IBM Support

5.5.0 Limitations and Known Issues for IBM Spectrum Control

Preventive Service Planning


Abstract

This document provides information about limitations and known issues that you might encounter when you use IBM® Spectrum Control™ 5.5.0

Content

This document contains the following sections:

Support links and documentation

To access all of the support documentation, including alerts and APARs, go to the IBM Support Portal.

For more information about the devices that are supported by IBM Spectrum Control, see the support matrix at http://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/388393

IBM Spectrum Control documentation: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-control

PDF guides for IBM Spectrum Control: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-control/5.5.0?topic=printable-documentation

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Product licenses for IBM Spectrum Control

IBM Spectrum Control 5.5.0 offers product licenses with differing licensing metrics to meet your storage management needs. For more information about these licenses, see https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-control/5.5.0?topic=product-licenses.

 

Installing

Upgrading to IBM Spectrum Control 5.5.0 or later
 
Upgrades directly from IBM Spectrum Control versions 5.2.x, 5.3.x, and 5.4.x (up to 5.4.5) are no longer supported. To upgrade to version 5.5.0, you must first be on version 5.4.6 or a later release.
 

Installing IBM Spectrum Control on RHEL (x86-64)

 
Spectrum Control version 5.5.0 is only supported on RHEL 8 (all versions) and RHEL 9 (9.2 onwards). Do not install or upgrade to IBM Spectrum Control 5.5.0 on RHEL 7 (all versions) or earlier as it leads to an unstable environment and loss of access. 
 
Installing IBM Spectrum Control on Windows Server 2022
 
When you use the installation program to install IBM Spectrum Control on Windows Server 2022, you must start the program by completing the following steps:
 
  1. Press Windows key+R to open the Run window.
  2. In the Run window, type cmd.
  3. For Windows Server 2022, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to run the command prompt as an administrator. (For other supported versions of Windows, press Enter to run the command.)
  4. In the command prompt, to change to the directory where you extracted the content of the installation image files, enter cd source_installation_directory\SC and press Enter.
  5. For Windows Server 2022 only, type SET JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-Dos.name=Windows 10" and press Enter.
  6. Type setup.bat and press Enter.
  7. Follow the prompts in the installation program to install IBM Spectrum Control.
For more information about using the installation program, see the following documentation:
 
 
 

General IBM Spectrum Control issues

 
APAR IT48396: IBM SPECTRUM CONTROL PERFORMANCE CHART INCLUDES INVALID METRICS FOR HITACHI STORAGE
 

Spectrum Control currently displays several PM metrics for Hitachi storage systems that are not actually supported or available on the Hitachi devices. To avoid customer confusion and prevent the display of misleading information, we should remove or suppress any PM metrics that are not applicable to Hitachi third-party storage systems.

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APAR IT48802: MODIFYING CONNECTION ON A FLASHSYSTEM STORAGE IS DELETING THE DRIVES INFORMATION IN DEVICE DETAILS AND GENERATING ALERTS
 

After updating the password through “Modify Connection,” the automatic probe did not execute the lsdisk command, causing the Disk page to disappear from the Storage L3 view and generating drive deletion alerts. Password updates should not result in disk removal or trigger such alerts.

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APAR IT48247: PERFORMANCE MONITOR IS NOT FUNCTIONING FOR CISCO MDS 9148T SWITCHES RUNNING FIRMWARE 9.4.X
 
Cisco Switches with firmware 9.4.X are not collecting performance data and showing exceptions "Timeout occured while retrieving stats for FA-MIB and FE-MIB".
 

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APAR IT46712: CPU CORE STATS FOR FLASHSYSTEM 9500 LIMITED TO 32 CORES INSTEAD OF 48 IN SPECTRUM CONTROL
 
Spectrum Control is showing the performance stats for only 32 cores on a Flashsystem that have 48 cores.
 
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"IBM Spectrum Control" branding overlaps with navigation menu on Safari browser in 5.5.0 GUI

In IBM Spectrum Control 5.5.0, when accessed using the Safari browser, the "IBM Spectrum Control" branding text at the top overlaps with the "Home" and "Storage" navigation menu items. This layout issue causes text to become unreadable and reduces overall usability of the interface. The issue is not observed on Chrome or Edge.

