Primary Storage

Your block storage inventory at a glance

Have you ever wanted an enterprise-wide dashboard for monitoring your block storage systems? And did you want that dashboard to look like those slick Network Operations Center (NOC) dashboards that you often see used by IT professionals in large organizations? Well, look no further than this update of IBM Storage Insights.

The new dashboard in IBM Storage Insights provides a window into the health, capacity, and performance of IBM block storage systems. With this dashboard, you no longer need to open different management GUIs to view key information about storage systems -- it's all here now, at a glance. To access the dashboard, simply click Home > Dashboard.

In the dashboard's Event Feed, you can quickly view and sort the latest critical and warning Call Home events that were detected for your IBM block storage systems. Just click an event to view more details about it.

On the right side of the dashboard, monitored storage systems are displayed on easy-to-read tiles so you can quickly scan your inventory. For each storage system, you can view:

• The name of the storage system


• The number of nodes and enclosures (when applicable)


• The number of error and warning conditions that were detected


• Key performance and capacity metrics

Product support at your finger tips

Detecting and resolving issues in a storage environment is one of the main focuses of this update. It combines storage-management capabilities with a simplified yet robust IBM Support experience to help you spend less time troubleshooting storage problems and more time planning for your future storage needs.

Getting support for any IBM block storage system in your inventory is just a click away.

With features such as Call Home, a lightweight data collector, a streamlined ticketing process, and proactive support, you can feel confident that your storage environment is stable, performing well, and has the capacity to meet your applications' requirements. And if a problem does occur, you can get help easily by:

Additionally, IBM Support has read-only access to diagnostic information about monitored storage systems, so they can proactively help troubleshoot and resolve problems.

Pearls in the documentation: All about security

The new IBM Spectrum Control™ Storage Insights Security Guide [PDF] explains the security and data collection features of IBM Storage Insights and addresses the typical concerns of administrators and IT professionals when deploying such capabilities in their environments., The guide is available as a downloadable PDF.

In this guide, the following questions are answered:

• What is the data collector?


• How is the metadata protected?


• What types of metadata are collected?


• How long is the metadata kept?


• Who can access the metadata that is collected?

You can also view security information directly in the IBM Knowledge Center.

What to do if you're not an IBM Storage Insights subscriber

If you're not a current IBM Storage Insights subscriber but want to see first-hand how these features can help you manage IBM block storage systems, there is a way! IBM Storage Insights Foundation is an upcoming offering from IBM that provides some of the same features of IBM Storage Insights for managing IBM block storage systems. While it doesn't include all the rich, storage-management features of IBM Storage Insights, it does provide the following capabilities: Monitor health, capacity, and performance enterprise-wide on a single pane of glass Focus on storage events that truly need attention Connect to IBM support in a few easy steps Automate the upload of support log packages Resolve issues faster by using cumulative telemetry data View all open tickets and ticket history Enjoy the ease and security of an IBM Cloud service Learn more about Storage Insights Foundation in the  IBM Knowledge Center.

Interested? If so: Do you manage IBM block storage systems? Are you located in the United States? Do you want a hands-on preview of IBM's cognitive storage management and support capabilities at no charge? If you answered "yes" to these questions, consider joining the exclusive IBM Storage Insights Foundation pilot program!     An IBM representative will contact you to get started. It's that simple, so why wait?

Joining the conversation

Be social! Join the conversation at #IBMStorage, #ibmsystems, and #softwaredefinedstorage.

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For continuing news about the documentation for IBM Spectrum Control and IBM Storage Insights, follow me on or Twitter @chris_tking.