Graphical user interface

The Data Cataloging graphical user interface is a portal that is used for running data searches, report generation, policy and tag management, and user Access Management. Based on a user's role, they might have access to one or more of these areas.

The Data Cataloging environment provides access to users and groups. The role that is assigned to a user or group determines the functions that are available. Users and groups can also be associated with collections, which use policies that determine the metadata that is available to view.

User and group access can be authenticated by Data Cataloging, an LDAP server, or the IBM Cloud® Object Storage System. The administrator can manage the user access functions.

Roles

Roles determine how users and groups can access records on the Data Cataloging environment.

If a user or group is assigned to multiple roles, the least restrictive role is used. For example, if a user is assigned a role of Data User, and is included in a data administrator role, the user has the privileges of a data administrator.

Dashboard

An example of the Data Cataloging dashboard is shown.
Figure 1. Example of the Data Cataloging dashboard
Example of the IBM Spectrum Discover dashboard (1)
Example of the IBM Spectrum Discover dashboard (2)

Data administrators and users can view the following:

  • Metrics for the overall capacity used by every data source
  • Total number of files
  • Amount of capacity that is used by records with specific tags and facets, for example, owner, cluster, and size range
  • Distribution of those records across data sources

Users can click any of the dashboard widgets to initiate a search and further explore and drill down into the data. Administrators and user can also perform the following:

  • Monitor storage usage and data recommendations
  • View total indexed data and capacity
  • View duplicate file or object candidates. For example:
    • Number
    • Capacity used
  • Preview capacity use by data facet. For example:
    • Classification
    • Owner
    • File type
  • View data capacity by group or collection. For example:
    • Customer defined
    • Lab or project

Understanding size and capacity differences

Data Cataloging collects size and capacity information:
  • Size refers to the size of a file or object in bytes.
  • Capacity refers to the amount of space the file or object consumes on the source storage in bytes.

For objects, size and capacity values always match. For files, size and capacity values can be different because of file system block overhead or sparsely populated files.

Note: Storage protection overhead (such as RAID values or erasure coding) and replication overhead are not captured in the capacity values.