Monitoring your FSx File Gateway - AWS Storage Gateway

Amazon FSx File Gateway is no longer available to new customers. Existing customers of FSx File Gateway can continue to use the service normally. For capabilities similar to FSx File Gateway, visit this blog post.

Monitoring your FSx File Gateway

You can monitor your FSx File Gateway and associated resources in AWS Storage Gateway by using Amazon CloudWatch metrics and audit logs. You can also use CloudWatch Events to get notified when your file operations are done.

Getting FSx File Gateway health logs with CloudWatch log groups

You can use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to get information about the health of your FSx File Gateway and related resources. You can use the logs to monitor your gateway for errors that it encounters. In addition, you can use Amazon CloudWatch subscription filters to automate processing of the log information in real time. For more information, see Real-time Processing of Log Data with Subscriptions in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

For example, you can configure a CloudWatch log group to monitor your gateway and get notified when your FSx File Gateway fails to upload files to an Amazon FSx file system. You can configure the group either when you are activating the gateway or after your gateway is activated and up and running. For information about how to configure a CloudWatch log group when activating a gateway, see Configure your Amazon FSx File Gateway. For general information about CloudWatch log groups, see Working with Log Groups and Log Streams in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

For information about how to troubleshoot the errors that may be reported by FSx File Gateway, see Troubleshooting: File Gateway issues.

Configuring a CloudWatch log group after your gateway is activated

The following procedure shows you how to configure a CloudWatch Log Group after your gateway is activated.

To configure a CloudWatch log group to work with your FSx File Gateway
  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Storage Gateway console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/home.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Gateways, and then choose the gateway that you want to configure the CloudWatch log group for.

  3. For Actions, choose Edit gateway information. Or, on the Details tab, under Health logs and Not Enabled, choose Configure log group to open the Edit CustomerGatewayName dialog box.

  4. For Gateway health log group, choose one of the following:

    • Disable logging if you don't want to monitor your gateway using CloudWatch log groups.

    • Create a new log group to create a new CloudWatch log group.

    • Use an existing log group to use a CloudWatch log group that already exists.

      Choose a log group from the Existing log group list.

  5. Choose Save changes.

  6. To see the health logs for your gateway, do the following:

    1. In the navigation pane, choose Gateways, and then choose the gateway that you configured the CloudWatch log group for.

    2. Choose the Details tab, and under Health logs, choose CloudWatch Logs. The Log group details page opens in the CloudWatch console.

Using Amazon CloudWatch metrics

You can get monitoring data for your FSx File Gateway by using either the AWS Management Console or the CloudWatch API. The console displays a series of graphs based on the raw data from the CloudWatch API. The CloudWatch API can also be used through one of the AWS SDKs or Amazon CloudWatch API tools. Depending on your needs, you might prefer to use either the graphs displayed in the console or retrieved from the API.

Regardless of which method you use to work with metrics, you must specify the following information:

  • The metric dimension to work with. A dimension is a name-value pair that helps you to uniquely identify a metric. The dimensions for Storage Gateway are GatewayId and GatewayName. In the CloudWatch console, you can use the Gateway Metrics view to select gateway-specific dimensions. For more information about dimensions, see Dimensions in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

  • The metric name, such as ReadBytes.

The following table summarizes the types of Storage Gateway metric data that are available to you.

Amazon CloudWatch namespace Dimension Description
AWS/StorageGateway GatewayId, GatewayName

These dimensions filter for metric data that describes aspects of the gateway. You can identify a FSx File Gateway to work with by specifying both the GatewayId and the GatewayName dimensions.

Throughput and latency data of a gateway are based on all the file shares in the gateway.

Data is available automatically in 5-minute periods at no charge.

Working with gateway and file metrics is similar to working with other service metrics. You can find a discussion of some of the most common metrics tasks in the CloudWatch documentation listed following:

Understanding gateway metrics

The following table describes metrics that cover FSx File Gateways. Each gateway has a set of metrics associated with it. Some gateway-specific metrics have the same name as certain file-system-specific metrics. These metrics represent the same kinds of measurements, but are scoped to the gateway rather than the file system.

Always specify whether you want to work with a gateway or a file system when working with a particular metric. Specifically, when working with gateway metrics, you must specify the Gateway Name for the gateway whose metric data you want to view. For more information, see Using Amazon CloudWatch metrics.

Note

Some metrics return data points only when new data has been generated during the most recent monitoring period.

