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IBM Storage Insights: Pearls in the documentation for 2020

By Chris King posted Wed April 08, 2020 02:27 PM

  
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









What's new for IBM Storage Insights 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.
IBM Storage Insights GUI and link to KC



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.

Storage devices






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.

table of capacity terminology changes

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:



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