It's almost becoming clichéd, but data as we know it, is growing at an unprecedented rate and having the right storage resource manager is now essential to your business. Visibility into storage environments is becoming more challenging due to the increasing complexities and escalating user demands. Many companies do not have a complete understanding of the health of their storage infrastructure which can eventually be detrimental to their business. Managing storage infrastructure is far more costly than acquiring products to increase capacity, therefore new approaches have emerged to mid-sized companies better manage their environments. 

A recent technology assessment by The Evaluator Group reviews a new way to manage storage using IBM’s Spectrum Control™ Storage Insights solution that addresses the challenges facing administrators with storage resource management and monitoring.

What’s sets it apart is that it is a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering available through partners such as Sentia. It's easy to use and to set-up, very flexible and affordable on a low monthly fee - and it also supports Dell EMC storage systems.

This product combines analytics leadership and a rich history of storage management expertise with a cloud-based delivery model.

It will enable you to: 

● Accurately identify and categorize your storage assets 
● Monitor capacity and performance from your perspective—including application, department and server views 
● Increase capacity forecasting precision using historical growth metrics 
● Reclaim unused storage to delay future purchases and improve utilization 
● Optimize data placement based on historical usage patterns



In assessing Storage Insights, The Evaluator Group attests that it provides the tools and capabilities to enhance the performance of your storage while lowering the cost of storage. This cloud-based solution also provides actionable insights in minutes - with deeper insights delivered over time as intelligence about your environment builds in the system. Storage Insights runs on one or more virtual or physical servers in your environment, using metrics already collected by your storage systems.

The most interesting thing about this concept is that it will give you the visibility you need into your data and storage environment without the upfront cost and complexity of deploying an on-premise solution.

Information is obtained by Storage Insights through the analysis of storage systems and server data usage. The solution becomes smarter as it gathers data and within hours, it helps identify performance hotspots.  It also provides visibility into available capacity and data growth rates to help take the guesswork out of capacity planning. 

Easy to use by IT generalists

Storage Insights is so simple to use that virtually no training is required and an IT generalist can easily accomplish the tasks that used to require in-depth experience with storage. 

Not limited to IBM storage systems – Now supporting Dell EMC storage systems

As promised when Storage Insights was initially released, additional storage systems were planned to be added to expand monitoring and reporting in enterprise environments. Spectrum Control Storage Insights Software as a Service (SaaS) now also supports Dell EMC storage systems. 

Storage Insights can be easily introduced into environments with Dell EMC (VNX, VNXe and VMAX) or IBM storage systems or external third-party storage attached to IBM Spectrum Virtualize software or IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC). IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights enables customers who were unlikely to use more exhaustive tools to now have the benefit of storage resource management to optimize their environment and reduce storage costs

For a quick overview – View the video here



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y64zDpuQ97w

For more details, read the white paper from the Evaluator Group:

IBM Spectrum Control Insights enables broader use of Storage Resource Management

If you need to talk about your data storage challenges and if a cloud-based SaaS low-monthly fee is a way to potentially manage your current environment, we're here to help. 

Drop me a line if you'd like to have an initial chat.

Paul Oh
VP of Technical Services at Sentia