As organizations and their network infrastructures expand perpetually, it's inevitable that storage will become a challenge. When storage demands grow, the need to provision more storage resources also grows. Once more storage resources have been provisioned for the infrastructure, they need to function undisrupted and should be secure from threats. Essentially, an IT operations team's objectives when it comes to enterprise storage management are no different from the everyday IT infrastructure management itself.
Managing the whole of an enteprise's storage from a central console, keeping tabs on important metrics, and ensuring efficient performance is a big challenge.
Large volume of data to be monitored: As expected, a large enterprise infrastructure will have humungous sets of data traversing in and out of the network. Constantly monitoring and analyzing such large volumes of data is crucial for IT admins but also incredibly difficult. Massive amounts of data are stored on storage systems, introducing challenges in collecting and analyzing all the data needed to monitor storage performance.
Variety of storage systems and devices: Organizations invest in various types of storage devices according to their requirements. A small organization, with a limited budget but large amounts of data to manage, might choose to have a combination of network-attached storage (NAS) and HDD devices. A large organization, on the other hand, might choose a storage area network (SAN) as it is a storage system ideal for massive amounts of data while also providing superior performance.
Low visibility into storage performance: Diving deep and constantly keeping an eye on storage devices' performance is difficult since storage systems are often situated in remote locations or behind firewalls to ensure security.
The costs involved: Storage expansion and upkeep need considerable investment from an organization. An overestimation of storage needs will lead to overspending on storage space. Simultaneously, a poor understanding of the organization's growing capacity needs and lack of decision-making can lead to network paralysis when the data requirements surpass the existing capacity. To monitor storage systems and maintain a fine balance in capacity planning, organizations need to invest in storage monitoring software. However, there are few standardized storage monitoring solutions that can monitor all types of storage systems. Specific monitoring solutions for specific storage types will only increase costs. In summary, the costs involved in storage capacity planning and storage monitoring are high; an organization needs a unified enterprise storage monitoring solution that can monitor all types of storage devices in a distributed environment.
SAN monitoring: A SAN is a dedicated high-speed storage network employed by organizations, separated from the LAN so that operational traffic doesn't interfere with the storage traffic. SANs promise higher availability and low latency, amongst other advantages. OpManager Plus employs SAN monitoring while also having the ability to monitor devices such as tape libraries, RAIDs, and SAN switches. OpManager Plus provides dedicated SAN performance monitors for storage devices and switches. It supports a wide range of storage devices from multiple vendors with predefined storage device templates, making SAN monitoring effortless. Once the devices have been added, OpManager Plus maintains an inventory of all storage devices in your SAN, and collects information such as IP address, DNS name, vendor, device type, category, device status, and more. All the information is presented on the SAN dashboard, giving you a full overview of your SAN, identifying devices that need immediate attention. With this, OpManager Plus helps you establish a centralized approach to SAN management.
RAID storage: OpManager Plus, as an advanced storage monitoring solution, discovers RAIDs in your infrastructure using SNMP, CLI, SMI-S, and vendor-specific APIs. Thanks to its multi-vendor support and all the relevant information presented on a central console, OpManager Plus makes the prospect of managing RAIDs in your infrastructure much easier.
Tape libraries: OpManager Plus comes with a tape library management system that uses vendor-specific management information bases (MIBs) and/or APIs to automatically discover the tape libraries in SAN and NAS networks. After discovery, the complete set of physical and logical assets, capacity, performance, and configuration information of the library are also collected and represented in the OpManager Plus client. Tape drivers within the tape library are monitored for addition, removal, mounting, un-mounting, and other functions, and also to detect fault conditions. SNMP traps from the tape library are collected, and alarms are generated for fault conditions.
Storage dashboard: OpManager Plus is a powerful storage monitoring solution that can help you achieve observability into your storage devices from a single dashboard. It supports over 25 vendors and provides a predefined set of storage monitors that you can use to view key metrics like availability, performance, and utilization. OpManager Plus lists all of your devices on a single screen, making it easy to get a bird's-eye view of your infrastructure. And with its real-time thresholds and alert notifications, you can be sure that you'll always be informed of any potential problems beforehand.
Fabric switch: OpManager Plus manages fabric switches based on the SNIA's standard fabric switch management MIBs. In addition, vendor-specific MIBs and APIs are used to provide fine-grained monitoring capabilities. OpManager Plus automatically discovers fabric switches in your environment.
OpManager Plus is a powerful infrastructure observability solution that enables organizations to optimize their storage infrastructure and ensure the best possible performance, availability, and security. Learn more about OpManager Plus