Storage targets

Adding a storage Target enables Turbonomic to connect to your storage subsystem through a native or SMI-S provider API. Turbonomic uses the target's API to access and collect information from each of the underlying disk arrays. The information is used to set disk performance characteristics according to the type and capacity of storage, leading to improved workload placement.

Similarly, Turbonomic determines the relationships between storage controllers and disk arrays, and the location of datastores within those arrays. This information also helps optimize workload placement at a more granular level.

For on-prem applications, this optimization will enable Turbonomic to make more informed decisions about which storage devices the workloads hosting your applications run on, and assist in assuring application SLO. In the cloud, storage data is handled as part of the public cloud target.

Both virtual machines and containers benefit from this level of optimization. In the case of short-lived containers, Turbonomicwill suggest the best datastore to hold persistent data, and paired with a container or hypervisor target, will select the optimal match of compute and storage resources. For longer-lived containers and virtual machines, each workload will be continually assessed for SLA/SLO, and recommendations to move or resize storages will ensure the continued efficiency of your environment.

The following section describes the storage supply chain. For information on how to add specific storage targets, the resources Turbonomic can monitor for the various supply chain entities, and the actions it can take to optimize the environment, refer to the target configuration instructions for your specific storage type.

Entity mapping

After validating your targets, Turbonomic updates the supply chain with the entities that it discovered. The following table describes the entity mapping between the target and Turbonomic.

EMC VMAX EMC XtremIO HPE 3Par NetApp Nutanix Pure Turbonomic
Volume (Regular, Thin, Meta) Volume Virtual Volume Volume Container Volume Storage
Disk Group or Thin Pool XTremIO Cluster CPG Aggregate Storage Pool Shelf Array Disk Array
VMAX Array XTremIO Cluster Controller Controller / Filer Controller VM Controller Storage Controller

Storage targets (storage controllers) add Storage Controller and Disk Array entities to the supply chain. Disk Array entities in turn host Storage entities (datastores).