IBM SVC Storwize analysis and monitoring: BVQ storage in Balance (English)

Keep your storage in balance

BVQ – Business Volume Qualicision

AGENDA page 2

SVA company overview

New challenges in the storage sector

The solution

The benefits

Customer references and examples

A closer look at BVQ

Profile and business objective:

page 3

SVA is one of Germany´s leading system integrators for data center

infrastructure.

The company, headquartered in Wiesbaden, was founded In 1997 and

has today more than 460 employees at 13 locations In Germany.

The business goal of SVA is to combine high-quality IT-products of different manufacturers with SVA´s outstanding project know-how and

flexibility, to achieve optimal solutions for our customers.

BVQ – KEEP YOUR STORAGE IN BALANCE , March 2015

SVA serves today more than 200 SVC customers.

The leading SVC partner in Europe!

SVA GmbH locations

page 4BVQ – KEEP YOUR STORAGE IN BALANCE , March 2015

Berlin

HannoverHamburg

Dresden

MünchenStuttgart

Saarbrücken

Karlsruhe

Headquarter

Wiesbaden

Düsseldorf

Köln

Greven

Dortmund

March 2015BVQ – KEEP YOUR STORAGE IN BALANCE page 5

Felix Alexander Graduate Engineer

Former IBM sales manager

CEO, management spokesman

Philipp Alexander Graduate Engineer

CFO

Sven Eichelbaum Business Economist

CIO

Management board:

AGENDA page 6



The solution

The benefits



March 2015BVQ – KEEP YOUR STORAGE IN BALANCE


Harmonizing growth and cost means to ensure growth, to reduce cost and to provide storage services of highest quality.

page 7

Challenges:

1) Improving storage efficiency

2) Enhancing service quality

3) Adapting investments to measured needs


Reduced cost because of improved efficiency! Full usage of existing capacity and precise planned enhancements.


Reducingstorage costs

Optimizing load distribution

Improvingefficiency

Increasing utilization


Capacity 100%

10

0%

Perf

orm

ance

Utilizing all capacity

Uti

lizin

gal

l per

orm

ance

cap

abili

ties


Efficiency is achieved by measuring, assessing and controlling. This is the base for efficient use and precise capacity planning.

This goal cannot be achieved by assuming facts!



Improvingefficiency




Improving operational safety

Monitor, analyze, identify risks

ProactiveManagement



Monitoring and analysis help to identify risks at an early stage to avoid problems before they rise. The quality of the storage service is improved sustainably!

Increasing service quality

Improvingefficiency



Highly verified investments

Addingbusiness value

to storage

Charge back, SLM,alerting, VMware integration

Modular expansion, new disciplines


Monitoring and analysis help to improve efficiency and quality. Why not going a few steps further by integrating new services to generate added value?



Improving operational safety

Increasing service quality

Monitor, analyze, identify risks

ProactiveManagement


Improvingefficiency

AGENDA page 12



The solution

The benefits




Small storagepool

Largestoragepool

Storage pools

High performanceHigh capacityArchive…

Storage system

IBM SVCIBM Storwize family

The solution

With BVQ, companies gain the ability to discover complex relationships within their storage environment - displayed by a simple and clear screen design.


Storage pool utilization

Size of pools Size of volumes Free capacity Secure drag & drop volume

migration *

* Connected to BVQSLA management rules

Reports : for example capacity growth

The treemap offers an in-depth view on storage details – such as pools, volumes and their utilization. Volume migration is simplified via drag and drop...

The solution


Capacity and performance overview

Available capacitiesUsed / free capacities

Performance judgment

high

low

Supports performance planning and risk management

Provable assessment of performance needs

Early detection of capacity and performance shortages

The solution

Analysis methods are displayed and combine the views with reviews on performance, efficiency, risks and errors. Highly efficient multidimensional views can be saved as favorites.


Green = storage is balanced!

Capacity / performance ratio

Cost / TB OK

Nothing to change

Blue = storage is unbalanced!

Capacity / performance ratio not OK

Cost / TB too high

Add more volumes with better performancePlan for cheaper storage

The solution

The BVQ analysis method ‘BVQ Heatmap’ displays the adequate storage classes as green areas. The blue areas indicate too expensive storage classes.

A clear reference for possible savings potential.