The following table describes the metrics that you can use to get information about your FSx File Gateways.

Metric Description
AvailabilityNotifications

This metric reports the number of availability-related health notifications that were generated by the gateway in the reporting period.

Units: Count

CacheDirectorySize

This metric tracks the size of folders in the gateway cache. Folder size is determined by the number of files and subfolders in its first level, this does not count recursively into subfolders.

Use this metric with the Average statistic to measure the average size of a folder in the gateway cache. Use this metric with the Max statistic to measure the maximum size of a folder in the gateway cache.

Units: Count

CacheFileSize

This metric tracks the size of files in the gateway cache.

Use this metric with the Average statistic to measure the average size of a file in the gateway cache. Use this metric with the Max statistic to measure the maximum size of a file in the gateway cache.

Units: Bytes

CacheFree

This metric reports the number of available bytes in the gateway cache.

Units: Bytes

CacheHitPercent

Percent of application read operations from the gateway that are served from cache. The sample is taken at the end of the reporting period.

When there are no application read operations from the gateway, this metric reports 100 percent.

Units: Percent

CachePercentDirty

The overall percentage of the gateway cache that has not been persisted to AWS. The sample is taken at the end of the reporting period.

Units: Percent

CachePercentUsed

The overall percent of the gateway cache storage that is used. The sample is taken at the end of the reporting period.

Units: Percent

CacheUsed

This metric reports the number of used bytes in the gateway cache.

Units: Bytes

CloudBytesDownloaded

The total number of bytes that the gateway downloaded from AWS during the reporting period.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to measure throughput and with the Samples statistic to measure IOPS.

Units: Bytes

CloudBytesUploaded

The total number of bytes that the gateway uploaded to AWS during the reporting period.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to measure throughput and with the Samples statistic to measure input/output operations per second (IOPS).

Units: Bytes

FilesFailingUpload

This metric tracks the number of files which are failing to upload to AWS. These files will generate health notifications which contain more information on the issue.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to show the number of files which are currently failing to upload to AWS.

Units: Count

FileShares

This metric reports the number of file shares on the gateway.

Units: Count

FileSystem-ERROR

This metric provides the number of file system associations on this gateways which are in the ERROR state.

If this metric reports any file system associations are in the ERROR state, then it is likely there is a problem with the gateway which is may cause disruption to your workflow. It is recommended to create an alarm for when this metric reports a non-zero value.

Units: Count

HealthNotifications

This metric reports the number of health notifications that were generated by this gateway in the reporting period.

Units: Count

IndexEvictions

This metric reports the number of files whose metadata was evicted from the cached index of file metadata to make room for new entries. The gateway maintains this metadata index, which is populated from the AWS Cloud on demand.

Units: Count

IndexFetches

This metric reports the number of files for which metadata was fetched. The gateway maintains a cached index of file metadata, which is populated from the AWS Cloud on demand.

Units: Count

IoWaitPercent

This metric reports the percentage of time that the CPU is waiting for a response from the local disk.

Units: Percent

MemTotalBytes

This metric reports the total amount of memory on the gateway.

Units: Bytes

MemUsedBytes

This metric reports the amount of used memory on the gateway.

Units: Bytes

RootDiskFreeBytes

This metric reports the number of available bytes on the root disk of the gateway.

If this metric reports less than 20 GB are free, you should increase the size of the root disk.

To increase the root disk size, you can increase the size of existing root disk on the VM. When the VM is rebooted, gateway recognizes the increased size on the root disk.

Units: Bytes

SmbV2Sessions

This metric reports the number of SMBv2 sessions that are active on the gateway. This metric is emitted once for each file system associated with the gateway. Use the SUM stat to calculate the total number of active SMBv2 sessions across all file systems.

Units: Count

SmbV3Sessions

This metric reports the number of SMBv3 sessions that are active on the gateway. This metric is emitted once for each file system associated with the gateway. Use the SUM stat to calculate the total number of active SMBv3 sessions across all file systems.

Units: Count

TotalCacheSize

This metric reports the total size of the cache.

Units: Bytes

UserCpuPercent

This metric reports the percentage of time that is spent on gateway processing.

Units: Percent

Understanding file system metrics

You can find information following about the Storage Gateway metrics that cover file systems. Each file system has a set of metrics associated with it. Some file system-specific metrics have the same name as certain gateway-specific metrics. These metrics represent the same kinds of measurements, but are scoped to the file system instead.

