Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning - Understanding IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center and IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning

58 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning

Figure 3-6 Sample invoice - OS storage by user

3.2 IBM Tivoli SAN Manager

IBM Tivoli SAN Manager helps you manage your resources by providing network

resource discovery and management capabilities. IBM Tivoli SAN Manager is a

comprehensive management solution for multi-vendor SANs, which includes

automatic resource and topology discovery, monitoring and alerts, zone control

and SAN error prediction capabilities.

IBM Tivoli SAN Manager is an enterprise scalable solution architected to ANSI

SAN standards, allowing you to choose best of breed products for your storage

infrastructure.

IBM Tivoli SAN Manager can help you:

򐂰 Simplify the task of SAN management and configuration

򐂰 Ensure SAN availability

򐂰 Improve SAN ROI

Chapter 3. Components 59

Figure 3-7 shows how IBM Tivoli SAN Manager can manage all of your storage

resources, including devices connected to host systems through fiber-based

hubs, bridges, switches, routers, gateways, and directors. IBM Tivoli SAN

Manager also manages any hosts with agents.

Figure 3-7 IBM Tivoli SAN Manager in a storage area network environment

With IBM Tivoli SAN Manager, one system acts as the manager, and one or

more other systems are the managed hosts. The IBM Tivoli SAN Manager

gathers information about the SAN by querying switches and devices for attribute

and topology information. It also gathers host-level information, such as file

systems and mapping to LUNs, and event information detected by host bus

adapters (HBAs).

3.2.1 How is SAN topology information displayed?

IBM Tivoli SAN Manager uses IBM Tivoli NetView to display topology information

and views, and for monitoring devices. IBM Tivoli NetView discovers, displays,

and manages traditional TCP/IP networks.

IBM Tivoli SAN Manager extends this function to the Storage Area Network by

providing a new SAN pull-down menu item, as well as a SAN icon on the

NetView top-level root map. These are shown in Figure 3-8.

Tivoli Storage Area Network Manager

Database

Managed

Host

(Agents)

Managed

Host

(Agents)

Managed

Host

(Agents)

SAN

Enterprise

Storage

Server

FAStT

Storage

Server

60 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning

Figure 3-8 IBM Tivoli SAN Manager — Root menu

IBM Tivoli NetView, as customized with IBM Tivoli SAN Manager, provides a

single integrated platform to manage both traditional IP networks and SANs.

Chapter 3. Components 61

Ways to display the topology

IBM Tivoli SAN Manager presents topology displays in two different ways — the

icon display and the explorer display.

Figure 3-7 on page 59 is an example of an icon display. The explorer display

(named because it is similar to the Windows Explorer file manager), looks like

Figure 3-9.

Figure 3-9 IBM Tivoli SAN Manager — explorer display

Physical topology display

A typical SAN physical topology display is shown in Figure 3-10.

62 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning

Figure 3-10 NetView physical topology display

In the preceding figure, one SAN switch is shown with the hosts and devices

connected to it. All icons are colored green, indicating they are active and

available. Similarly, the connections are black. NetView uses different colors for

devices and connections to indicate their status.

If something happens within the SAN (for example, a port on the switch fails), the

topology will be automatically updated to reflect that event; for example, a link

between the switch and storage device will be colored red while the host system

remains green.

Figure 3-11 shows a switch that has failed (or has been powered off). All links on

the switch are red because the entire switch is down, thus all links are down as

well. The devices 1, 2, 3, and 4 went red. These devices have no Agent on them,

are known to IBM Tivoli SAN Manager only through the switch nameserver, and

are unavailable now that the switch is down.