Red = storage is unbalanced!

Operational risk

On performance issue, first candidate for higher performance storage

Close monitoring and plan for more performant storage

Yellow = high performance demand

May develop to operational risk

Seen from performance aspects: next candidate for higher performance storage

Close monitoring

The solution

The BVQ Heatmap also indicates risks. The red and yellow areas may evolve to a risk which will be indicated early by a yellow coloring of the surrounding storage pools.


The BVQ Treemap is a highly efficient tool for quick overview and monitoring. With a single click you can start the deeper analysis of the measured data.

The playground for experts and unmatched by other tools in its depth and possibilities.

page 18

Analyze storage performance problems

Gain in-depth knowledge and solve potential problems

The solution

• Clear presentation of many important

dependencies on one single screen

• Fast and in-depth analysis capabilities

• Many disciplines in a single tool:

– Basis: monitoring, reporting,

analysis and alerting

– Modular expansions available:

accounting, service level

management, copy services

management and VMware

integration


BVQ is the most advanced monitoring and analysis software for theIBM storage systems SVC (SAN Volume Controller) and the Storwize family,

allowing a maximum of results with a minimum of complexity.

page 19

The solution

February, 2013BVQ – KEEP YOUR STORAGE IN BALANCE

THE SOLUTION

BVQ Base Edition can be extended by 4 optional packages. This makes it easy to add value to storage for different needs.

page 20

BVQ Base Edition

• BVQ Treemap Module for capacity and performance monitoring and reporting engine with ODBC access to BVQ data

• BVQ Performance View for technical analysis

• BVQ alerting and analysis modules

• BVQ IO Density Heat Map analysis

• BVQ Response Time Compliance analysis

• BVQ Space Efficiency with compression and Thin Provisioning analysis

page 20

SVC CAPACITY BASED LICENSE

STORWIZE V7000, V5000 ENCLOSUREBASED LICENSE

STORWIZE V3700 SYSTEM BASEDLICENSE

BVQ Accounting Package

Storage cost

Interactive monitoring on organizational layers

Accounting reports

BVQ Service Level Manage-ment Package

Ensures compliance with storage class related SLA’s

Checking and reporting compliance based on policies

BVQ Copy Services Package

Ensures that the mirrored data is up-to-date

Displays, monitors and analyzes metro / global mirror

BVQ VMware Integration Package

Monitors VMware storage related objects in context with SVC/Storwize objects

Displays effectiveness of VM Thin Provisioning

• Low complexity

• Easy to install and maintain

• Modular expandability

– only one single server needed

– virtual servers possible

– only 1 or 2 hours for installation

– several different storage systems on one

installation possible


Installation in a few hours on a single server for a variety of storage systems.Thus you can master complex environments with easy-to-manage systems.

page 21

BVQ Application BVQ GUI

VMware

BVQ VMwareScanner

BVQ ReporterCognos ReporterExcel, Birt, ...Other applicationsopen ODBC Interface

SVC /Storwize

BVQ SVC Scanner

The solution

AGENDA page 22



The solution

The benefits



The return on your investment:

• Avoid misinvestments at an early stage

– very high savings potential >> 75%

• Helps to secure operations

• Adds additional value to your storage

• Cost effective monitoring, reporting and

analysis solution

• Small footprint – easy to manage, saves

administration cost

• Storage investment protection

BVQ is the solution for companies of any size. For monitoring, analysis, planning, solving problems and to add more business value to storage value.

BVQ – favorable price models for each size

page 23

BVQ for SVCFavorable tier price model

BVQ for Storwize Enclosure base price model

regardless of capacity

BVQ for Storwize V3700System based – one license per system - capacity independent

• Reduction of purchase cost

– BVQ analyzes how well the available performance is utilized

– Allows optimized planning of the performance requirements

– Base for choosing more effective storage classes

– Reduces cost/TB, less hardware, less maintenance and management

cost, less power cost

• Reduced storage management cost

• Avoid operational risks

• Master and avoid performance bottlenecks

• Proactive problem detection and avoidance

• Creating additional storage values

Minimizing purchase cost is a factor in an enterprise environment. Thus the costs of many other cost objects are reduced in succession.

Benefit: reduction of purchase cost

page 24

BVQ for SVC

BVQ for Storwize

BVQ for Storwize V3700

Planned investment

80TB of high-end storage is exhausted and should be

extended.


