The word is out! The number of customers using IBM Storage Insights grew in leaps and bounds in 2019 and shows no signs of slowing down in 2020. This easy to use, fast-growing
#IBMCloud service can help you predict and prevent problems on your storage devices before they impact your business. It can also help you plan for your future capacity needs.
With the need to monitor your storage remotely during the current, worldwide health emergency, now's the perfect time to sign up if you haven't already.
Need more information? No problem. Whether you're a new customer, a potential customer, or a seasoned veteran, the official
IBM Knowledge Center for IBM Storage Insights can help you answer key questions about IBM Storage Insights, like "How do I get started?", "What storage devices can I monitor?", and many more.
Let's explore some of the new information that's been added to the knowledge center and some other tidbits that you might find useful:
Start your engines!
Getting started with new apps can be a hassle. In the busy job of storage management, who has time for that? We've heard your concerns, and that's why we made it easy to get up and running quickly with IBM Storage Insights. With our hassle-free startup, automated maintenance of the service in
#IBMCloud, and a free trial, now's a great time to get started.
Don't be left at the starting line when it comes to taking control of your storage -- start your engines today with IBM Storage Insights!
To get a jumpstart, check out this
handy PDF.
Or watch this short video about how to get going:
What's new
 | With all the updates in 2019 and 2020, IBM Storage Insights is even more packed with exciting features. Don't miss out -- kick off your capacity planning and performance troubleshooting with the latest version today. |
Here are just a some of the things that you can do now:
- With the new Operations dashboard, grab your morning cup of coffee and quickly assess which block storage systems in your inventory need attention.
- Monitor and report on more non-IBM devices, such as Dell EMC Unity, NetApp storage systems running ONTAP 9, and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series and G Series.
- Monitor and report on more IBM devices, such as IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud, IBM FlashSystem 5000, FlashSystem 5100, FlashSystem 7200, and FlashSystem 9200.
- Measure the performance of unmap volume commands and define alerts so that you are notified when unmap operations values fall outside thresholds you specify.
- Quickly see how full your cache is by adding new cache fullness metrics to the performance charts when you view the performance of nodes for your storage systems.
- Review node metrics that measure the operations that are used to free up and reclaim capacity in data reduction pools to help determine if reclamation is affecting performance.
- Share reports as PDFs to keep your colleagues up to date on the latest storage changes.
- In the free version of IBM Storage Insights, you can now create, schedule, and send inventory reports for storage systems, and capacity reports for storage systems and pools.
Learn more about these and other new features in the IBM Knowledge Center.You can also check out this video to see what's new:
Pro tip: To go to the IBM Knowledge Center directly from the product GUI, hover your mouse over the help icon in the upper-right corner of the GUI and click Documentation.
More devices, better monitoring
You might be interested in IBM Storage Insights and what it can do, but you want to ensure that it can monitor the storage devices in your environment. What's the point in using a product that doesn't help you with the storage that you have, right? After all, the more devices that can be monitored, the better and more comprehensive view that you'll have of what's happening.
The IBM Knowledge Center can help you find out if you're covered. To see which devices that you can monitor with IBM Storage Insights and IBM Storage Insights Pro, including the new device and version support that was added in 2019 and 2020, check out
https://ibm.biz/insightsdevices.
Clarity with capacity
Continuing in our efforts to bring unity and clarity to capacity, we're working to ensure that the terminology used for capacity metrics is used consistently, and makes sense, across all IBM Storage products. That means no matter what devices you're monitoring, whether a SAN Volume Controller, FlashSystem, DS8000, IBM Cloud Object Storage, or other IBM device, the same capacity term for the same capacity concept will be used.
In the latest releases of IBM Spectrum Control and IBM Storage Insights, we updated 47 capacity terms, removed 4 terms that are no longer needed, and added 1 new term. For example, Allocated Space is now called
Used Capacity; Available Space is now
Available Capacity; Effective Capacity is now
Written Capacity Limit; and so on.
