Product guide

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Challenges

Today, many businesses face ever-increasing challenges regarding reporting on,

monitoring, configuring, and controlling their datacenters.

Reporting

Businesses are finding it difficult to keep track of what they have in their datacenters.

For example, they need to know the number of storage arrays they have, the storage

array vendors, how the storage arrays are being used, and by which applications. The

process of keeping track, gathering information from many sources, in many forms,

using tools unique to each operating system, and then compiling the information onto

spreadsheets, with multiple iterations, is labor-intensive and cumbersome.

Monitoring

Both large and small organizations face the challenge of monitoring their storage

environment. The introduction of storage networks, while solving problems of data

access, has increased datacenter complexity. Mergers and cost-conscious purchases

have contributed to a heterogeneous environment, and tight budgets have prevented

organizations from adding personnel. At the same time, the internet, by providing

means for organizations to reach a global audience that is active day and night, has

raised the standard of the levels of performance and availability.

Configuring and Controlling

Managing storage resources involves complicated, routine tasks, which can include

planning changes to a datacenter and juggling multiple tools from different vendors

unique to each system. Management tasks can include knowing how storage is

utilized, how much free space is available and where that storage is located.

Configuration tasks can include adding new servers, applications, and storage. All of

these processes can be extremely complex and difficult to manage efficiently.