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Incorrect overhead capacity value for block storage systems

IBM Spectrum Control might report an incorrect overhead capacity for some block storage systems such as XIV, EMC Unity, FlashSystem 9100, and FlashSystem A9000.

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Enabled ethernet port that is not connected to a switch can cause the GUI to hang  

On some IBM servers running Windows 2012, an enabled ethernet port can cause the IBM Spectrum Control GUI to stop responding if the port is not connected to a switch.  This condition causes a Db2 SQL -911 error and also causes the IBM Spectrum Control GUI to stop responding.

To prevent this issue, disable the ethernet port or configure the port by using the instructions at  https://bladecenter.lenovofiles.com/help/index.jsp.

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Spectrum Scale cluster with configured sudo-wrapper environment cannot be managed with Spectrum Control or Storage Insights

This configuration is not supported since mmdsh commands are needed to collect various configuration information from the Scale Cluster.  

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IBM Spectrum Control cannot detect the mount status of file systems on Storwize V7000 Unified storage systems   

If a file system is manually unmounted from a Storwize® V7000 Unified storage system, IBM Spectrum Control cannot detect that the file system was unmounted. Because of this limitation, information that is displayed in the IBM Spectrum Control GUIs is not accurate and some storage-related actions on the file system might fail.

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IBM SAN Volume Controller and IBM Storwize devices might not accurately report used space of data reduction pools and deduplicated volumes

When a SAN Volume Controller or Storwize device is configured with data reduction pools, it no longer reports the used space for a specific volume and the tier distribution.  This issue occurs on firmware levels with data reduction pools and deduplicated volume, including 8.1.3.3.

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Calculation discrepancies for capacity savings in SAN Volume Controller

IBM Spectrum Control shows different volume capacity and capacity savings than the element manager for SAN Volume Controller due to a limitation in the calculation method in the element manager. The correct capacity values are shown in the IBM Spectrum Control Overview panel.

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RHEL known issues with fprintd-pam module (fingerprint authentication module)

The fprintd-pam module (fingerprint authentication module) has some known issues in various environments.  Review the details on redhat.com:
 
In some instances, the fprintd-pam module can cause the IBM Spectrum Control web server to crash.  If you don't need the fingerprint authentication service, you can uninstall the fprintd packages to avoid any potential problems. 


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Application Groups and Aggregated Metrics 

For application groups, the performance data is aggregated from the volumes added to the group, either directly or by using a filter.  The values displayed for the aggregated Read Response Time, Write Response Time, and Overall Response Time are incorrect.  All other metrics currently supported for application aggregation are rendered correctly.

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IBM Spectrum Control might report incorrect vmdk size and incorrect capacity of VM

IBM Spectrum Control persists the relation between a vmdk and vmdisk, restricting the relation to vmdisk <-> current vmdk file. The current vmdk file has an aggregate size, which includes the sizes of snapshots up to the current vmdk file. IBM Spectrum Control associates the latest running delta file with vmdisk. Therefore, if there are newer snapshots (which are not included in the current vmdk size), it might report the size smaller than actual size of the vmdisk.

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Export Performance Data Tool  

The output format from the exportPerformanceData Script was changed, starting in IBM Spectrum Control 5.4.4.  To minimize the impact of this and all future output format changes, users of the CSV files are encouraged to parse the column headers they are interested in.

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iSCSI ports

IBM Spectrum Control support monitoring the performance of iSCSI ports for FlashSystem having Code level 9.1.2.0 or later

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FC ports

IBM Spectrum Control displays only the total count of physical ports under Internal Resources > FC ports on the device details page. This count may differ from the number that is shown by the IBM block controller, which includes both physical and logical ports.

 

Non-IBM storage support issues

Non-IBM storage devices show node relationships in the Volumes table only if the relationship is 1:1.  Therefore, if a volume resides on more than 1 node, the node column is empty for that volume.

