perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Antoine Delvaux <>]

Hello Robert,

The usual setup for a perfSONAR mesh is to have measurements running between 
different points of a network.  A central server takes care of distributing 
the configuration (what we call the mesh config) and of visualising the 
measurement results.  This can result in what we call a full mesh, where each 
perfSONAR node makes measurements towards all the other nodes, or can be a 
reduced mesh where you measure only the links you’re interested in.

In your situation, you can have a reduced hub-and-spoke ‘mesh’.  For this 
you’ll need to have one central perfSONAR toolkit server in your own network 
and one perfSONAR node in each school network where you provide fiber.

The central perfSONAR toolkit server needs to be running the full perfSONAR 
toolkit, thus under CentOS 6.  This is the host that will hold the mesh setup 
and that will collect the measurement data.  Depending on the number of 
measurements you will be running, you’ll want this host to be relatively 
powerful.  On this server, you’ll need to define and publish your ‘mesh’ 
configuration.  This process is documented at 
http://docs.perfsonar.net/multi_mesh_server_config.html

The perfSONAR nodes in the school networks can be built with a minimal setup 
where you only deploy the perfsonar-tools and perfsonar-testpoint bundles 
that we provide for Debian/Ubuntu.  You can have other software running on 
this machine if you want (i.e.: if you already have on your CPE device), but 
you have to know that the measurements results can potentially be affected by 
the performance of the device or the network interface when running the 
measurements (that depends on how heavily loaded and how powerful that CPE 
device is and if the network interface is used by other network intensive 
activities).

Each of these perfSONAR nodes (on the CPE devices), will be consuming the 
‘mesh’ configuration file that you have published on your central server.  
The mesh-config-agent is taking care of reading it and running the 
measurements towards your central server, storing the measurement data on the 
central server too (you define that in your central mesh config).  As I said 
earlier, this is documented at 
http://docs.perfsonar.net/multi_mesh_agent_config.html

For viewing your measurement results, you’ll just use the perfSONAR toolkit 
GUI that will be available on your central server.  There you’ll see the 
measurements towards and from each of your CPE device.  This means that the 
only host where you need to run CentOS is the central server in your premises.

Just a note about that, CentOS usage is in no way discouraged, this is 
currently the oldest and the most supported distro for which we provide 
packages.  When using CentOS you have 2 different installation options: 
installing the whole server from the perfSONAR installation ISO or installing 
CentOS on your own and then adding, with the help of yum, the required 
packages bundles that we provide.

One important thing to remember with perfSONAR measurements: have a stable 
clock on each of your measurement device.  Look at your ntp configuration on 
both the central server and each of your CPE device.  See 
http://docs.perfsonar.net/manage_ntp.html for more information on configuring 
NTP on your central server and 
http://docs.perfsonar.net/install_debian.html#step-3-verify-ntp-and-tuning-parameters
 on your CPE devices.

I’m not sure we currently have a rule-of-thumb about the number of test 
points supported.  It would certainly be dependant on the frequency, duration 
and type of the measurements you’re running.  We recommend to have at least 4 
GB RAM and 50 GB disk available on the central server, raising those numbers 
will provide room for storing and displaying more measurements results.

I hope this answer your questions.  Other perfSONAR users having a similar 
setup can probably comment with their own experience and maybe some 
recommendations for the central server specs.

Antoine.


