Back to: Storage Area Network (SAN) Storage
1. Monitoring Storage Infrastructure
Key Metrics to Monitor:
- Capacity Usage: Total, used, and free space across storage pools.
- Performance: IOPS, throughput (MB/s), and latency.
- Disk Health: Drive failures, bad sectors, and SMART errors.
- Network: Bandwidth utilization and congestion in SAN/NAS environments.
- Replication & Backup: Job success rates, RPO/RTO compliance.
Popular Tools:
- Vendor-Specific:
- NetApp OnCommand
- Dell EMC Unisphere
- HPE Storage Management Console
- IBM Spectrum Control
- Pure Storage Purity
- Third-Party / Open Source:
- Nagios with Storage Plugins
- Zabbix
- Prometheus with Node Exporters
- Grafana for visualization
- PRTG Network Monitor
2. Reporting & Alerts
Key Reports:
- Capacity Trend Analysis: Predict when storage will run out.
- Performance Reports: Identify bottlenecks in read/write operations.
- Failure Reports: Disk errors, RAID rebuild events, SAN switch issues.
- Backup & Snapshot Reports: Ensure data protection compliance.
- User/Department Usage Reports: Chargeback and cost allocation.
Methods to Generate Reports:
- Built-in vendor dashboards (e.g., NetApp Active IQ, HPE Infosight).
- Custom scripts (Python, PowerShell) to extract logs and generate reports.
- SIEM tools (Splunk, ELK) to analyze logs from storage devices.
3. Capacity Management & Forecasting
Best Practices:
- Thin Provisioning: Optimize storage allocation to avoid over-provisioning.
- Storage Tiering: Move inactive data to slower, cheaper storage.
- Regular Audits: Identify underutilized volumes, orphaned LUNs, and unnecessary snapshots.
- Growth Trend Analysis: Use historical data to predict future storage needs.
- Policy-based Auto Scaling (especially in cloud environments).
Automation & AI-driven Solutions:
- AI-powered insights from tools like HPE InfoSight, NetApp Active IQ.
- Scripting (Ansible, PowerShell, Python) for automatic log collection and analysis.
- Cloud-based Capacity Management using AWS Storage Gateway, Azure Monitor, or Google Cloud Operations.
1️⃣ Monitoring Strategy (Vendor-Specific Tools)
For SAN & NAS Storage:
- NetApp: Active IQ Unified Manager, Cloud Insights
- Dell EMC: Unisphere for PowerMax, CloudIQ for PowerStore, SRM for Isilon
- HPE: InfoSight, OneView
- IBM: Spectrum Control
- Pure Storage: Pure1
For Cloud Storage:
- AWS: CloudWatch, AWS Storage Gateway
- Azure: Azure Monitor, Azure Storage Insights
- Google Cloud: Cloud Operations (formerly Stackdriver)
Each tool can provide real-time monitoring for latency, IOPS, capacity utilization, and failed disks, with alerting features.
2️⃣ Reporting (Chargeback & Historical Growth Trends)
- Dell EMC Storage Resource Manager (SRM) – Cross-platform storage monitoring & reporting
- NetApp Cloud Insights – Multi-vendor analytics & chargeback
- HPE InfoSight – AI-driven capacity forecasting
- IBM Spectrum Control – Historical trends & usage analytics
- Grafana/Power BI Integration – If you need custom dashboards for multi-vendor reporting
These tools can generate scheduled reports on storage consumption by department, business unit, or workload for chargeback/showback
3️⃣ Capacity Forecasting & Management
To predict storage needs and optimize usage:
✅ AI/ML-based Forecasting
- HPE InfoSight: Predicts capacity & performance issues
- NetApp Active IQ: Uses AI for proactive recommendations
- Dell EMC CloudIQ: AI-based anomaly detection
✅ Automation & Optimization
- Thin Provisioning Alerts (Set thresholds to prevent over-provisioning)
- Auto-tiering (Move cold data to lower-cost storage)
- Snapshot & Backup Optimization (Identify redundant snapshots consuming space)