EMC Support issues

In IBM Spectrum Control, you can view more information about the capacity, space usage, and performance of EMC™ storage systems. However, keep in mind the following issues for EMC support:

On the details page for an EMC storage system, duplicate NAS nodes might be displayed if the EMC's NAS Servers support both NFS and CIFS protocols. This issue occurs because each protocol represents a node. For example, on the same NAS server, if NAS1451 supports NFS and NAS1451 supports CIFS protocols, two node entries are displayed on the details page for the storage system.

Information about FC and Serial Attached SCSI ports is returned when FC ports are probed.

VNXe:
Thin-provisioned volumes:

  • The value for allocated space is incorrect.
  • Total or available capacity values of each storage tier in a storage pool are incorrect.

VNX:

  • Thin pools: The value for physical allocated space is incorrect.
  • File system pools are not displayed.
  • Total or available capacity values of each storage tier in a storage pool are incorrect.
  • The VNX regular thin pool's "pool capacity" value, returned by EMC SMI-S provider, is slightly lower than reported by the element manager.  This issue applies only to VNX thin pool, referred to as "Pools" in Unisphere.
  • Disk and volume response times and utilization percentages: The displayed values for these metrics are higher than their actual value.

 
VMAX3:

  • Available pool space or any allocated capacity values are always 0.
  • All aggregated volume capacity values are 0 because of the missing relationship between pools and volumes.
  • Mappings of volume to pool and volume to disk are not displayed.

Reporting: In Cognos Analytics, pre-defined reports might not be available for EMC storage systems.
 

NetApp Support issues

For NetApp systems Copy Data cannot correlate data, so no links are shown.
 

HDS Support issues

Viewing managed disks 

Hitachi VSP systems are supported as virtualizers and show the backend storage system and external disks.  It is not possible to show managed disks mapped directly to a host.

Problems monitoring performance on Hitachi VSP storage systems  

In some cases, you might see data gaps in your performance charts or "Performance monitor failed" messages in the performance monitoring logs when you're monitoring the performance of your Hitachi VSP storage systems.
 
This problem occurs when the Hitachi Service processor is busy with configuration changes. It can also occur when the system that is running the Hitachi Export Tool is slow, which might cause timeouts and performance monitor failures from the IBM Spectrum Control server.
 
To avoid this problem, try placing the Hitachi Export Tool on a faster machine. For more information about how to install the Hitachi Export Tool, see Installing the Hitachi Export Tool in the IBM Spectrum Control documentation.
 
More information
 
For a list of the known issues with the IBM Spectrum Control support for Hitachi Data Systems Virtual Storage Platform, see http://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/241805
 

Pure Support issues

If IBM Spectrum Control is monitoring a Pure system that is in asynchronous relationship with another storage system, details of the target system are not available.  IBM Spectrum Control lists the target system but cannot correlate the remote volumes or display a link. 

If IBM Spectrum Control is monitoring only the target system of asynchronous relationships, no details of the source system are available.
 

 

Cognos Analytics

GPFS/GSS/Spectrum Scale is not supported in Cognos Analytics

GPFS/GSS/Spectrum Scale™ file systems are not correctly represented in Cognos reports and are not supported in Cognos.

Information is not collected about NFS and CIFS exports that are defined on a GPFS/GSS/Spectrum Scale cluster.

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IBM Spectrum Scale is not supported in Cognos Analytics

GPFS/GSS/Spectrum Scale™ file systems are not correctly represented in Cognos reports and are not supported in Cognos.

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Links to Help in IBM Spectrum Control predefined reports are incorrect

When you use Cognos Analytics to generate predefined reports for IBM Spectrum Control, the link to the online help does not work. To get help, go to IBM Docs at https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-control/latest?topic=reporting-creating-predefined-capacity-reports.

Tip: The system running Cognos Analytics requires access to the internet to open to the documentation. 

 

Documentation and product interface corrections

The following corrections apply to the help pages that are accessible from the help menu ("?") in the IBM Spectrum Control GUI:
 
 

Browser issues

Browser displays a security certificate error 

Some browsers might display: "There is a problem with this website's security certificate."  when you log in to IBM Spectrum Control. To continue to the GUI, click "Continue to this website". The previous page is displayed.  This behavior does not occur on all browsers.

 
 

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Document Information

Modified date:
21 August 2026

UID

ibm17275238

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