Redefine your SAN fabric management experience with HPE GreenLake

[StorageExperts]

HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management provides a cloud-native experience that addresses storage network administration by configuring, managing, and monitoring storage fabrics. Learn how this cloud-based management approach gives you the ability to monitor and manage both simple and complex storage fabrics in a single pane of glass from the Data Services Cloud Console in HPE GreenLake.

– By Mike Geroche, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, HPE Storage

With the consistent growth in storage driven by today’s digital world, the need to modernize the management of storage resources is an essential part of the Storage IT administrator’s toolbox. Management of storage networks must innovate and scale to meet these significant growth trends in the storage industry. 

Traditional management of storage networks involves a command line or web-based connection to each entity in the SAN. That connection must be local to the management network, either physically on premises or through VPN. As the size and complexity of your storage network grows, management of each SAN component becomes a more difficult task – as each component must be logged into individually, generally with IP addresses and credentials.  Collating the information obtained from each component to get an aggregate view of the entire SAN can be a formidable task.The management of on-prem devices in the cloud is an exciting innovation in this area. It gives your IT administrator greater flexibility because a local or VPN connection does not have to be established. If multiple infrastructures in different locations with separate management networks are being managed, the tasks become that much easier using cloud-based management. 

Enter HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform that provides secure access to on-premises infrastructure. Whether that infrastructure is compute, data network, or storage-based assets, HPE GreenLake provides a unified management console to provision, scale, monitor and manage. But what about your storage network? Cloud-based management of the storage network could only be done through vendor-specific tools. There’s been no unified approach to cloud-based management of the SAN – until now.

Introducing HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management

Simplify the management of your storage network fabric as you accelerate productivity, increase scale, and optimize storage networking investments with HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management.

HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management is a cloud-native application that resides in the Data Services Cloud Console of GreenLake. It provides management of management of on-premises storage fabrics including configuration and monitoring – all within a single pane of glass. From servers with Compute Ops Manager, to storage with the Data Ops Management, and now with storage networks using the Storage Fabric Management application within the Data Services Cloud Console, you can manage your entire storage infrastructure from the secure, cloud-based GreenLake console.

No need to manage each switch independently. No need to remember the IP address and login credentials for each entity in your storage network. No need to have multiple browser windows open, or multiple terminal sessions. And no need to remember command syntax at the CLI. One browser window allows management and monitoring of the entire storage infrastructure located in multiple places, implemented in the secure HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.

No matter how simple or complex your storage network is, HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management is well-suited to manage it. The dashboard above shows a simple 2 fabric/12 switch SAN located in one data center. With a quick glance your storage admin can assess the health of that setup in aggregate. And what if your storage networks managed are spread across different campuses or geographies? The number of managed devices and switches could grow very quickly – and become very difficult to manage at each individual device interface. With HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management, the status and health of the entire storage network infrastructure is easily determined in this single pane of glass view.

Monitoring and Management of the SAN Infrastructure using a single familiar interface

Typical management functions such as Zoning Operations, Port Monitoring, Environmental information, Firmware Update, and more are available via straight-forward menus and commands that are consistent across the Data Service Cloud Console Applications. Should problems arise anywhere in the SAN, you can easily click on the links and go directly to the problematic switch or port. No leaving the Storage Fabric Management application to figure out the IP address or Switch name and credentials to log into it individually. And no need to be on the VPN of that management network.

Storage Fabric analytics

Analytics is one of the great features of HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management, which can be enabled at the fabric level. The analytics feature analyzes statistics and generates alerts based on common failure modes that can impact a storage fabric:

• Link resets
• Port flaps
• CRC In errors
• Class-3 discard errors (in and out)

Sample data are collected at 6-hour intervals for every port on all switches in the fabric. Any warnings or critical error alerts will appear on the HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management dashboard for easy single pane of glass management. At each even collection, previous alerts will be checked to see if the issue has cleared itself or resolved. If previous alerts have been clear for four consecutive sample periods, then the condition is removed from the Issues section of the dashboard.

SPOCK Report

Another great feature is that HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management runs what is known as a “SPOCK” report. SPOCK stands for Single Point of Connectivity Knowledge and is a database used to determine interoperability between HPE Storage components. It tracks storage OS, switch firmware, host OS driver, and firmware versions. It also compares it to known tested configurations. Assessing the firmware/driver/OS versions on all of the compoents of the SAN can be a time-consuming exercise. Looking up each of these versions in the online SPOCK database can also be tedious. When you are using HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management, the whole process is automated – usually takes less than 30 seconds total time. 

In the topology view, green indicates SPOCK compliance, yellow indicates an update is available, and red indicates non-compliance. In this visual topology view, you can also click on the links between SAN components to determine what is connected to what. This is useful for troubleshooting. You can also output the results of a SPOCK compliance check in a pdf document, useful for archiving the state of the SAN at the particular time that the report was run.

HPE GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management: A platform for innovation

With GreenLake for Storage Fabric Management, HPE again shows a commitment to cloud-based management of the entire IT infrastructure. This innovative approach provides a platform for upcoming multi-vendor and multi-protocol storage fabrics – all using the same, familiar browser-based UI. And all with just one browser to manage your IT assets, whether cloud-based, hybrid cloud, or on-prem. 

The benefits add up to simplify the management of your storage networking fabrics as you accelerate productivity, increase scale, and optimize storage networking investment.

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Meet Storage Experts Blogger Mike Geroche, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, HPE

Mike is a storage network engineer on the data infrastructure technical marketing engineer team at HPE.  His experience includes Fibre Channel and Ethernet transports specialized for storage traffic.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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