Taking the first steps after installation

After IBM Spectrum® Control is installed, configure it to monitor the resources in your environment.

Access the IBM Spectrum Control GUI
To configure IBM Spectrum Control for your environment, access the GUI.

For information about how to start the GUI, see Opening IBM Spectrum Control GUIs and CLIs.

To set up IBM Spectrum Control for monitoring and managing resources, complete the following tasks:
Add resources for monitoring.
You can add the following resources for monitoring:
  • Storage systems
  • Servers
  • Hypervisors
  • Switches
  • Fabrics
  • NetApp Filers
Configure the retention of data in the database repository
Determine how long that IBM Spectrum Control stores data about the resources that are being monitored.
(Optional) Configure the collection of data about the sizes of GPFS™ snapshots
By default, IBM Spectrum Control does not collect information about the size of GPFS snapshots. To view that information, you must enable IBM Spectrum Control to collect information about the size of GPFS snapshots.
For information about how to configure collection of snapshot size information, see Collecting information about the sizes of snapshots in IBM Storage Scale.
Configure alert notifications for conditions that are detected on monitored resources
Determining when and how you’re alerted to configuration and performance conditions within your storage environment is important to helping you maintain and administer storage resources. Many conditions can trigger alerts. IBM Spectrum Control provides default alert policies for each resource type, or you can configure alert definitions so that IBM Spectrum Control examines the data about your resources for the conditions that you specify.
Specify the users that can access the product and the functions that are available to them
Assign roles to groups of users to determine which functions are available in IBM Spectrum Control. When a user ID is authenticated to IBM Spectrum Control through the GUI, CLI, or APIs, membership in an operating system or LDAP group determines the authorization level of the user.
Deploy Storage Resource agents to set up data features
Deploy Storage Resource agents on servers to enable data collection and to monitor the fabrics that are visible to the server.
Monitor and manage resources
Access the IBM Spectrum Control GUI to monitor and manage your storage, including the following tasks:
  • Monitor the status of resources
  • View capacity and asset information about resources
  • Troubleshoot the performance of resources
  • Set performance thresholds and alerts
  • View the relationships between resources
  • Optimize storage
  • Configure for the cloud and storage provisioning
  • Generate detailed reports about resources
Remove the IBM Spectrum Control installation directory from the antivirus scan
Scans that are conducted by antivirus software cause more I/O write operations on the IBM Spectrum Control and server disk drives. For example, the antivirus software can be set to scan any file, record, or process that is written to or read from. The scan includes logs, read/write operations for database records, and Java™ processes that are used by IBM Spectrum Control. The antivirus software performs write operations on the objects that it identifies with these scans. These additional operations affect product performance and are visible in the performance monitoring tools for the operating system on which the IBM Spectrum Control server is installed. For example, on the Windows™ operating system, the Reliability and Performance Monitor might show an unusually high number of active write operations for IBM Spectrum Control. To improve performance, update your antivirus software so that it excludes the IBM Spectrum Control installation directory from scans.
McAfee tip for Windows: If McAfee Adaptive Threat Protection is enabled on the server where IBM Spectrum Control is installed, it might prevent some services from starting or stopping. To help avoid this issue, open McAfee Adaptive Threat Protection and go to settings. In the Real Protect Scanning (Windows only) section, verify if Enable client-based scanning is selected. If so, select Low from the Sensitivity level list.

For more information about McAfee Adaptive Threat Protection, see the following links:

For more information about these tasks and how to manage and monitor your resources with IBM Spectrum Control, see Managing resources.