And don't worry, you won't be left scratching your head about all these terminology changes. In the IBM Knowledge Center, the following information is there to guide you through:
- Which terms changed
- Where terms changed
- What new terms mean
To see all the capacity terms that were updated and their descriptions, go to the following links:
- IBM Storage Insights Knowledge Center: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSQRB8/com.ibm.spectrum.si.doc/prd_capacity_terms_updates.html
- IBM Spectrum Control Knowledge Center: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS5R93_5.3.6/com.ibm.spectrum.sc.doc/prd_capacity_terms_updates.html
Dashboards make it easy
Dashboards are a quick way to get insights into key aspects of your storage at a glance. Identify storage systems that need your attention, monitor notifications of events that occur on your devices, get an overview of your environment, and more.
Knowing which dashboards to view, and when, can help you find and resolve problems on your storage before they impact your business.
To learn more about which dashboards best meet your needs at different times, see Dashboards in the IBM Knowledge Center.
To see the Advisor dashboard in action, check out this video:
What data is being collected about devices?
Or perhaps the more accurate question to ask is "What metadata is being collected about devices?".
IBM Storage Insights Pro collects over 100 capacity and performance metrics about your storage devices. These metrics help you get a clear picture of your overall capacity and insight into any problem areas that need your attention. It also collects diagnostic data to help you troubleshoot any issues that might occur on your devices or with the service itself.
These metrics and diagnostic data are collectively known as "metadata" because they represent information about your devices.
What IBM Storage Insights Pro (and IBM Storage Insights) doesn't collect is any of the actual data that is stored on those devices. It can't, and won't, access your actual application data.
Here's a quick rundown of what's collected:
- Information about the status of a storage system and its internal resources
- Information about the configuration of a storage system, such as name, firmware, and capacity
- Information about the internal resources of a storage system, such as volumes, pools, nodes, ports, and disks
- Information about the performance of storage systems and their internal resources
If you want to see a detailed list of the metadata that's collected, the IBM Knowledge Center is the best place:
Changing the ownership of your IBM Storage Insights instance
(The following instructions were taken from the IBM Storage Insights Knowledge Center)
There might be cases where the person who "owns" the IBM Storage Insights instance within your organization is leaving the company, moving to a different position, or needs to hand over responsibility to someone else.
So, what do you do if the owner of your organization's IBM Storage Insights instance has left for some reason or needs to change? It's simple, and you don't need to create new subscription / URL to make the change.
Instead, just do this: Open a support case against IBM Storage Insights or IBM Storage Insights Pro at https://www.ibm.com/mysupport/s/ and provide the following information so that the new owner can be assigned:
- Company name and country
- Full name of the original owner
- Full name of the new owner
- Phone number of the new owner
- IBM ID and email address of the original owner
- IBM ID and email address of the new owner
- URL of the IBM Storage Insights service, if you have it
You can also state whether access to IBM Support and IBM Storage Insights is to be revoked for the original owner of the subscription and whether the associated IBM ID should be removed from the company's account.
That's all there is to it. IBM will help you the rest of the way.
Dear IBM Spectrum Control users, you might already have access to IBM Storage Insights
Are you an IBM Spectrum Control user and want a complementary #IBMCloud service that can transform your support experience for #IBMStorage, at no additional cost?
Look no further than "IBM Storage Insights for IBM Spectrum Control". See if you qualify! https://ibm.biz/insightsandcontrol
Best regards,
The IBM Storage Insights Team
Getting answers to common questions
Do you have more questions about IBM Storage Insights or IBM Spectrum Control and want quick answers? Click any of the following links:
You can also check out the following resources for more information:
Joining the conversation
Be social! Join the conversation at #IBMStorage, #IBMCloud, #ibmsystems, and #softwaredefinedstorage. You can also communicate with product experts and other users in our technical community.
We are always striving to improve the information that we deliver, and how we deliver it. On every page in IBM Knowledge Center is a place where you can provide us with direct feedback about your experience.
For continuing news about the documentation for IBM Spectrum Control and IBM Storage Insights, follow me on 
or Twitter @chris_tking.
#PrimaryStorage#StorageManagementandReporting#Cloudstorage#IBMCloudstorage#IBMCloud#ibmsystems#IBMSpectrumControl#ibmspectrumcontrol#ibmstorage#Storage#ibmspectrumcontrolibmsystems#Softwaredefinedstorage