See how one of our customer‘s saved 75% on investment costs! The BVQ Heatmap analysis uncovered a large difference between

perceived and real measured necessities.

Knowledge based on facts is the base for optimized investment

page 25

Migrate blue volumes and free up storage class

High EndMid Range

New

low

en

d c

lass

Revised result after BVQ analysis

• IO density analysis shows many blue volumes on high-end.

• many of these with no business needs for high-end

• final result: 60% of all capacities can be moved to lower class

storage

Free space on high end storage class

no further extension needed.

Extension of low-end for only a ¼ of the high-ends costs

Savings: 75%


• Reduction of management cost

– One tool for SVC / Storwize monitoring, reporting, analysis and alerting

– Easy to use, highly effective presentation of results with the Treemap

– Increases efficiency of storage administrators

– Reduces invests in other tools, education and IT environment.




• Creating additional storage value

Many management disciplines summarized in one product. BVQ is easy to use and provides fast understanding of complex relationships by using the treemap.

Benefit: reduced management cost

page 26

BVQ for SVC

BVQ for Storwize


Highly integrated presentation of results! 2.5PB and thousands of volumes at a glance! A one-click interface allows performance analyses, storage efficiency

or more different capacity analyses.

Highly integrated presentation of results provides an excellent overview


Go from the big picture into detailed granularity. Detect problem areas with the clearly displayed treemap and analyze them into depth.

The first step of problem solving and proactive management.

With one single click detailed analysis of each object



• Reduction of storage management efforts


– Storage systems do not know critical business rules

– SLAs or disk mirror placement rules must be checked by admin.

Consequences of crept errors may be fatal

– BVQ can learn technical and business rules (SLAs) and alerts early on

errors




Storage systems do not understand business needs.BVQ learns technical and business-related rules including monitoring of their

implementation. This leads to efficient indication of possible errors before they arise.

Benefit: reduced operational risks

page 29

BVQ for SVC

BVQ for Storwize


A storage system can trigger alerts if technical reasons exist. BVQ also knows business needs and risks and warns you if they are violated.

The below displayed error would perhaps only be noticed in the case of a failed failover!

BVQ Alerting – application example


Data mirror – violated safety rule!

Mirrors no longer physically separated -alert is triggered!





– Performance bottlenecks may happen at any time

– Reasons for this are often very difficult to understand

– Often hardware expansion is the reaction. That way, problems are

reduced at great expense but not solved.

– BVQ offers root cause analysis to solve problems selectively



Performance bottlenecks happen in small and big environments. The effects are always high cost and many other subsequent problems. With pride we observe:

‘BVQ is the reference class in the performance analysis of SVC and Storwize’

Benefit: performance analysis to master bottlenecks

page 31

BVQ for SVC

BVQ for Storwize


BVQ reference customer German Post

After 4 hours server outage we lose 50.000 €/h ($ 65,000

per hour) in every of our 4 locations.

We respond to this with the highest quality standards and

pro-active monitoring and analysis. Also partly as a

service.

BVQ customer reference stories


Unexpected performance bottlenecks are not only just annoying situations. They are unwanted, hard to master and mean high risk factors. In the worst case, they can lead to a

halt tomorrow. The proactive analysis with BVQ helps to avoid such situations.

page 32

Find more detailed information here

Analysis reveals the true reasons of bottlenecks - the first step to problem solving

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/NQAz

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/uIB4

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/HoBP

Storwize V7000 Performance problem solved

Data collection started on Thursday, first analysis on

Wednesday – project finished on Monday.


Unexpected performance bottlenecks are not only just annoying situations. They are unwanted, hard to master and high risk factors. In the worst case, they can lead to a halt

tomorrow. The proactive analysis with BVQ helps to avoid such situations.

page 33

Find more detailed information here

Analysis reveals the true reasons of bottlenecks - the first step of problem solving


http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/HoBP






– Admins using BVQ have better knowledge about their systems’ limits

– With this knowledge many problems are avoided before they happen

– Periodic ‘Health checks’ further improve the stable operation


Administrators using BVQ have a better knowledge of the limits of their systems. They can react very quickly and avoid many problems with the help of their

knowledge and experience.

