolkit has additional problems in a NGZ,
I don't know.  I haven't used it in them yet.

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham at taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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