perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Piotr Pikusa <>]

Hi Ralph!

1. As you could probably read in perfSONAR docs, SQL-MA is one of 
services in perfSONAR project. Main idea of perfSONAR is to create 
services with individual functionality  and make  them working  through 
interaction.  There is  LookupService  dedicated  to store and  send  
information about  all the services available in  the network  environment.
Since SQL-MA is storing service you it obviously must have some data to 
store ;) These data are sent to SQL-MA by measurements services i.e. 
BWCTL  and OWAMP MP  (all  MP  services  you will find here: 
https://wiki.man.poznan.pl/perfsonar-mdm/index.php/PerfSONAR_Downloads 
). So to store measurement data you must have at least three services: 
LS, MP and MA (i.e. SQL-MA). MP will measure data. LS will tell MP where 
to send data to store them, and MA will store data sent by MP. You don't 
need to send any snmp request yourself. SQL-MA store measurement data 
itself, but only if some service sent them to it. Of course you can have 
actually your database full of data and then SQL-MA can send archivered 
data to some visualization tool i.e perfSONAR UI.


2. Metadata file was thought i.a to  differ many interfaces which give 
the same data type. So one table - one measurement type, many 
interfaces. How to differ interfaces, you can read about it in docs 
files, especially in Interface_Specification.doc . (look in the 
doc/geant-2-java-sql-ma directory)

3. If you want to change/add new tables, you probably want to add new 
metrics to SQL-MA. Information about how to do it you can find  here: 
https://wiki.man.poznan.pl/perfsonar-mdm/index.php/Adding_new_metrics_to_the_SQL_MA
Since SQL-MA is webservice and eXist is webapp they are depend on 
tomcat. Good practice is to restart tomcat after any hand-made change in 
config files.

I hope you found some useful information in my e-mail, If you have more 
questions or I missed the point, please write to perfsonar-user group. 
Hope you will find our services useful and admin-friendly :)

Cheers
Piotr Pikusa
PSNC



Ralph Niederberger wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> sorry for the, may be stupied, questions.
>
> 1.) Could someone tell me, if I have to generate data myself for e.g. 
> the SQL MA service.
>     The perfSONAR MDM 3.1 admin guide states at page 43:
>     "The SQL MA stores link data that is collected by measurement 
> tools. ..."
>     So, who stores?  Do I have to make an snmp request myself and put 
> the data via
>     mysql statements into the tables provided, i.e. configured in SQL 
> MA or does the
>     SQL MA tool retrieve and store the measurement data itself?
>
> 2.) If I would like to control several interfaces, do I have to create 
> different discard,
>     error and utilization mysql tables for every interface or can I 
> differ between the
>     interfaces by storing the info with different "metadataId"s?
>
> 3.) What are the dependencies between Tomcat server, exist database 
> configurations
>     and e.g. SQL databases? E.g. what are the dependencies when SQL MA 
> stiching
>     is done. Especially if you change some configurations afterwards, 
> e.g. change/add     sql tables, which services have to restarted and 
> in which chronological orders do
>     they have to be restarted.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Ralph