Benefit: proactive problem detection and avoidance

page 34

BVQ for SVC

BVQ for Storwize


Risk analysis: checks for overload situations within nodes, caches and SAN ports

Performance bottleneck analysis: are there visible signs of bottlenecks? how can they be solved ?

Capacity and usage analysis: actual capacity and performance utilization with extrapolation for full utilization

Storage tier analysis: is the data allocated to suitable storage classes? Which investments should be done in the future?

Storage efficiency analysis: checks efficiency and effect of Thin Provisioning and compression.

Easy Tier analysis: how effective is Easy Tier working in the environment?


A BVQ Health Check uncovers weak points in SVC / Storwize environments. Many BVQ customers therefore request it 1-2 times a year as value-added service to

improve the operational safety within their storage environments.

BVQ Health Check

page 35

Click here for more information



• Reduced storage management efforts

• Reduced operational risks




– Integrates new disciplines in storage management

– Improves efficiency of storage administration

– Connects storage monitoring with the VMware world, monitors the

stability of data mirrors, enables accounting or sets the basis for

Service Level Management

Creating added storage value means to support business requirements far beyond the mere storage of data. Much of this can be found already in the basic edition of BVQ and

special disciplines can be added as required.

Benefit: additional storage value

page 36

BVQ for SVC

BVQ for Storwize


AGENDA page 37



The solution

The benefits



EXAMPLE: PLANNING ANALYSIS

• BVQ customer in Switzerland

• Onsite service: planning analysis

• Requirement:

High- end storage is fully utilized and has to be extended

• Analysis shows: most of the volumes on the high end storage don´t have high end performance requirements

(Volumes represented in blue in the BVQ analysis)

• An interview with the customer revealed , that only a few of these

volumes with poor performance had to remain on the high-end storage

because of business reasons

• Result of analysis with recommendation:

– Recommendation: establishment of a new Nearline storage class

– High end storage usage can be reduced immediately by 60%

– Move volumes into appropriate storage classes

Result is cost reduction:

• Nearline storage costs (less than) ¼ of the originally planned HE

storage class.

75% saving for storage expansion

BVQ Return on Invest Whitepapers

Migrate Volumes to lessexpensive Storage

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/AIFQAQ

EXAMPLE FOR BVQ PROBLEM SOLUTIONS

BVQ CUSTOMER AEPONA (NORTH IRELAND)

• Offsite service measure

• History:

– Extreme performance problems

– 6 months of analysis without any improvement

• Project:

– 09/20/2013: Scan started

– 09/25/2013: Web conference 25th September, 2013

– 09/29/2013: End of service

– 09/30/2013: End of project

• Result:

Problem was completely solved in just 10 days!

EXAMPLE FOR BVQ PROBLEM SOLUTIONS

CUSTOMER IN SOUTH AFRICA

• Offsite service measure

• History:

– Performance problems with ISCSI attached servers

– Open complaint with IBM

• Project not yet completedPreliminary results:

Storwize is the wrong contact for the complaint

Problems can be found in the ISCSI connectionwith the servers

• Finish time-consuming search on the Storwize!Perform analysis of server connections!

E-Postbrief‘ brings the secrecy of correspondence into the Internet.

Accurately and efficiently with Storwize V7000 and BVQ

The German Post and DHL corporate brands offer a unique portfolio of logistics and

communication. Customers are offered both easy to use standardized products as well as

innovative and tailored solutions - from dialog marketing to industrial supply chains.

Organization of a new storage infrastructure with BVQ

Based on the existing SVC environment with analysis of BVQ

Requirement: low complexity

Requirement: lowering TCO

The precisely formulated demands on manufacturers were formulated with the help of BVQ

New infrastructure as a result of detailed tendering

Storwize V7000 with the following storage-mix:

1,4TB SSD, 137TB 900GB SAS, 437TB 3TB SATA

BVQ Base Edition for Storwize V7000

Extended benefits with BVQ

Optimal mapped storage-phased approach for performance, capacity, storage classes

Highest efficiency in space and power because fewer discs are needed

Continuity in the administration because of the close relation to V7000 for SVC, continued

usage of BVQ possible

BVQ references in the Internet

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/NQAz

Sika Germany GmbH is a subsidiary of the leading Swiss company Sika AG

The manufacturer of industrial

sealants and adhesives,

construction chemical product

systems employs more than 1,100

people in Germany.

