Dell EMC PowerScale Data Source Plugin for Grafana

Description

The Dell EMC PowerScale DataSource Plugin is a Grafana backend datasource plugin that enables on-demand querying and visualization of Dell EMC PowerScale (formerly Isilon) cluster metrics, storage statistics, and system events inside Grafana panels.

Dell EMC PowerScale is a scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) platform that provides high-performance, scalable storage for unstructured data. The plugin connects to the OneFS API to retrieve real-time and historical metrics including cluster health, node performance, protocol statistics, storage capacity, quotas, NFS exports, and system events.

Features

• Query and visualize PowerScale cluster metrics directly within Grafana
• Support for multiple data categories:
  • Statistics: Real-time and historical cluster, node, and protocol performance metrics
  • Cluster Configuration: Cluster name, OneFS version, and system settings
  • Storage Pools: Tier capacity, usage, and protection status
  • Node Pools: Per-node-pool capacity and disk allocation
  • Quotas: Per-path quota usage, limits, and enforcement status
  • NFS Exports: Export configurations and mount paths
  • Events: System alerts and event groups filtered by severity
  • Licenses: Installed feature licenses and expiration status
  • Workload Summary: Per-workload CPU, throughput, latency, and I/O statistics
• Time-series support for historical statistics with configurable intervals
• Node-specific filtering for detailed per-node metrics
• Built-in retry logic with exponential backoff for transient failures
• TLS support with optional CA certificate verification
• Automatic session management with the OneFS API

Compatibility

Visuals

Onboarding

Query Examples

Added Dashbords

Installation

Requirements

• Grafana >= 12.0.0
• A Dell EMC PowerScale cluster with API access enabled
• OneFS credentials (username and password)
• Network connectivity to the PowerScale cluster management interface

Obtain OneFS Credentials

1. Login to the PowerScale Web UI or CLI.
2. Navigate to Access > Membership & Roles (or use the CLI).
3. Create or identify a user with appropriate permissions for the Platform API.
4. Ensure the user has access to at least the following services: platform.

Install the Plugin

Install the plugin from the Grafana Plugin Catalog or using the Grafana CLI:

grafana cli plugins install crestdata-dellemcpowerscale-datasource

After installation, restart the Grafana server for the plugin to be loaded.

Configure the Data Source

1. In Grafana, navigate to Connections > Data Sources > Add data source.
2. Search for Dell EMC PowerScale and select it.
3. Fill in the required configuration fields:

1. Click Save & Test. The health check will validate your credentials against the PowerScale API.

TLS Configuration

For secure production environments:

1. TLS with CA Certificate (Recommended): Leave "TLS Skip Verify" unchecked and provide a valid CA certificate in the "CA Certificate" field.
2. TLS Skip Verify: Only enable this for trusted environments. This skips TLS certificate validation.

Usage

Query Editor

Once the data source is configured, you can create panels using the query editor with the following parameters:

Available Metric Categories

Cluster Metrics

• CPU: User/system utilization, idle time
• Network: Bytes/packets in/out rates
• Storage: IFS filesystem capacity, usage, SSD statistics
• Health: Node count (total, up, down)

Node Metrics

• CPU: Per-node CPU utilization
• Network: Per-node network throughput and errors
• Storage: Per-node capacity
• Memory: RAM usage
• Cache: L2 (SSD) and L3 (RAM) cache hits/misses
• Disk: Access latency, busy percentage, queue depth, transfer rates

Protocol Metrics

• NFS: NFSv3, NFSv4, NFS RDMA operations
• SMB: SMB1, SMB2/SMB3 operations
• Other: NLM, FTP, HTTP, SyncIQ, PAPI, HDFS, S3 operations
• Client Stats: Active and connected client counts

Time Series Handling

The Statistics resource supports time-series queries for historical data:

• Enable Use Time Series to retrieve historical metrics
• Configure the Interval parameter (in seconds) to control data granularity
• Default interval is 120 seconds
• Time range is automatically passed from the Grafana time picker

Error Handling and Retry Strategy

Retries are performed only for transient failures:

• HTTP 429 (rate limited)
• HTTP 5xx responses (500–599)
• Network/connection-level errors
• Errors while reading the response body
• Session authentication failures (with automatic re-authentication)

Max retry attempts: 3, with exponential backoff (base delay: 3 seconds).

Non-retryable: HTTP 4xx errors (e.g., 401, 403) are returned immediately.

Resources Reference

Limitations and Recommendations

API Considerations:

• The plugin uses the OneFS Platform API (auto-detects latest version)
• Session authentication is maintained and automatically refreshed

Performance tips:

• Use higher interval values (e.g., 300s or more) for long time ranges
• Use Node ID filtering to reduce data volume for large clusters

Support

For issues, questions, or feature requests, please open an issue in this repository.

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features and known issues.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To get started with development:

cd crestdata-dellemcpowerscale-datasource
Frontend
npm install
npm run dev        # development mode with watch
npm run build      # production build
Backend
mage -v            # build backend binaries
Tests
npm run test       # frontend tests (Jest)
npm run test:ci    # CI mode
go test ./…      # backend tests
Linting
npm run lint
npm run lint:fix
Local Grafana instance (Docker)
npm run server
E2E tests (Playwright)
npm run e2e

Before submitting a pull request:

1. Run the linter and ensure all tests pass.
2. Validate the plugin using the Grafana Plugin Validator.
3. Ensure any changes to plugin.json are intentional — a Grafana server restart is required after such changes.

Authors and Acknowledgment

Developed by Crest Data.

License

This plugin is distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. See the LICENSE file for details.

References

• Dell PowerScale Product Page
• Dell OneFS API Reference
• Grafana Plugin Development
• Grafana Plugin Publishing Best Practices