Creating custom reports

Create, configure, and save or send custom reports by email that include asset, capacity, configuration, health status, or performance information about your storage resources.

If you want to send custom reports by email, you must set up the mail server. If you already set up the mail server to send alerts, or chargeback and consumer reports, or if you want to only save reports to your file system, you don't have to set up the mail server.

If you want the reports that you will create to be saved to your file system to be stored in a folder other than the default reports folder, you must create the folder before you create the reports.
Saving custom reports to file systems on remote servers: The machine on which the Web server component was installed and runs must be able to access the remote or shared file system that is specified for saving custom reports. To make file systems on a server available to remote clients, they must be mounted as a CIFS export on Windows™ operating systems or as an NFS export on UNIX® or Linux® operating systems. On Windows operating systems, the file system must be mounted as the local system user or from a service that is running under the local system account so that it is visible to all logon sessions. One way of mapping a drive as the local system user is to map the drive from a psexec command window. The psexec command window is available as part of the Sysinternals command-line tools for Windows operating systems.

Use custom reports to quickly create reports to alert members of your organization about performance anomalies, health issues, capacity shortfalls, or capacity depletion. You can also schedule custom reports to keep a close watch on critical resources such as applications, or the storage resources that you use in your production environment.

From any table view that shows information about your storage systems or their related resources, you can create, configure, schedule, and save or send reports by email.

For example, you can create custom reports for top-level storage resources such as:
  • Storage systems
  • Hypervisors
  • Servers
  • Fabrics
  • Switches
  • Back-end storage systems
You can create custom reports for internal resources such as:
  • Disks
  • Pools
  • Volumes
  • Filesets
  • File systems
  • Network Shared Disks
And, if you added groups, you can create custom reports for general groups, applications, and departments.
File names for reports: The format for the name of reports that are saved to the file system is: <report name>_<epoch time>.<HTML|PDF|CSV>, where epoch time reflects the time of the server where IBM Spectrum® Control is installed. For example, the name of your report is MyReport, and you save it as a CSV file on 16 October, 2018 at 08:15pm (UTC) server time. The name of the file for the report is MyReport_1539720900000.CSV.
Tip: Monitor the default reports folder or the custom folders that you use to save reports to ensure that you have enough space for saving reports. For example, if you schedule and save a daily report to your file system, each version of the report is saved to the folder you choose. The factors that determine space usage are:
  • The number of rows in the report.
  • The frequency of the report.
  • The format of the report.
Try it out: Open any page that shows information about your storage resources, such as the Block Storage Systems page, click Create Report, and create a custom report. Or, go to the Performance page and click Create Report, to create a performance report.
  1. Open any page that shows capacity or performance information about your storage systems, and then click Create Report.
  2. Provide a unique name for your report. You can use alphabetical and numerical characters, hyphens, dashes, and blank spaces.
    Remember: When you create your report, you can also use the table view features to customize your report, such as:
    • Drag the column headings to reorder the information that you want to show in the report.
    • Click the column heading in the table view to sort the values in the column.
  3. To ensure that the report's recipients get the information that they need, you can add other information, such as the location of the resources or custom tags and remove the information they don't need.
  4. To refine the capacity or asset information that you want to share, you can add up to four filters.

    Examples of filters
    For example, if you want to notify resource administrators or owners about capacity shortfalls, you can set threshold values for capacity information. Or if you want to exclude information that is not of interest to the report's recipients, you can add a filter. Check the report preview when you apply filters to make sure that the recipients of the report will get the information that they need.
    Tip: You can add advanced filters to refine information about capacity and information about the assets in your storage environment. If advanced filters aren't available for a resource, you can use the filter feature that is available in the table. For example, in reports about volumes, you can filter by volume, pool, or storage system name, or by Easy Tier® attributes.
  5. Choose one of the following scheduling options:
    OptionDescription
    Email Save and send the email now. You can also attach the report to the email as a CSV, PDF, or HTML file.
    Save to File System Schedule and save the report to the default reports folder or to the folder that you created for saving reports.
    Email and Save to File System Schedule the report, send it by email or attach the report to the email as a CSV, PDF, or HTML file, and save the report to the default reports folder or to the folder that you created for saving reports.

To review the report that you created, click Reports > Reports, expand Customs Report, and then select the report.

You can edit the report, such as change the name and the schedule for the report. To delete the report, click Actions > Delete Report.

Tip: You want to save a scheduled report to your file system or send it by email report now, but you don't want to change the original schedule? Click Reports > Reports. Select the report, and click Actions > Run Now. The report is sent without changing the original schedule.