Live Optics | Optical Prime | FAQ

How do I generate a project report?

• For Optical Prime projects, click Reports on the upper-right navigation bar, where you can download an AIR report (VMware environments only) and Excel files.
• For other Live Optics projects, select a project from the Live Optics dashboard and download the Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel report.

Does Optical Prime support Mac OS?

• Mac OS is not supported by the Optical Prime collector software.

What port does Optical Prime use when streaming data?

• Optical Prime uses TCP port 443 (HTTPS) to communicate with the Live Optics web portal.

How often is Optical Prime transmitting information?

• Collected information is transmitted to Live Optics servers every 5 minutes.

What is the interval length for a performance collection?

• Optical Prime collects information from hosts every 2 minutes, and uploads information directly to the Live Optics web portal (if the direct streaming option is selected at the beginning of a scan).

What happens if network connectivity to a remote server is lost during a collection?

• If one or more remote servers stop communicating with Optical Prime during a collection, Optical Prime restores communication when they come back online. The server loss is reflected in the participation graph in the resulting project report. Depending on the duration and scope of servers not reporting during a collection, you may have to rerun Optical Prime to ensure that any important nodes have not been missed.

• Yes. While configuring your collection, you can specify the IP address of each server or select Import Server List and provide a text file containing a list of IP addresses or hostnames. Each IP address or hostname must be added on a separate line.

Does Optical Prime collect information about SMB shares, NFS exports, or object stores?

• If SMB shares or NFS exports (NAS file shares) are hosted by a supported operating system, Optical Prime can record the performance metrics of the underlying block devices supporting the file systems. However, if the network file share is hosted by a storage array (filer) or an unsupported operating system, Optical Prime cannot be used. Note that NFS exports are supported as datastores in VMware, and datastore metrics can be gathered through VMware. You can also use Dossier to collect file characterizations for SMB and NFS shares. 

Are backend storage array statistics collected by Optical Prime?

• No. Optical Prime collects data at the host level only (physical host, virtual host, or virtual guest layer).

Does Optical Prime collect server components and HW inventory, such as HBA firmware and drivers?

• Optical Prime communicates with a host using a supported operating system, and not directly with hardware. All collected information is provided through the operating system. HBA hardware, firmware, and drivers are not shown. Only make, model, CPU, and memory information are available. Can I see all the applications installed on the hosts? If you use Optical Prime to scan physical hosts or virtual machines directly, you can see a list of the installed applications. However, if you use Optical Prime to connect to a VMware vCenter, you can see the hypervisor only as the installed application.

What collectors are available for Optical Prime?

• Optical Prime scans are available on the Windows and Linux Live Optics collectors.

Can I merge collections information for a particular server across several different monthly scans?

• No. You can perform a manual comparison between different projects that were run at different times. Each project has collected data available in Excel files which can be used for manual comparisons.

Is Optical Prime available for VMware?

• Yes, Optical Prime supports VMware ESXi. You must connect to a VMware vCenter instance to collect information. Communicating directly with a hypervisor is not supported. If no VMware vCenter instance is available, you can use RVTools, which supports scans directly from ESXi servers.

Is it possible to select only certain assets (servers, VMs) to see their workloads?

• Yes. On the Performance tab, each project asset has a radio button on the left. Select or deselect an asset to group its workloads together. Select Recalculate on the top. Selecting Reset selects all assets and reverts the project to the original state. Does the VMware reporting in Optical Prime include VSAN metrics? Yes, if your VMware cluster is using vSAN for the datastore, metrics are in the report.

Can I use Optical Prime for Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) assessments?

• Yes. Optical Prime reports on virtual environments, even if virtual machines are used as servers or desktops.

When should I collect information from VMs directly rather than through vCenter?

• To understand the performance attributes in detail, connect to the VM directly.

Do I need VMware rights to run Optical Prime in a virtualized environment?

• Yes, you need appropriate user credentials to allow Optical Prime to communicate with a VMware vCenter. The user credentials to log Optical Prime into vCenter must be at least read-only. In addition, the source machine where Live Optics is running must be able to access the vCenter/vSphere client application.

What is the difference between virtual and hypervisor?

• Environment > Server Roles > Virtual refers to the virtual machines that were directly targeted, while Hypervisor refers to the physical host running the hypervisor operating system.

What is the difference between Guest VM and Virtual?

• Environment > Server Roles > Virtual refers to directly targeted virtual machines. Guest VMs represent virtual machines that were reported indirectly by the hypervisors.

Does Optical Prime display information about third-party storage arrays such as drive utilization, memory usage, or director/SP ports activity?

• Optical Prime communicates directly with the host operating system. When using Optical Prime to target servers connected to third-party external storage array information, including frontend IOPS, peak and 95% IOPS, throughput at peak, R/W ratio, and used/free storage capacity is included.

Can you remove IP address AD server names from Optical Prime reports?

• Yes. Start Live Optics from the Command Prompt and use /anon (Windows) or —anon (Linux) to assign random server and disk names in the project report. Also, when a project is shared, there is an option to anonymize the project information for the recipient.

Can you add a range of IP addresses to the Optical Prime collector? Is it possible to use wildcards to add servers to the Optical Prime collector?

• Optical Prime does not support the use of wildcards to scan an IP range. However, you can import a text file containing IP addresses and hostnames of target systems to be scanned. You can also search through an Active Directory for target systems.

How do you run Optical Prime behind a firewall?

• If TCP port 443 is open with the firewall, Optical Prime can upload data directly to the Live Optics web portal. If an Internet connection is not available, you can choose not to connect to the Live Optics web portal and upload an SIOKIT file later.

If a local collection is run every day, will the collector write over previous data? Can the tool aggregate multiple days for analysis?

• If a collection is completed daily, each collection results in a single Live Optics project. Multiple individual data collections containing the same servers cannot be combined for analysis. To collect data across multiple days, perform the collection across multiple days continuously by selecting the appropriate duration. The maximum collection duration is 7 days.

How long must I wait before I can use the collector once it is requested?

• When you receive the email to download, you can begin using the collector. The collector expires in 90 days and can be run anytime up until the expiration date.

In the Project View, does the project display Total CPUs and Total Cores?

• Under the Environment tab on the Optical Prime dashboard, CPU information, including Peak CPU, Net CPU, Total Number of Cores, and Total Number of CPU Sockets is displayed. This information is also available in the project report once a scan is completed. You can view individual server configurations under the Performance tab.

Does Optical Prime display the processor core count?

• Yes, Optical Prime displays the processor core count. It is also in the project report.

How long will Optical Prime project information be available in the Live Optics portal after upload?

• Live Optics projects are available for up to seven years on the portal. However, projects that have not been opened for three months are archived. Archived projects can be found on the main Live Optics dashboard by clicking the All Projects button on the right side of the screen. To make any changes, such as grouping assets for analysis, you must select an archived project and click Restore at the top of the page.

Are the prices indicated in the Cloud Pricing section on dedicated or shared instances?

• The pricing is for shared instances.

How can I complete a scan on a dark site?

• Contact the Live Optics support team, or alternatively, you can complete an Inventory Mode collection using the Live Optics collector. Performance data is not collected using this option.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Live Optics Support at liveoptics.support@dell.com.