Creating predefined capacity reports

To share information about capacity availability, usage, and growth, create capacity reports. You can configure and refine the information that is included in the report so that your colleagues get the information that they need to monitor the resources that they manage and make capacity planning decisions.

Before you start

If you want to send reports by email, you must set up the mail server. If you already set up the mail server to send alerts or 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 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 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.

Step 1: Pick your predefined report

Click Reports, and then click Create Report and pick the capacity report that you want to create.

Step 2: Name the report

Provide a unique name for your report. You can use alphabetical and numerical characters, hyphens, dashes, and blank spaces.

Step 3: Specify the scope of the report

Choose one of these options:

Option 1: Generate capacity information about all of the resources of a specific type.
Option 2: Generate capacity information about a selection of resources of a specific type.
Option 3: Generate capacity information about the resources of a specific type in a group.

Option 1: All of the resources: Choose this option to generate a report about all of the resources, such as all storage systems, pools, volumes, managed disks, or NAS file systems.

Option 2: One or more of the resources: Choose this option to generate capacity information about a selection of resources such as a selection of storage systems, pools, volumes, managed disks, or NAS file systems.; When you create capacity reports about managed disks, pools, server , or volumes, you can group the types of resources, such as managed disks by storage systems, pools by storage systems, server by applications, and volumes by server .

Try it out: Click Reports, click Create Report, and choose the Pools capacity report. Choose capacity information for one or more resources, and select pools by storage systems or pools by tiers. To refine the list of the resources that are shown, you can enter a matching pattern for the names of the storage systems, or you can select the storage systems that contain the pools that you want to include in the report.
Option 3: Resources assigned to groups: You can also generate capacity information about the storage systems that belong to a group that you created, such as a general group that consists of the storage systems that are assigned to your production platform, or the storage resources that are assigned to an application or department.; Tip: The report you pick, determines the level of information that is shown about applications in reports. For example, if you want to see the capacity information about the set of volumes that you added to an application, create a Volumes capacity report and select the application. Or, if you want to see the capacity information about the filesets that you added to an application, create a Filesets capacity report and select the application.

Step 4: Select columns

To ensure that the report's recipients get the information that they need, you can add more information, such as the location of the resources or custom tags. You can also remove the information that your colleagues don't need.

Step 5: Add filters

To refine the information in the report, you can add up to four filters.

Sample filters for block storage systems capacity reports

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.

Don't forget to check the table when you apply filters to make sure that the recipients of the report will get the information that they need.

Step 6: Schedule and deliver the report

To notify your colleagues of capacity or configuration anomalies, create one-off capacity and inventory reports or create a schedule to provide regular updates about the capacity or state of your storage assets.

Tip: Instead of sending the report by email, you can save the report to the default reports folder or to a folder on your file system. Alternatively, when you send the report by email, you can also attach the report as a CSV, PDF, or HTML file.

Review, edit, and delete reports

To review the report that you created, click Reports, expand the relevant section, such as Capacity Report for predefined capacity reports and Inventory Report for predefined inventory reports, and then select the report.

You can edit the report, such as change the name and scope of the report or schedule of 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. Select the report, and click Actions > Run Now. The report is sent without changing the schedule that you saved.