Storage Resource Monitor v6.3 Release Candidate is Avaiable!

We have reached the Release Candidate (RC) status for Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) 6.3. RC is the last step before general availability and is a chance for existing customers to get the newest functionality before it is available to everyone else.

This RC contains the following enhancements:

• Support for EMC XtremIO arrays
• Support for Pure Storage arrays (Purity 4.6 or above required)
• Refreshed user interface

New Metrics with All-Flash Arrays (AFA's)

The use of very fast flash memory instead of spinning disks is not the only benefit that comes with all-flash arrays. Many (but not all) models provide the user with interesting advanced features such as data de-duplication, compression, and thin provisioning. In order to monitor and report relevant information about the flash array, we extended and/or modified some of the reported statistics, alerts, etc.

The below information applies to both EMC XtremIO and Pure Storage arrays.

Capacity Reporting

Let's take a look at storage array capacity summary resources. Because of the nature of disk space management, Raw Capacity and Total Used Capacity will always be the same for AFA's. They represent sum of physical sizes of all memory modules (e.g. SSD's).

Usable Capacity Summary is more interesting: Total Usable Capacity means sum of user data space on all memory modules (disks).

• Data Reduction is the ratio of actually used volume capacity to used physical capacity in the cluster. In the picture below, the reduction is 3:1, which means that e.g. 300 GB of user data only occupies 100 GB physical capacity after deduplication. It's one of the most important parameters for capacity planning.
• Total Reduction also takes compression and thin provisioning into account, but its interpretation is not so straightforward.

Further details are reported on storage pool level:

• Total Usable Capacity -- Total user data space on all memory modules (SSDs)
• Total Subscribed -- Capacity of all LUNs after the data reduction (SUM(Lun.CapacityTotal) / Data Reduction))
• Provisioned -- Amount of user data space in use
• Over-Subscribed -- Total Subscribed minus Total Usable Capacity

Monitor Your EMC XtremIO Arrays

The latencies with AFA's are much lower that for disk-based arrays.

Monitor Your Pure Storage Arrays

Enjoy the New UI Design

If you kept reading up to this point, you have probably noticed that the user interface looks a little different than in the past. SRM is not the only module that benefits from this improvement shipped by the Orion Platfrom (Core). We wish you a pleasant experience.

RC builds are made available to existing customers prior to the formal release. These are used to get customer feedback in production environments and are fully supported. If you have any questions, I encourage you to leverage the SRM RC forum.

You will find the latest version on your customer portal in the Release Candidate section.