Sika AG is an ideal partner for

architects, planners, builders, trade

and commerce as well as for

industrial production in Germany.

Sika already develops successful

innovations for tomorrow in its

own research laboratories.


Targets achieved with BVQ

Capacity and perfor-

mance reporting

Optimize storage

usage

Proactively prevent

errors

Improve stability of

SVC environment

Lower administrative

efforts with storage

The Sika success story

Customer success cases

page 42

Voith sets standards in the markets energy, oil & gas, paper, raw materials and transport & automotive.

Founded in 1867, Voith employs

more than 42,000 people, generates

€5.6 billion in sales, operates in more

than 50 countries around the world

and is today one of the biggest family-

owned companies in Europe.

Customer request

A solution for transparent

performance management and to

enable optimized load distribution

within the virtualized (SVC) storage

infrastructure.March 2015BVQ – KEEP YOUR STORAGE IN BALANCE

Advantages with BVQ

Performance management

and load monitoring in real

time

Fast implementation

Avoidance of performance

peaks and bottlenecks

Business and service-level

oriented

Easy management of SVC

infrastructure

The Voith success story


page 43

Bernd Nagel, Team Manager Global Application Infrastructure Voith IT Solutions

‘BVQ allows us a detailed analysis of the performance and utilization of our storage infrastructure. With this information and through the management of BVQ we could avoid bottlenecks and subsequently achieve higher utilization while improving performance’.

The SSB, Stuttgarter Straßenbahn AG, is one of the largest and most modern transport operators in Germany and has won numerous awards for its achievements in recent years.

Customer request

A solution to optimize load and

performance of the virtualized

storage environment (SVC)


Advantages with BVQ

Automatic performance

analysis in the

background

Clear presentation of

Performance / capacity

utilization and history

Performance of different

layers like application

storage system etc.

Identification of high

performers

Supports process to re-

balance a storage

system

The SSB success story


page 44

Alexander Müller, responsible for storage and supply, Stuttgarter Straßenbahn AG

‘With BVQ it was only a small effort to achieve excellent load distribu-tion on our different storage tiers.

The root causes of performance problems are easy to find can often be solved with some movements in the storage’.

Advantages with BVQ

More transparent capacity and

performance utilization of the

storage systems

BVQ is business and service level

oriented as requested

Cost savings due to allocation of

storage volumes now based on

clear facts

Performance peaks and bottle-

necks can now be avoided

Clear presentation with the BVQ GUI

Fast and uncritical installation


Ericsson is a world-leading provider of telecommuni-cation equipment and services to mobile and fixed network operators.

Over 1,000 networks in

more than 180 countries

use our network

equipment, and more than

40 per cent of the world's

mobile traffic passes

through Ericsson networks.

The Ericsson success story


page 45

Dr. Reinhard Waas, Team Leader Unix and BVQ-users, LHS Telecommunications GmbH & Co. KG

‘With BVQ we have achieved a good mix and balance of storage pooling with performance load isolation. This resulted in better storage performance and optimized storage efficiency’.

BVQ webpages and contacts

page 47

BVQ on the Internet www.bvq-software.com

BVQ technical wiki page with videos and technical whitepapershttp://bvqwiki.sva.de

BVQ mail contact [email protected]

www.sva.de

http://www.bvq-software.com/

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.sva.de/

AGENDA page 48



The solution

The benefits



BVQ application areas

Monitoring, surveillance and reporting

Keeping an eye on performance and capacity indicators and documenting them

Supporting storage planning and cost reduction

Finding cost-optimal storage mix, supporting Easy Tier planning

Problem-free operation, finding and solving storage problems

Checking for typical bottlenecks, finding and solving problems

VMware integration

Viewing and monitoring VMware objects in context with SVC objects

Usage based billing of storage cost

Organizational management of storage resources

Monitoring storage-related SLAs

Ensuring SLA compliance

Surveillance of remote copies and snapshots

Ensuring the currentness of mirrors and copies

BVQ application exampleshttp://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/VwAo

http://bvqwiki.sva.de/x/VwAo


Monitoring with BVQ

Treemap – overview - monitoring

Capacities and performance at a glance

Plenty of analysis capabilities Performance, capacity, utilization, cost, price

Integrated alerting module Wrong storage location, violated limits…

Settings can be saved as favorites

Performance view - analysis

In-depth performance and bottleneck analysis

Highly interactive module allows ad hoc-analysis

Analysis can be saved as favorite

Detailed performance data for the last 7 months

Resolution of measurement data down to 1 minute

The BVQ GUI supports the typical operation of the administrator. The treemap provides an overview and expertise for daily monitoring. The BVQ Performance View is the expert mode, which allows in-depth analysis to clarify conspicuous performance situations.

