Planning for Pure Storage systems

Pure storage resources provide block storage for organizations with network-attached storage or storage area network environments that have block-level services. IBM Spectrum Control provides enhanced monitoring for Pure FlashArray//M and FlashArray//X storage systems.

Pure FlashArray//M and FlashArray//X Device configuration

A Pure FlashArray//M or FlashArray//X can be added to IBM Spectrum Control as a block storage system. When you add a Pure storage system, IBM Spectrum Control collects data by connecting directly to the storage system.

To view the versions of Pure storage systems that are supported in IBM Spectrum Control, go to the External link icon Pure Storage support page.

Antivirus software restriction: If your antivirus software is set on the maximum mode, it might prevent your Pure Storage systems from being added to IBM Spectrum Control. For more information about how to configure your antivirus software, see Installation checklists for IBM Spectrum Control.

Benefits

IBM Spectrum Control can help you predict and prevent storage problems before they impact your business. Here are some key benefits of using IBM Spectrum Control to monitor your Pure 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 Spectrum Control that you can use to monitor PureFlashArray//M and FlashArray//X storage systems:

Table 1. Supported features for PureFlashArray//M and FlashArray//X
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 NVMe.
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 IBM Spectrum Control servers.
Analytics	Performance planning.
	Capacity planning.
	Business impact analysis (applications, departments, and groups).
	Optimize data placement with tiering.
	Optimize capacity with reclamation.

Restrictions:

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 Spectrum Control. The volumes are listed in the Copy Data page but do not have hyperlinks.
For asynchronous remote relationships, note the following limitations.
- From the target storage system perspective, no details are available for the source storage system.
- From the source storage system perspective, the remote storage systems and volumes are listed in the Copy Data page. However, the remote volumes cannot be correlated with the volumes on the source system and so 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 Pure storage systems.

For Pure storage systems, the collection intervals for performance metadata are 5 minutes and 60 minutes. The default interval is 5 minutes.

What's next

Before you can monitor, alert, and report on your Pure storage systems, you must add them to IBM Spectrum Control.

For instructions on how to add storage systems for monitoring, see Adding storage systems.