Planning for Dell EMC storage systems

Dell EMC resources provide block and unified storage for organizations with network-attached storage or storage area network environments that have file and block-level services. IBM Spectrum Control provides enhanced monitoring for Unity, VMAX, VNX, and VNXe storage systems.

IBM Spectrum Control version 5.3.5 and later supports the Unity storage system by connecting directly to the device.

IBM Spectrum Control version 5.2.13 and later supports versions of Dell EMC SMI-S Provider or Dell EMC Solutions Enabler that are compliant with SMI-S 1.6. Through SMI-S 1.6, the following storage systems are monitored:
  • VMAX family
  • VNX family
  • VNXe family

For other Dell EMC storage systems, monitoring is through SMI-S 1.2.

Supported versions: To view the versions of Dell EMC storage systems that are supported in IBM Spectrum Control, go to the External link iconDell EMC support page.

Dell EMC Unity Device configuration

A Unity device can be added to IBM Spectrum Control as a block storage system, a file storage system, or both. When you add a Unity storage system, IBM Spectrum Control collects data by connecting directly to the storage system.

Antivirus software restriction: If your antivirus software is set on the maximum mode, it might prevent your Unity storage systems from being added to IBM Spectrum Control. For more information about how to configure your antivirus software, see Installation checklists for IBM Spectrum Control.

Benefits

IBM Spectrum Control can help you predict and prevent storage problems before they impact your business. Here are some key benefits of using IBM Spectrum Control to monitor your Dell EMC storage systems:
  • View detailed information about capacity, storage usage, and performance.
  • Monitor health, status, and availability.
  • Use alerts and alert policies to be notified of conditions and potential problems.
  • Use advanced analytics to reclaim storage.
  • Create and share reports about inventory, capacity, performance, and storage consumption.

Supported features

View a detailed list of the features in IBM Spectrum Control that you can use to monitor Dell EMC Unity storage systems:
Table 1. Supported features for Dell EMC Unity
Resource Monitoring Features Supported
Understanding the environment Monitor storage inventory and configuration. Includes information about type, model, serial number, and firmware. Check mark
Understand storage relationships, from volume and share down to server and application. Checkmark
Explore virtualization relationships.  
Explore replication relationships. Checkmark
View dashboards to get insights into key aspects of your storage at a glance and one-click access to web-based element managers. Checkmark
Support for multiple protocols and storage types, such as FC, iSCSI, NVMe, CIFS, and NFS. Checkmark
Monitoring capacity Collect storage consumption and capacity metrics. Checkmark
View data reduction information. Checkmark
View copy data information. Checkmark
View internal storage tiers such as Easy Tier® and EMC FAST. Checkmark
Monitor the storage consumed by applications. Checkmark
Monitoring performance Collect performance metrics about the workload on resources. Checkmark
View calculated metrics to gain insights into performance conditions. Checkmark
Export performance data to a compressed file. Checkmark
Drill down performance workflows to troubleshoot bottlenecks. Checkmark
Compare the performance of resources. Checkmark
Monitoring health Understand the health of resources. Checkmark
Receive notifications when the status of a resource changes.  
View the status of elements that are not represented as resources. Checkmark
Alerting Alert on conditions within your storage environment. Checkmark
Define alerts to identify issues based on multiple conditions. Checkmark
Define alert policies to be notified of changes across related resources. Checkmark
Reporting View predefined reports. Checkmark
View chargeback and consumer reports. Checkmark
Create custom reports by using the REST API. Checkmark
Create rollup reports to view information across multiple IBM Spectrum Control servers. Checkmark
Analytics Performance planning Checkmark
Capacity planning Checkmark
Business impact analysis (applications, departments, and groups) Checkmark
Optimize data placement with tiering  
Optimize capacity with reclamation. Checkmark
Restriction: In replication relationships, any snapshot volumes in either source or target storage systems that are not assigned to a host, are not stored in IBM Spectrum Control. The volumes are listed in the Copy Data page but do not have hyperlinks.

Metadata collection schedule

By default, asset, capacity, and configuration metadata is aggregated and collected daily. You can schedule daily capacity and inventory reports to gain insights about your Dell EMC storage systems.

For Dell EMC Unity storage systems, the collection intervals for performance metadata are 5 minutes and 60 minutes. The default interval is 5 minutes.

Performance metadata is collected every 15 minutes for VMAX, VNX, and VNXe block storage systems.

What's next

Before you can monitor, alert, and report on your Dell EMC storage systems, you must add them to IBM Spectrum Control.

For instructions on how to add storage systems for monitoring, see Adding storage systems.