Visualization of storage load - IO density – the BVQ Heatmap

Determines the load (IOPS / GIB – ‘IO density’) which is exerted by a volume on the sub-storage. It is

calculated for all storage tiers such as volume, MDisk, MDG, controller, array, …

Coloring shows how well a volume uses

the existing performance.

Why is this valuable?

Rapid assessment, whether volumes are

placed on the correct storage classes

Quick identification of capacity

overload or weak capacity utilisation

Basis for extension planning

Hot or cold? Best place for a volume?

The BVQ Treemap combines capacity and utilization information at a glance.BVQ is familiar with the performance capabilities of the storage system and can

compare them on many levels with the current performance.

Storage load response time compliance

Compares the volume’s latency to the

maximum value of their storage class

Conspicuous volumes are marked

Combination of all storage objects possible

Multiple evaluation options

Higher objects ‘inherit’ the result

Small deviations become visible


Quick overview, if the response time of

individual volumes or disks deviates

from the expected value

Problems are quickly isolated

xx

Another example - BVQ knows the expected response times of the storage pools. If the expected value is not met, the affected volume will be colored.

If this volume is host-related, the host will also be marked.

Optimizing storage efficiency

Monitors whether the useage of Thin Provisioning and / or Compression

leads to the desired success for individual volumes.

Evaluation for all storage levels


Storage efficiency stresses critical system resources

(CPU performance and write cache)

Compression is limited to 200 volumes per

node pair

Data can change over time and changes the

benefit of compression

The analysis-treemap for storage efficiency, shows objects which have more or less advantage of Thin Provisioning or compression. Thus the utilization of these functions

can be monitored over time and optimized.

Compressionis efficient

Compressionnot effcient

Switch off

Measurement interval down to 1 minute

The BVQ standard measurement interval is 5 minutes. This setting provides a good overview but in order for a better problem-detection and analysis, it can be lowered during operation

to 1 minute.

Same CPU pathway with 1 min interval

Reporting functions

Development of capacities, performance

Accounting reports

Special reports on request

Open interfaces allow access from other tools

such as Excel or Cognos

Can be automated - integration into Intranet

Can be integrated into other system management

environments like Nagios

The database of BVQ is the source of all information. Reporting is another way to access this information. There are also other ways to report the data e.g. via Excel or Cognos, for which

BVQ uses an open database schema.



Keeping an eye on performance parameters and documenting them

Supporting planning and development, cost reduction




VMware integration


Performance-based billing of storage cost









High performance class

Typical storage management problems

Existing capabilities are underestimated

Required performance is overrated

No measuring instrument to find a proper assessment

Storage is calculated too high-valued (too expensive) due to security

standards

BVQ approach - avoiding wrong investments and revising with the

next expansion

Finding the adequate storage-mix via analysis

Enabling investments into convenient storage classes

Rapid assessment analysis by BVQ Heatmap

Only one volume needs 2000 IOPS

Only some volumes need500 IOPS

Most of the volumes need 100 IOPS or less

Low-end class

The Capacity Performance Analysis is one of the analysis techniques developed to detect the assignable performance requirements quickly and clearly.

BVQ Capacity and Performance Analysis

All non-orange areasare stored too expensive

Quick analysis at the push of a button - even for many clusters simultaneously

The BVQ Heatmap analysis is the capacity performance analysis at the push of a button! Mean values of 7 days to 5 minutes give a quick overview.

In this case shown below 2.5PB in 6 SVC clusters.

High amount of blue volumes big savings potential!








VMware integration











Technical analysis – Risk analysis

Just a few steps are required to answer many questions.

A BVQ expert can make a statement about potential risks

in just a few minutes.

