Overview charts

Monitor the activity and storage usage of your storage systems. Use the charts and key metrics to gauge the workload activity of your storage resources and to check whether you have sufficient capacity.

Block storage systems

On the Overview page for a storage system, monitor storage usage, detect capacity shortages, and plan your capacity needs. The type of block storage system determine the information that is displayed.

Usable Capacity
For block storage systems, usable capacity is the amount of capacity that is available for storing data on a storage system, pool, array, or managed disk after formatting and RAID techniques are applied. It includes all the storage that the system can be virtualized and assigned to pools.
Capacity Savings
For block storage systems, use the following information in Capacity Savings to monitor the amount of capacity that is saved by using deduplication, thin provisioning, and the data compression capabilities of the storage system.
Get more views of Usable Capacity and Capacity Savings:
  • To get a capacity breakdown of the storage system by pool and the fill and growth rate for each pool, click the overview menu (three vertical dots) Usable Capacity and select View capacity by pool.
  • To get a capacity breakdown of the storage system by volume, click the overview menu (three vertical dots) in Usable Capacity and select View capacity by volume.
  • To view the capacity savings of a storage system with data reduction metrics and savings summary that includes duplication, thin provisioning, drive compression, and pool compression, click View more in Capacity Savings. If a capacity limit was set, you can hover over the capacity chart and check how much available capacity you have left before you reach the capacity limit.
Metrics for storage systems that have both block and file storage
The following information is shown for storage systems that have both block and file storage, such as Dell EMC Unity and NetApp ONTAP 9:
  • The Capacity section shows how much capacity is used and how much capacity is available for storing data.
  • The Provisioned Capacity section shows the written capacity values in relation to the total provisioned capacity values before data reduction techniques are applied:
    • % Written: The capacity of the data that is written to the volumes as a percentage of the total provisioned capacity of the volumes.
    • GiB Available: The amount of capacity that is still available for writing data to the thin-provisioned volumes. It is the difference between the provisioned capacity and the written capacity, which is the thin-provisioning savings.
  • The Capacity Savings section shows the amount of capacity that is saved by using deduplication, thin provisioning, and the data compression capabilities of the storage system.
Get more views of Capacity, Provisioned Capacity, and Capacity Savings:
  • To get a breakdown of the capacity usage by pool or volume, click the links in each section. For example, on the Block Storage Systems page, double-click a storage system, and then click View capacity by pool. You get a capacity breakdown of the storage system by pool, and you see the fill and growth rate for each pool.
  • To view the capacity savings of a storage system with data reduction metrics and savings summary that includes duplication, thin provisioning, drive compression, and pool compression, click View capacity savings. If a capacity limit was set, you can hover over the capacity chart and check how much available capacity you have left before you reach the capacity limit.
Figure 1. Capacity and activity charts
The types of overview charts are: capacity overview charts, capacity by storage resource charts, and workload activity charts.
Three types of charts are provided:
  • Capacity overview charts
  • Capacity by storage resource charts
  • Workload activity charts
Depending on the type of storage system, the following activity and capacity by storage resource charts are shown:
Table 1. Capacity by storage resource
Chart Name Purpose
Capacity Use this chart to monitor the available, used, and provisioned capacity in your storage system over the last 30 days.
Capacity by Host Use this chart to monitor the current capacity of the storage system that is mapped to hosts.
Capacity by Pool Use this chart to monitor the current available and used capacity of your largest pools.
Capacity by Volume Use this chart to monitor the current used and unused provisioned capacity of your largest volumes.
Capacity by Tier Use this chart to monitor the current used and available capacity of the pools that are assigned to tiers.
Exclusive to IBM Storage Insights Pro: In IBM Storage Insights Pro, users with Administrator privileges, can set capacity limits for storage systems and pools. When you hover over the capacity overview chart, you can see the value for the Capacity Limit and the Capacity-to-Limit. The Capacity-to-Limit is the amount of capacity that is left before the capacity limit is reached.
Table 2. Activity charts
Chart Name Purpose
Overall system activity Use this chart to monitor the overall activity of your storage system, which is broke down into total I/O rate, read I/O rate, and write I/O rate in operations per second over the last 24 hours.
Most Active Nodes Use this chart to monitor the nodes with the heaviest workloads, which is calculated in operations per second, over the last 24 hours.
Most Active Pools Use this chart to monitor the pools with the heaviest workloads, which is calculated in operations per second, over the last 24 hours.
Most Active Volumes Use this chart to monitor the volumes with the highest response times over the last 24 hours.
MDisk Activity Use this chart to monitor managed disks (M Disks) with the heaviest workloads, which is calculated in operations per second, over the last 24 hours.