Viewing nodes

3.2 Viewing nodes

You can use the View Nodes page to obtain visibility into, and information about, your data center. The View Nodes page offers a holistic view of the nodes and virtual machines (VMs) in your data center in tile view. It also allows you to select one specific node to view its details. Likewise in a node detail view, you can view summaries of all the associated VMs in a tile view, and you can select a specific VM to view its details. In the nodes and VMs tile view, you can use filtering and sorting options to help you quickly find what you're looking for (for details, Understanding "View" pages features).

Access the View Nodes page by navigating to View > Nodes.

For more information, see these sections:

Viewing node summaries in tile display
Viewing node details
Understanding health/state information
Filtering and sorting

Viewing node summaries in tile display

Nodes appear on the View Nodes page. They also appear and in the detail view of services on the View Services page.

Image 3-1: View Nodes page

Click to enlarge

The View Nodes page will not display any storage node tiles. (Storage nodes are nodes without any processors or memory.)

Tiles also graphically display the node state using the following logic (for more information, see Understanding health/state information):

A node in an OK health state does not display any icon.
A node with a health state other than OK displays the health state.
If a node is in a Requested Actions state but also has a health state of anything other than OK (i.e., Failure, Warning, or Unknown), the health icon will display instead of the Requested Actions icon. The same applies for a Reserved node.
A node in both a Reserved state and Requested Actions state displays the Requested Actions icon.

In addition to displaying the node state, each tile contains summary information about the node it represents, including the following:

Field	Description
Alias	An alternate name for the resource
Hypervisor type	Type of hypervisor
Image	Operating system
IP	IP address
State	State of the node (for example, Idle or Running)
Total memory	Total amount of memory
Total processors	Total number of processors
VM count	Number of VMs associated with the node (for example, 3)
OS	Operating system

You can use the Filters tool to limit the nodes that display in the tile view, and you can sort the limits that do display by using the Sort tool. For more information, see Filtering and sorting.

Viewing node details

Click any node tile to see its detail information. The details view contains all of the same content as the summary tile view and the following additional information:

Field	Description
Available memory	Amount of available memory
Available processors	Number of available processors
Events	List of generic events associated with the node
Has pending actions	Either Yes or No
Has reservations	Either Yes or No
Health	One of OK, Unknown, Warning, or Failure (for more information, see Understanding health/state information)
Load	CPU load
Power	Either On or Off
VLAN	Virtual LAN name

Additionally, if there are any VMs or storage associated with the node, they appear as summary tiles in the node detail view. For more information, see Viewing VMs and Viewing storage.

Understanding health/state information

There are four different health states for a node or VM resource: Failure, Warning, OK, and Unknown. Each resource will be in one of these states.

State	Summary icon	Tile icon
Failure/Down
Warning
OK		(none)
Unknown

There are two other states that are not health-related: Reserved and Requested Actions.

State	Summary icon	Tile icon
Reserved
Requested Actions

Because each resource must be assigned a health state, the Reserved and Requested Actions states are additional states added to the resource. (For example, a Reserved node will also have a health state of Failure, Warning, OK, or Unknown.)

Health/state information does not display for storage.

The Quick Filter table displays the number of nodes in your data center in each state. For example:

The Quick Filter table allows you to filter the resources that appear on the page. For more information, see Filtering and sorting.

Filtering and sorting

The page has filtering and sorting options to help you find what you need and organize what you see. The Filters option includes a list of fields (for instance, Health, Alias, Available Processors, and so forth) that you can use to filter what resources display.

For example, if you wanted to display all nodes that were last updated on February 16, 2012, you can select 2012-02-16 from the Last State Update field in the list. Then only the nodes that were last updated on that day appear in the page.

To use the Filters list

Locate the field you want to filter by. (Expand and collapse the field by clicking the field name.)
Select the field value you want to filter by (in this example, Last State Update).

The page is updated so that only the resource summary tiles that fit that field value display.

Also, the field value you selected is noted at the top of the Filters list.

If you want to filter by other field values, repeat this process.
To remove individual selected field values, click the remove icon ().
To remove all filters, choose View all.

To use the Quick Filter table

Click the icon for the resource state you want to filter by.

(For example, if you want to see only the resources that are in a Requested Actions state, click the Requested Actions icon.)

It is possible that when you filter by Requested Actions or Reserved states, the resource tiles that display will have a Failure, Warning, or Unknown icon. This is because every resource has a health status. If the health status is anything but OK, the health icon overrides the Requested Actions or Reserved icon, even though the resource will still appear in the filter.

For example, you might have a Reserved resource that has a health status of Warning. If you filter by Reserved, that resource will appear, but its tile will display the Warning icon, not the Reserved icon.

The page also includes a Sort option that allows you to sort the order of the resources that appear on the page. This option sorts by the field that you select (for example, ID, Alias, Load, Total Memory, etc.) numerically or alphabetically, depending on the specified criterion. By default, resources are sorted by ID.

To sort resources

From the Sort drop-down, select the field you want to sort by (for example, Type).

The resources will reorder to match your sort selection.