The Pools page provides an aggregated listing of storage pools including PowerMax storage resource pools. The Issues column displays the number of health issues associated with any pool or storage object in that pool or a green check mark for items with no associated issues. Issues can be calculated for Unity XT family, SC Series, PowerScale/Isilon, PowerVault, and PowerFlex. The pool name and system name are hyperlinks to the details for the item.

The Pools listing represents the raw storage on the system that is available to be provisioned as either block storage or file storage. This listing provides the Total Size (TB), Used and Subscription percentages, and Free (TB) storage within the pool that has not been provisioned for storage objects. The Time to Full range is also shown. Time to Full is based on the storage consumption measurements. The longer the pool is configured, the more accurate the prediction of Time to Full. This Time to Full measurement identifies pools that are at greatest risk of running out of storage space, and that require attention.

Pool details – Properties

The information in the Properties tab for a pool varies depending on the array type. It provides various pool attributes and any health issues associated with the pool. Expanding the issue will provide a suggested resolution. Where supported, there is a hyperlink in the upper right of the window to launch the associated element manager. The bottom of the Pool details page has different tabs of information depending on array type.

The following series of screenshots show the information for each array type.

Unity XT family and SC Series:

• Storage
• Virtual Machines
• Drives

PowerVault:

• Storage
• Drives

PowerScale and Isilon:

• Nodes

PowerMax:

• No tabs

PowerFlex

• No tabs

Pool details – Capacity

The Capacity tab for a pool varies based on array type.

Unity XT family, PowerScale, Isilon, PowerVault

The graph along the top displays the historical pool capacity data and the Predicted Date to Full date (Unity XT family, PowerVault, PowerScale/Isilon, and PowerFlex). The graph shows Free, Used, Total, Forecast Used, Confidence Range, and Subscribed. The Confidence Range represents the confidence level in predicting the date to full; the wider the range, the lower the confidence level. When an imminent full condition exists, the graph also shows the Previous Forecast and Previous Confidence Range. It also shows the top storage objects predicted to contribute to capacity consumption over the next 24 hours as shown below. If the pool is in a Learning, Full, or Unpredictable state, only the historical trend graph is displayed.

The beginning of the chart is based on the selection in the “From:” field. By default, the setting is set to “3 months ago.” For pools at imminent risk, the “From:” field is set to yesterday. The following times are available from the pull-down:

• Yesterday
• 1 week ago
• 1 month ago
• 3 months ago (default)
• 6 months ago
• 1 year ago
• 2 years ago
• Custom

The end of the chart is based on the selection in the “To:” field. By default, the setting is set to “Predicted Full.” The following times are available in the pull-down:

• Today (Only historical data is shown)
• Tomorrow
• 1 week from today
• 1 month from today
• 3 months from today
• 6 months from today
• Predicted Full (default)
• Custom

The Subscribed checkbox enables the user to view or hide the pool subscription data on the graph.

The Confidence Range checkbox enables the user to view or hide the upper and lower confidence range forecasts.

The bottom of the Pools Capacity tab provides details for the pool capacity, showing Used, Free, Reclaimable, and Subscribed. The Storage Usage ring shows how the used storage is configured.

SC Series

For SC Series, the historical trend of Total, Used, Free, and Subscribed storage is provided along with a Predicted Date to Full. However, the chart does not display forecasting data.

PowerMax 2000, 8000, and VMAX3

For PowerMax 2000, 8000, and VMAX3 arrays, the Capacity tab displays a capacity forecast chart for storage resource pools. The bottom half of the page shows Used and Free storage in bar charts for Subscribed, Snapshot, and Usable space. It also displays the Overall Efficiency ratio. This ratio is calculated as the sum of all TDEVs plus snapshot sizes (based on 128 K track size) divided by the physical used storage (based on the compressed track size). Data Reduction ratio and enabled percentage, Virtual Provisioning savings, and Snapshot savings are also displayed.

PowerMax 2500 and 8500

For PowerMax 2500 and 8500 systems, the effective capacity is reported as it provides a more realistic measure of available space considering all data reduction components.

Pool details – Performance

The Performance tab for pools is available for Unity XT family, SC Series, PowerMax/VMAX, and PowerVault systems. The information under the Performance tab differs slightly for each supported array type.

Unity XT

For Unity XT pools, the top of the page displays 24-hour trend lines and a 24-hour average for Latency, IOPS, and Bandwidth for both block objects and file systems. Observability presents the top five objects associated to the pool. The user can scroll to see additional objects.

Scrolling down this view provides the user with detailed performance graphs for Latency, IOPS, Bandwidth, and Backend IOPS (one chart per tier). Observability identifies and highlights not only performance anomalies on the Latency chart, but also performance impacts. Performance anomalies are highlighted in dark blue while performance impacts are highlighted in pink. Highlighting an area on the Latency, IOPS or Bandwidth performance graphs identifies up to the top five most active objects contributing to that metric over the highlighted period.

When the user selects Best Match on the left side of the chart, Observability identifies up to five objects that have the highest correlation to the selected period. Best Match is available on the Block Latency, IOPS, and Bandwidth performance charts.

When there are performance impacts detected by Observability, the user can view details of them by selecting the Details button in the upper right of the chart. If there are multiple performance impacts displayed on the chart, the user can select which impact to investigate by selecting the drop-down menu next to the date.

The following shows the results of the details of a performance impact. The right side of the chart shows the time of the selected performance impact and identifies the most likely causes (competing workloads) for the impact and if there is any resource contention for SPs, Cache, Disk, or Ports.

SC Series

Similar to the Unity XT family, the top half of the Performance tab for SC Series pools displays 24-hour trend lines and a 24-hour average for Latency, IOPS, and Bandwidth.

Scrolling down provides displays 24-hour performance graphs for IOPS, Bandwidth, and Volume Latency. Observability identifies and highlights performance anomalies on each performance chart for SC Series pools. Highlighting an area in any of these graphs identifies the top volumes contributing to that metric during the highlighted period.

PowerMax

The Performance tab for PowerMax Storage Resource Pools provides 24-hour charts for Latency, IOPS, Bandwidth, %Read, IO Size, and Queue Length. Observability highlights performance anomalies for each chart in the SRP Performance tab. The pool performance charts for PowerMax are not selectable.

PowerVault

The Performance tab for PowerVault pools also displays top object activity on the top half of the page and 24-hour charts at the bottom of the page. Metrics displayed include IOPS and Bandwidth. Selecting an area in the IOPS and Bandwidth charts displays the top volumes contributing to that metric during that time period under the Most Active tab. The Best Match tab shows up to five objects with the highest correlation to the selected period.

Note: The Performance tab is not yet supported for PowerScale/Isilon or PowerFlex pools.