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NetApp Console setup and administration

Maintain NetApp Console agent VMs

Contributors netapp-tonias netapp-mwallis
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Maintain NetApp Console agent VMs by applying OS security updates to manually installed agents, responding to CPU, RAM, and disk-space alerts, and resizing or stopping and starting VMs when needed.

When you manually install a Console agent, maintaining the operating system on the agent host is your (the customer's) responsibility. For example, you (the customer) should apply security updates to the operating system on the agent host by following your company's standard procedures for operating system distribution.

If an agent VM becomes under-provisioned or experiences performance issues, you should take appropriate actions to upgrade the VM resources.

Note If you installed the agent in vCenter, use the Console maintenance tool to resize the VM instance. Learn how to maintain a agent VM in vCenter.

Apply operating system updates to the manually installed agent hosts

Apply OS security patches without stopping agent host services.

To maintain compatibility with supported configurations, you should prevent Docker or Podman from being upgraded during routine OS patching. You can do this by either temporarily excluding Docker or Podman during updates or by permanently configuring the package manager to skip Docker or Podman updates.

The following are examples of how to exclude Docker or Podman updates for different Linux distributions. Consult your Linux distribution's documentation for the most up-to-date instructions on how to exclude packages from updates.

Podman example
sudo yum update --exclude=podman
sudo yum upgrade
Docker example
sudo apt-mark hold docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Resizing the VM or instance type

If you create a Console agent from the Console, it deploys a VM instance in your cloud provider with a default configuration. After you create the agent, don't switch to a smaller VM instance with less CPU or RAM.

If you receive notifications that your agent VM is under-provisioned, consider upgrading to a larger VM instance with more CPU or RAM to ensure optimal performance.

Note If you installed the agent in VCenter, use the Console maintenance tool to resize the VM instance. Learn how to resize the agent VM in VCenter.

Learn about the default configuration for the agent.

If you need to increase the CPU or RAM of your agent VM, follow the instructions provided by your cloud provider or on-premises virtualization platform to resize the VM instance. NetApp recommends doubling the current CPU and RAM allocation to ensure optimal performance. The following table shows recommended sizing tiers, with each tier doubling the CPU and RAM of the previous tier.

Tier CPU (cores or vCPUs) RAM

Minimum

8

32 GB

Medium

16

64 GB

Large

32

128 GB

Monitor the agent

The Console notifies you when the agent VM is unhealthy, including disk space, RAM, and CPU issues. Monitor these notifications in the Notifications Center within the Console or configure email notifications. Occasional increases in disk space, memory, or CPU usage are normal, but if it happens frequently, you should take steps to resolve.

For example, the Console notifies you when an agent resource (CPU, RAM, or disk space) exceeds 90% of its total capacity for 30 consecutive minutes. Afterwards, if the resource usage drops below that threshold, the notification displays as resolved (green) in the Notifications Center.

Note Work with NetApp Support if you have questions about modifying your agent VM.

Learn more.

Notification Action needed

Disk space is too high

Review the NetApp Knowledge Base article.

CPU usage is too high

Increase the CPU size of the agent VM in your cloud provider or on-premises, depending on where you installed it. Alternatively, create additional agents and distribute the workload across multiple agents. RAM utilization can vary based on your environment, ONTAP workloads, number of Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems, and the data services that you are using.

RAM usage is too high

Increase the RAM of the agent VM in your cloud provider or on-premises, depending on where you installed it. Alternatively, create additional agents and distribute the workload across multiple agents. RAM utilization can vary based on your environment, ONTAP workloads, number of Cloud Volumes ONTAP systems, and the data services that you are using.

Stopping and starting the agent VM

If you need to, stop and start the agent VM using your cloud provider's console or standard on-premises procedures.

Be aware that the Console agent must be operational at all times.

Connect to the Linux VM

If you need to connect to the Linux VM that the agent runs on, use the connectivity options from your cloud provider.

AWS

When you create the agent instance in AWS, provide an AWS access key and secret key. You can use this key pair to SSH to the instance. Use the user name 'ubuntu' for the EC2 Linux instance. For agents created prior to May 2023, use the user name 'ec2-user'.

AWS Docs: Connect to your Linux instance

Azure

When you create the agent VM in Azure, you specify a user name and choose to authenticate with a password or SSH public key. Use the authentication method that you chose to connect to the VM.

Azure Docs: SSH into your VM

Google Cloud

You can't specify an authentication method when you create an agent in Google Cloud. However, you can connect to the Linux VM instance using the Google Cloud Console or Google Cloud CLI (gcloud).

Google Cloud Docs: Connect to Linux VMs