Planning for Hitachi storage systems
Hitachi resources provide block storage for organizations with network-attached storage or storage area network environments that have block-level services. IBM Storage Insights provides enhanced monitoring for Hitachi VSP F and G Series storage systems.
Hitachi VSP F and G Series Device configuration
A Hitachi VSP device can be added to IBM Storage Insights as a block storage system. When you add a Hitachi VSP storage system, IBM Storage Insights collects data by connecting to the Hitachi Command Suite that is managing the device. Connect to the Hitachi Device Manager to enable the Hitachi Export Tool to collect performance information from the storage system.
To view the versions of Hitachi VSP storage systems that are supported in
IBM Storage
Insights, go to the 
Hitachi support page.
Hitachi support page.Restrictions:
- You can only monitor devices managed by Hitachi Ops center and not the devices managed by Hitachi command suite if the only available IBM Storage Insights data collector is installed on AIX®.
- You must set the Hitachi Performance Monitor Monitoring Switch to Enabled in the Hitachi Device Manager and then set the Sample Interval to 1 minute or 5 minutes only. Any other interval options are not supported. If performance monitoring is already enabled at an unsupported interval and you want to keep the previous monitoring data, first export the data by using the Export Tool and then restart monitoring.
Antivirus software restriction: If your
antivirus software is set on the maximum mode, it might prevent your Hitachi VSP storage systems from being added to
IBM Storage
Insights. For more information about how to
configure your antivirus software, see Before you begin checklist for IBM Storage Insights.
Benefits
IBM Storage
Insights can help you predict
and prevent storage problems before they impact your business. Here are some key benefits of using
IBM Storage
Insights to monitor your
Hitachi VSP 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 Storage
Insights that you can use to monitor Hitachi VSP F and G Series storage
systems:
| Resource Monitoring | Features | Supported |
|---|---|---|
| Understanding the environment | Monitor storage inventory and configuration. Includes information about type, model, serial number, and firmware. |  |
| Understand storage relationships, from volume and share down to server and application. | |
|
| Explore virtualization relationships. | ||
| Explore replication relationships. | |
|
| View dashboards to get insights into key aspects of your storage at a glance and one-click access to web-based element managers. | |
|
| Support for multiple protocols and storage types, such as FC, iSCSI, and PVMe. | |
|
| Monitoring capacity | Collect storage consumption and capacity metrics. | |
| View data reduction information. | |
|
| View copy data information. | |
|
| View internal storage tiers such as Easy Tier®. | ||
| Monitor the storage consumed by applications. | |
|
| Monitoring performance | Collect performance metrics about the workload on resources. | |
| View calculated metrics to gain insights into performance conditions. | |
|
| Export performance data to a compressed file. | |
|
| Drill down performance workflows to troubleshoot bottlenecks. | |
|
| Compare the performance of resources. | |
|
| Monitoring health | Understand the health of resources. | |
| Receive notifications when the status of a resource changes. | ||
| View the status of elements that are not represented as resources. | |
|
| Alerting | Alert on conditions within your storage environment. | |
| Define alerts to identify issues based on multiple conditions. | |
|
| Define alert policies to be notified of changes across related resources. | |
|
| Reporting | View predefined reports. | |
| View chargeback and consumer reports. | |
|
| Create custom reports by using the REST API. | ||
| Create rollup reports to view information across multiple servers. | |
|
| Analytics | Performance planning | |
| Capacity planning | |
|
| Business impact analysis (applications, departments, and groups) | |
|
| Optimize data placement with tiering | ||
| Optimize capacity with reclamation. | |
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 Storage
Insights. 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. Schedule daily reports to gain insights about your Hitachi VSP storage systems.
IBM Storage Insights collects performance metadata from Hitachi VSP storage systems at intervals of 5 minutes and 60 minutes. The default interval is 5 minutes.
You can also enable the performance monitoring for Ops Center by enabling the check box, specifying the time interval, and entering the mandatory fields.
Important: When you set the Sample Interval in Hitachi Device Manger to 1 minute or 5 minutes, there
will be a gap in the performance data after performance monitoring starts because no data has
accumulated. Depending on the value of the Performance Monitor interval in
IBM Storage
Insights, the resulting gap
in performance data will be 35 minutes or 90 minutes.
What's next
Before you can monitor, alert, and report on your Hitachi VSP storage systems, you must add them to IBM Storage Insights.
Important: If you want to monitor performance information, you must install the Hitachi Export Tool. The Export Tool requires that the
password for connecting to the storage system is temporarily stored as clear text in a file on the
server or virtual machine where
the data collector is installed. For security reasons, ensure
access to that server or virtual machine is restricted to key personnel. The file is automatically
deleted after metadata is collected.
For your reference: Want to learn more about support for Hitachi VSP storage systems in IBM Storage
Insights? No problem. Take a
look at the following documentation:
- For instructions on how to add storage systems for monitoring, see Adding storage systems
- For instructions on how to install the Hitachi Export Tool, see Installing the Hitachi Export Tool.
- For instructions on using Hitachi Performance Monitoring and the Hitachi Export Tool, see the Hitachi documentation at https://knowledge.hitachivantara.com/Documents/Storage