> Le 5 janv. 2016 à 20:08, Rittenhouse, Robert (LACA) 
> <>
>  a écrit :
> 
> Antoine,
> 
> Thank you for the very detailed response. When you mention the mesh 
> structure and multiple test points, are you referring to the CPE devices 
> that would be tested to or the servers that would be initiating tests 
> against test points?
> 
> We basically need an automated test tool for testing our circuits between 
> us and our schools at (at least) certain times of day. Were set up as a 
> hub-and-spoke with our customer school districts and we only need to test 
> from our testing server here to the CPE device that we have deployed.
> 
> I'll read more into the Mesh setup and see if that'll work for us. If we 
> would (for some reason) resort to using the Centos packaged distro (I do 
> realize that its discouraged) how many test points (generally) would be 
> supported in a setup like that. I do realize that there are TONS of 
> variables to that question but is there a rule-of-thumb?
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Robert Rittenhouse
> Network Coordinator
> Licking Area Computer Association (LACA)
> (740) 345-3400 ext. 220
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Antoine Delvaux 
> []
> Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2016 9:13 AM
> To: Rittenhouse, Robert (LACA)
> Cc: 
> 
> Subject: Re: [perfsonar-user] Running perfSONAR server on Ubuntu
> 
> Hello Robert,
> 
> The Debian/Ubuntu port we provide and support doesn’t contain the toolkit 
> web interface yet.  For the perfSONAR 3.5 release, the web interface only 
> comes with the CentOS install.
> 
> The Debian/Ubuntu port is currently limited to the perfsonar-tools and 
> perfsonar-testpoint bundles that are described at 
> http://docs.perfsonar.net/install_debian.html
> 
> The perfsonar-ui-web package that you have installed is another piece of 
> software that enables you to request and plot latency and bandwidth 
> measurements from a web interface that is not directly tied to a single 
> toolkit installation.  You can find more information about this tool at 
> http://docs.perfsonar.net/using_psui.html   This tool can be installed 
> separately from any perfSONAR toolkit deployment and we usually recommend 
> to have only one per network you administer/monitor/measure.
> 
> That being said, we’re currently working on extending the Debian/Ubuntu 
> port and we are working on the other bundles.  We have a few of them 
> already available for testing purposes, but the toolkit web interface is 
> not there yet.
> 
> In conclusion, at the moment, for the perfSONAR deployments using Debian or 
> Ubuntu, you have to either rely on CLI administration and configuration of 
> each node or use a mesh-configuration server that will distribute the 
> measurements configurations to your nodes through the meshconfig-agent 
> running on the Debian/Ubuntu nodes.  This last setup is actually the 
> recommended one if you have multiple test points to manage.  There is more 
> information about such a setup at 
> http://docs.perfsonar.net/multi_mesh_agent_config.html
> 
> I hope this answers your questions.
> 
> --                                                                --
> Antoine Delvaux                                        Skype: toninb
> perfSONAR developer                              Tel: +221.703368313
> http://www.perfsonar.net              XMPP: 
> 
> PGP fingerprint:  DC65 0D8B 6938 9229 33C3  18CA 4EB6 09D3 A333 3378
> 
>> Le 5 janv. 2016 à 13:20, Rittenhouse, Robert (LACA) 
>> <>
>>  a écrit :
>> 
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> I have been looking into using perfSONAR to perform automated testing 
>> between the fiber links that we provide to our customers. I am able to use 
>> the Centos perfSONAR Toolkit installation but I don't normally use Centos 
>> and I don't know how many testpoints that setup will handle, etc.
>> 
>> I tried to install it on Ubuntu 14.04.3 but there is no webserver 
>> listening on port 80 or 443 after I installed perfsonar-ui-web. I see that 
>> Tomcat was installed and appears to be listening, but no webserver?
>> 
>> What am I missing? I am looking for the toolkit GUI that I use on the 
>> toolkit CD.
>> 
>> Also, I do realize that Ubuntu is not specifically supported but Debian 
>> is. If Debian works better, let me know.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Robert Rittenhouse
>> Network Coordinator
>> Licking Area Computer Association (LACA)
>> (740) 345-3400 ext. 220
>> 
>> 
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> ________________________________
> PLEASE NOTE: This message and any response to it may constitute a public 
> record, and therefore may be available upon request in accordance with Ohio 
> public records law. (ORC 149.43)
> 
> This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the 
> intended recipient(s) and may contain private, confidential, and/or 
> privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or 
> distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, 
> employee, or agent responsible for delivering this message, please contact 
> the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original e-mail 
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