Adding storage systems
Add the storage systems that you want to monitor in IBM Storage Insights.
Before you begin
- You must enter a user name and password that is used to connect to that storage system. These credentials must not include any blank spaces. In rare cases, special characters might also not be allowed by IBM Storage Insights. If you can't add a storage system for monitoring because of restricted characters, it's recommended that you change the credentials for the storage system and try adding it again. Then, open a ticket for the character limitation so that we can address it in a future update.
- If you add non-IBM® storage systems, and the data collector
is installed on a Windows system, any directory names must
not start with any of the Windows reserved words such as
these:
CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9
As your email address or IBMid is used by internally by the data collector when you add storage systems, you must ensure that they do not start with any of the Windows reserved words.
About this task
You can add multiple storage systems at the same time, or add them one by one. To add multiple storage systems, the storage systems must be of the same type and share authentication credentials.
When you add block storage systems for monitoring, their status, capacity, configuration, and performance metadata is automatically collected and analyzed. When you add storage systems that manage both block and file storage, their status, capacity, and configuration metadata for file storage is also automatically collected and analyzed.
- Using the management GUI: If you add a storage system by using its management GUI, you must enable Call Home with cloud services. A data collector is not required when you use Call Home with cloud services to monitor an IBM Storage Virtualize storage system. For more information, see Enabling Call Home with cloud services.
- Using the IBM Storage Insights GUI: If you add a storage system by using the IBM Storage Insights GUI, you must deploy or assign a data collector. For steps on how to add the storage system, see Procedure.
- Status, configuration, and capacity metadata are collected by probes and aggregated once every
24 hours.
- For DS8000 storage systems and their pools, the value for used capacity is collected once every hour. To customize that interval, contact IBM Support.
- For some devices, additional probes are automatically run when specific events occur on those devices, or when many events are detected in a short time period. To avoid performance bottlenecks in those cases, probes are not run more than once every 20 minutes.
- Performance metadata is collected by performance monitors at the following intervals:
- Every 5 minutes for IBM block storage systems
- Every 5 minutes for Dell EMC Unity storage systems.
- Every 5 minutes for Hitachi VSP storage systems.
- Every 5 minutes for NetApp storage systems that are running ONTAP 9.
- Every 5 minutes for Pure storage systems.
- Every 15 minutes for other Dell EMC block storage systems.
- The user name that IBM Storage Insights Pro uses to connect to a storage system must have the required privileges (or role) on that storage system to collect different types of metadata. For more information about the requirements for each type of storage system, see User roles for collecting metadata.
- When storage systems are added that manage only file storage or object storage, you schedule the collection of asset, capacity, and configuration metadata.
Type | IBM Storage Insights Pro | IBM Storage Insights | Block | File | Object | Unified |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Click a storage system to view its supported versions. | ||||||
DS8000 | ||||||
IBM Storage Ceph® | ||||||
IBM Storage FlashSystem family (includes IBM Storage FlashSystem 5000, IBM Storage FlashSystem 5100, IBM Storage FlashSystem 7200, IBM Storage FlashSystem 9100, IBM Storage FlashSystem 9200) | ||||||
IBM Cloud Object Storage | ||||||
IBM Storage Accelerate | ||||||
IBM Storage Scale (ESS and GSS) | ||||||
SAN Volume Controller | ||||||
IBM Storage Virtualize | ||||||
IBM Storage Virtualize for Public Cloud | ||||||
Storwize block storage systems | ||||||
Storwize V7000 Unified | ||||||
XIV |
Type | IBM Storage Insights Pro | IBM Storage Insights | Block | File |
---|---|---|---|---|
Dell EMC Unity | ||||
Dell EMC VMAX family | ||||
Dell EMC VNX | ||||
Dell EMC VNXe | ||||
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) | ||||
NetApp storage systems running ONTAP 9 | ||||
Pure FlashArray//M and FlashArray//X | ||||
Procedure
Results
-
After you specify the information for adding storage systems, a task is added to the list of running tasks on the page banner. If a task fails for adding a storage system, it's added to the list of failed tasks on the page banner. You can retry the tasks that failed or clear them from the list. When you retry a task, the task is added to the list of running tasks.
-
After a storage system is successfully connected to IBM Storage Insights, a probe is automatically run to collect status and asset information. Additionally, the storage system is added to the default alert policy for the storage system type. For example, if you add a DS8000 storage system, it's automatically added to the alert policy called Default DS8000 policy. At any time, you can change which alert policy manages a storage system, or set a storage system to not be managed by any policy.