While the Storage component does not provide any new reports in Cost Transparency, it is used to provide better visibility into the cost of your applications. It is also a prerequisite used by the Storage Insights component (which is part of the Business Insights application).
Common source systems
Some common source systems for Storage data are:
Storage data typically comes from an IT operations analyst or whoever manages your CMDB or a storage management application.
Questions to consider
As you begin researching your Storage data, here are some questions to consider:
- Are your storage devices tiered?
- Are your storage volumes tiered?
- Can you identify what storage volumes are on which storage devices?
- Can you associate a storage volume to a server?
- Can you associate a storage volume to an application?
- Do you have contacts in mind for requesting the required data?
- Do you anticipate any struggles with acquiring the data?
- How clean is your data?
Required columns
The table below lists the data sets and specific data elements from those data sets that are required. There are many other data elements you may wish to include. Please refer to your Configuration Workbook for more details on all data elements.
Required data sets | Required data elements |
Storage Devices Use this data set as the basis of the storage device asset information | - Storage device ID
- Storage tier
- Location
- Used space (optional but may be used for weighting values)
- Total space (optional but may be used for weighting values)
- Usable capacity (optional but may be used for weighting values)
|
Storage Use this data set as the basis of the storage information | - Storage ID
- Tier
- Type
- Location
- Used space
- Total space
- Storage device ID
- Server ID
|
For NAS or thin provisioned storage that may be allocated outside of servers, the BU Consumer or App Consumer fields should be populated.
Storage Devices and Storage Identifiers
The Storage Devices identifier is the actual device ID.
The Storage identifier is the actual storage volume ID.
Columns Required to Link Data Sets
You will also need to consider the ways in which you'll link Storage Master Data to other data sets. The table below highlights some specific data elements needed for linking data sets together.
Link to Master Data Set | Required data elements |
IT Resource Towers Master Data | - IT Resource Tower
- IT Resource Sub-Tower
|
Physical Servers Master Data | |
Applications Master Data | |
All Business Services | |
Business Units Master Data | - Application ID
- Service ID
- Business Unit Name
- Project_BU Key Metafield
|
If your storage devices support more than one tier, this may require more advanced configuration. You may need to use assumptive allocations initially, such as allocating costs by Total Available Storage on a device.
If you do not have sufficient data for allocating between Storage Devices and Storage, you may use assumptive allocations. For Storage Devices to Storage, this means you should allocate costs evenly based on device ID.