File storage systems

Use the File Storage Systems page to administer and monitor the status, configuration, capacity, and information that is collected about the file storage systems in your environment. For IBM Storage Scale, you can also monitor the performance of clusters, nodes, and file systems.

Information about file storage systems

File storage consists of file systems that are provisioned to one or more servers in a NAS environment. A file system is attached to servers with protocols such as Network File Systems (NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS) over ethernet. I/O access on a storage system is accomplished through reading or writing individual files of data.

Use the File Storage Systems page to view the following information for each storage system that is monitored:

Acknowledged

Shows whether a user marked the status of a storage system as acknowledged. An acknowledged status indicates that the status was reviewed and is either resolved or can be ignored.

Available File System Capacity (GiB)

The amount of unused storage space on all the file systems on the storage system or filer.

Cluster

The name of the IBM Storage Scale cluster.

Condition

The overall operational condition of a storage system. This condition represents the most critical status that was detected on the internal resources of a storage system. For example, if an error was detected on a storage system pool, an error icon Error condition icon

is shown for the storage system's condition. If no errors, warnings, or unreachable statuses were detected on its internal resources, then a green symbol is shown for the storage system's condition. To view the individual statuses of internal resources, right-click the storage system and select View Details.

Custom Tag 1, 2, and 3

Any user-defined text that is associated with a storage system. This text can be included as a report column when you generate reports for the storage system. To edit the custom tags for a storage system, right-click the storage system in the list and select View Properties. On the properties notebook, click Edit.

Data Collection

The aggregated status for the collection of capacity, configuration, status, and performance metadata. Two separate jobs are run to collect the metadata:

A probe is run every day to collect asset, capacity, and configuration metadata.
A performance monitor is run every 5 minutes to collect performance metadata. Applies only to IBM Storage Scale storage systems 4.1.1 and later that are configured to collect performance metrics.

Because separate jobs are run to collect the metadata, both collection jobs must be successful to get a Running status. If an issue occurs during metadata collection, the following statuses might also be displayed:

Degraded: Not all metadata for the device was collected. This status is displayed when metadata collection is interrupted and only partial metadata is available.
Device is not providing valid performance data: The performance metadata that was collected for the device doesn't match the expected values based on historical analysis. This analysis examines the performance counters (metadata) for a device. This status is displayed when the counters decrease (rather than increase) between consecutive metadata collections. In those cases, the counters are discarded and the related metrics are not calculated.
Device is not providing valid probe data: The probe metadata that was collected for the device is incomplete or corrupted and can't be displayed.
Device unreachable: A device is offline or your data collectors can't access the device. To collect detailed metrics and status information, a device must be online and a data collector must be connected to it.
Failed: Metadata was not collected for the device. This status might be displayed for a number of conditions, such as a service interruption, a network outage, or a device that is unavailable. If the failure was caused by an interruption or a global problem with the service, IBM® is investigating the issue and you'll be notified when the data collection service is resumed.
Tip: To quickly list storage systems where data collection failed, select Data Collection in the filter list and Failed in the Choose Value list. Doing so will return all storage systems that have any failure statuses reported.
No Call Home contact: Call Home with cloud services is unable to contact the storage system. To collect status, configuration, capacity, and performance metadata, Call Home with cloud services must be able to access the device.
Stopped: This status is displayed when data collection is manually stopped or when data collection was restarted but the restart failed.
Task expired: This status might be displayed for a number of conditions or temporary problems within the service.
Unknown: This status might be displayed if the probe or performance monitor had an error status that is no longer true. For example, if the status of previous probe was "Invalid Credentials" or "Device Unreachable" and that problem is resolved, Unknown is displayed. The next run of a probe or performance monitor clears this status.
Zimon is not running: The ZIMon collector on the IBM Spectrum® Scale cluster node is not running and metadata can't be collected.
Invalid Credentials: The user name or password that IBM Storage Insights uses to connect to a device is not correct. This status is displayed when the credentials of the user on the device were changed but were not update in IBM Storage Insights, the user name was removed from the device, or the credentials were entered incorrectly in IBM Storage Insights.

Help with statuses:

For more information about these statuses and how you can troubleshoot them, see Monitoring the status of data collection.
Subscribers are notified by email when issues with collecting data are detected. If an issue with collecting data persists and you can't resolve the issue, you can get help by submitting a post in the IBM Storage Community. For other support options, see Looking for help.

External Pool Used Capacity (GiB)

The capacity that is migrated to external pools for all of the file systems that are associated with the storage system. This value represents the capacity that is used by active data (migrated and pre-migrated) only. Active data is data that has corresponding stub files on the GPFS file system.

Tip: To view information about the inactive data in external pools, go the details page for an IBM Storage Scale storage system and click File System Pools. The value for External Used Capacity includes active and inactive data.

Availability: IBM Storage Scale.

File System Capacity (GiB)

The total amount of storage space on all the file systems on the storage system.

IP Address

The IP address of the storage system. For IBM Storage Scale, the IP address of the cluster node that IBM Storage Insights Pro uses to communicate with the IBM Storage Scale cluster is shown.

Last Successful Probe

The most recent date and time when the probe successfully completed the collection of asset and status data.

Name

A user-defined name of the storage system. If a name was not defined, IBM Storage Insights Pro shows the name that was defined when the storage system was added for monitoring.

Performance Monitor Status

The status of the most recent run of a performance monitor. Use this value to quickly identify a performance monitor that failed or generated warning messages during processing. If a performance monitor is run while a storage system is unreachable, its status is not shown in the column. Instead, the status of the previous performance monitor is shown.

Restriction: Applies only to IBM Storage Scale storage systems 4.1.1 and later that are configured to collect performance metrics.

Help with statuses: For more information about the different statuses that can be displayed and how you can troubleshoot them, see Monitoring the status of data collection.

Probe Status

The status of the most recent run of a probe. Use this value to quickly identify a probe that failed or generated warning messages during processing. If a probe is run while a device is unreachable, its status is not shown in the column. Instead, the status of the previous probe is shown.

Help with statuses: For more information about the different statuses that can be displayed and how you can troubleshoot them, see Monitoring the status of data collection.

Raw Capacity (GB)

(Previously known as Raw Disk Capacity) Total raw (unformatted) disk capacity of a storage system. When this value is calculated, IBM Storage Insights Pro does not include the capacity of storage system disks that become missing after data collection.

Used File System Capacity (GiB)

The amount of file system capacity on the storage system or filer that is used by files and directories. For IBM Storage Scale, the capacity that is used by all of the snapshots of the file systems is included in the Used File System Capacity value.