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IBM Storage Insights: Favorite custom alerts -- Are my Safeguarded Copy volumes being backed up?

By EUGENE O'CONNOR posted Thu December 03, 2020 07:44 AM

  
In IBM® Storage Insights, you can create alerts to notify you when one specific condition occurs. But, did you know that you can also create custom alerts to combine multiple conditions and resources into a single alert?  In other words, you can create "multi-conditional" alerts.

Let's look at an example of a custom alert for volumes that use the new Safeguarded Copy feature in DS8000® 8.5.0 or later. Safeguarded Copy can improve your cyber resilience by frequently creating protected, point-in-time backups of critical data.

You can create a custom alert to notify you if the capacity that is used to store the volume copies for Safeguarded Copy is 0 bytes. If the volume copies have 0 bytes, the backup copies were not created. If this alert is triggered, you need to check that the Safeguarded Copy feature is configured correctly.

Let's assume that your DS8000 systems are members of an alert policy that you can edit (that is, not a default policy). Here's how to create the custom alert:

  1. Go to Configuration > Alert Policies.
  2. Double-click the DS8000 alert policy that you use to manage the alert definitions of your DS8000 systems. 


  3. Click Edit Alert Definitions.
  4. Click the Custom category in the Alert Definitions tab. 
  5. Click Create Alert, then enter a name for the alert. Let's say "Safeguarded Volume No Capacity Used".
  6. Assign a severity to the alert to reflect its importance in your environment.
  7. Specify the following details for the first condition, which identifies if a volume is protected by Safeguarded Copy.
    • Component: Volumes
    • Category: General
    • Attribute: Safeguarded
    • Condition: Yes
  8. Click the plus icon to add another condition, then specify the following details for the second condition, which identifies if the capacity that is used to store backup copies is less than 1 GiB.
    • Component: Volumes
    • Category: Capacity
    • Attribute: Safeguarded Capacity
    • Operator: <=
    • Value: 1
    • Unit: GiB
  9. Set the notification frequency options so that you are notified only once. Also set the option so that you are notified only after the condition has been violated for 1 day.  This settings means that the conditions of the alert must persist for longer than a day before you are notified.

Here's what the alert definition looks like:

Now, if the "Safeguarded Volume No Capacity Used" alert is triggered, it means that a volume that is configured for Safeguarded Copy is not being backed up. You might need to check whether Safeguarded Copy is configured correctly for the volume.

See the IBM Storage Insights Knowledge Center for more information about Creating alert policies and Modifying alert policies, including adding resources.

Here's a short video of how to create this custom alert:



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