Always specify whether you want to work with either a gateway or a file system metric before working with a metric. Specifically, when working with file system metrics, you must specify the File system ID that identifies the file system for which you are interested in viewing metrics. For more information, see Using Amazon CloudWatch metrics.

Note

Some metrics return data points only when new data has been generated during the most recent monitoring period.

The following table describes the Storage Gateway metrics that you can use to get information about your file shares.

Metric Description
CacheHitPercent

Percent of application read operations from the file shares that are served from cache. The sample is taken at the end of the reporting period.

When there are no application read operations from the file share, this metric reports 100 percent.

Units: Percent

CachePercentDirty

The file share's contribution to the overall percentage of the gateway's cache that has not been persisted to AWS. The sample is taken at the end of the reporting period.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic.

Ideally, this metric should remain low.

Note

Use the CachePercentDirty metric of the gateway to view the overall percentage of the gateway's cache that has not been persisted to AWS.

Units: Percent

CachePercentUsed

The file share's contribution to the overall percent use of the gateway's cache storage. The sample is taken at the end of the reporting period.

Use the CachePercentUsed metric of the gateway to view overall percent use of the gateway's cache storage.

Units: Percent

CloudBytesUploaded

The total number of bytes that the gateway uploaded to AWS during the reporting period.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to measure throughput and with the Samples statistic to measure IOPS.

Units: Bytes

CloudBytesDownloaded

The total number of bytes that the gateway downloaded from AWS during the reporting period.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to measure throughput and with the Samples statistic to measure input/output operations per second (IOPS).

Units: Bytes

FilesFailingUpload

This metric tracks the number of files which are failing to upload to AWS. These files will generate health notifications which contain more information on the issue.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to show the number of files which are currently failing to upload to AWS.

Units: Count

ReadBytes

The total number of bytes read from your on-premises applications in the reporting period for a file share.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to measure throughput and with the Samples statistic to measure IOPS.

Units: Bytes

WriteBytes

The total number of bytes written to your on-premises applications in the reporting period.

Use this metric with the Sum statistic to measure throughput and with the Samples statistic to measure IOPS.

Units: Bytes

Understanding FSx File Gateway audit logs

Amazon FSx File Gateway (FSx File Gateway) audit logs provide you with details about user access to files and folders within a file system association. You can use audit logs to monitor user activities and take action if inappropriate activity patterns are identified. The logs are formatted similar to Windows Server security log events, to support compatibility with existing log processing tools for Windows security events.

Operations

The following table describes the FSx File Gateway audit log file access operations.

Operation name

Definition

Read Data

Read the contents of a file.

Write Data

Change the contents of a file.

Create

Create a new file or folder.

Rename

Rename an existing file or folder.

Delete

Delete a file or folder.

Write Attributes

Update file or folder metadata (ACLs, owner, group, permissions).

Attributes

The following table describes FSx File Gateway audit log file access attributes.

Attribute

Definition

securityDescriptor

Shows the discretionary access control list (DACL) set on an object, in SDDL format.

sourceAddress

The IP address of file share client machine.

SubjectDomainName

The Active Directory (AD) domain that the client’s account belongs to.

SubjectUserName

The Active Directory user name of the client.

source

The ID of the Storage Gateway FileSystemAssociation that is being audited.

mtime

This time that the object's content was modified, set by the client.

version

The version of the audit log format.

ObjectType

Defines whether the object is a file or folder.

locationDnsName The FSx File Gateway system DNS name.

objectName

The full path to the object.

ctime

The time that the object’s content or metadata was modified, set by the client.

shareName

The name of the share that is being accessed.

operation

The name of the object access operation.

newObjectName

The full path to the new object after it has been renamed.

gateway

The Storage Gateway ID.

status

The status of the operation. Only success is logged (failures are logged with the exception of failures arising from permissions denied).

fileSizeInBytes

The size of the file in bytes, set by the client at file creation time.

Attributes logged per operation

The following table describes the FSx File Gateway audit log attributes logged in each file access operation.

Read data

Write data

Create folder

Create file

Rename file/folder

Delete file/folder

Write attributes (change ACL)

Write attributes (chown)

Write attributes (chmod)

Write attributes (chgrp)

securityDescriptor

X

sourceAddress

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

SubjectDomainName

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

SubjectUserName

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

source

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

mtime

X

X

version

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

objectType

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

locationDnsName

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

objectName

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

ctime

X

X

shareName

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

operation

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

newObjectName

X

gateway

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

status

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

fileSizeInBytes

X