Typical risk areas

SVC / Storwize nodes utilization

Overloaded partitions caches?

SAN properly sized?

SAN failures or impairments in the SAN?

Backend storage systems performance?

Unilateral overload?

Pro-active: risk assessment, avoiding bottlenecks

Re-active: solving performance problems

The BVQ Performance View is the playground of the experts. We have developed many techniques for a controlled in-depth analysis of the storage. One of them is the so-called BVQ

Risk Analysis.








VMware integration











VMware integration package

Monitoring VMware areas in the SVC

context

• Connections from VMware storage objects to SVC/Storwize objects

• Capacities of VMware objects (VM virtual machines, VM disks, … ) in SVC volumes

• Free capacities in VM data stores

• Thin Provisioning storage efficiency of VMware objects

A BVQ scanner for VMware fetches the storage-related information from the VMware-installation and integrates them into the BVQ storage structure.

Then current information like the utilization of the VMware storage is available.

Two examples for storage-VMware representations

Example: which VM

is within the volumes?

Overview about the capacity utilization of the volumes

What happens during migrations, who is affected?

Example: which volumes support the

VM?

Typical starting point for a performance analysis

Performance problem in a VMware object

Question: which storage supplies the object?

The flexibility of the treemap is a big benefit here as it is easy to display which SVC volumes include VMware objects. For example also the presentation of volumes supporting a VMware virtual machine is important.

Representation ‘stand alone’ available for non-SVC volumes

VM SCSI volume not SVC /Storwize

VM SCSI volume of SVC/Storwize

Observation of the storage

connections in VMware

Independent from SVC or Storwize

systems

Also objects from other storage

systems are visible.

The VMware scanner detects all relevant VMware storage objects, no matter if they are connected to SVC or Storwize or not.

This provides a complete map of the VMware storage structure.

VAAI traffic

SCSI traffic

Detailed expert metrics








VMware integration











BVQ accounting - extension of storage objects in the operating organizations

New organizational levels of monitoring:

Cost Center, application groups,

applications, volume groups

Cost-oriented monitoring and billing for all

organizational levels

Topology, storage usage and performance

analysis based on applications or cost centers

Cost and prices of organizational levels

Reporting and accounting

BVQ accounting enables the combination of volumes to organizational structures like applications or cost centers. This provides an organizational view over the storage,

which can be then used for accounting and other purposes.

Accounting functions - a relevant result for the billing of storage costs

The accounting report is a standard BVQ report

Alternative database access:

Loading the data into a spreadsheet

and finishing via pivot tables

Loading the data into an enterprise application

for integration into existing applications

Database scheme of BVQ is open and published

Allows integration of BVQ into enterprise applications

such as Data Warehouse or Asset Databases.

Reports often are the result of accounting which then will be further evaluated. It might also be useful to transform data into more editable formats.

BVQs’ data formats are open to support such integrations.








VMware integration











Service Level Management functions

Storage and management of storage-related SLAs

Monitoring of SLAs and other storage rules

Data placement rating:

Green: compliant to storage rules

Red: violation against storage rules

Yellow: sub-optimal but compliant

Disk placement: ‘disk group relations’

Example: mirrors may not be established on

the same system, monitoring pools, systems,

rooms, sites

Cost and price calculation

For all storage objects and levels

Violation of SLA rule

Storage capacity is

acceptable by SLA

Storage capacity

corresponds to SLA

BVQ can monitor the fulfillment of SLAs. With SVC or Storwize it is very easy to move volumes with via migrations and thus breaking SLA rules unnoticed. BVQ displays them via GUI or uses

alerts when this happens.








VMware integration











Copy services package

Displaying and monitoring

Flash copy and remote copy

Relation-mappings

Consistency groups cluster partnership

Coloring by state

Consistent, disconnected, stopped, …

Another added value is representation and monitoring of flash copies or mirrors. Broken mirrors are shown as well as the transfer rate within a mirror-link.

An important added value for more safety in this critical area!

• Direct connection to the BVQ server with a

remote desktop application

• BVQ can be operated very efficiently on a

handheld or tablet device


The graphical representation of the treemap is also perfect to be used on mobile devices.

The benefits

page 73

Thank you – we would be happy and proud to work with you!

Documents

IBM SVC Storwize analysis and monitoring: BVQ storage in Balance (English)