IBM FlashSystem

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The IBM® FlashSystem family comprises all-Flash storage-array platforms. The platform delivers an active-active dual controller system. Assuming a pair of controller nodes, the active-active controller pair can process I/O for a specific volume through either node.

A FlashSystem control enclosure contains multiple NVMe-attached IBM FlashCore® Modules or other self-encryption NVMe-attached SSD drives. Each control enclosure contains two identical node canisters. A node canister provides host interfaces, management interfaces, and interfaces to the control enclosure. The pair of nodes within a single enclosure is known as an input/output (I/O) group.

Note:

For deployments that include mirrored volumes, Turbonomic discovers the Primary copy, and uses data from that for analysis and to generate actions. It does not discover the Secondary copy.

Prerequisites

  • IBM FlashSystem running on Spectrum Virtualize 8.3.1.2 or later (8.4.2.0 or later recommended)

    To take advantage of significant improvements to the Spectrum Virtualize interface, it is recommended that you use Spectrum Virtualize version 8.4.2.0 or later.

  • A service user account on the FlashSystem controller

    You must configure a user account on the FlashSystem with a Monitor role. This user account must be dedicated to a single Turbonomic instance. To manage one FlashSystem with multiple Turbonomic instances, you must create a different user account for each Turbonomic instance.

IBM FlashSystem permissions

Turbonomic functionality Required permissions
Monitoring Service account with a Monitor role

Considerations

When you configure a FlashSystem target, you should consider:

  • FlashSystem devices under IBM SVC management are not currently supported.

  • Turbonomic does not discover mirrored volumes or child pools.

  • Clusters must consist of a single enclosure.

Adding IBM FlashSystem targets

  1. Click Settings > Target configuration.

  2. On the Target configuration page, click Add Target.

  3. On the Select target page, click IBM FlashSystem.

  4. In the side panel, review the connection requirements and then click Connect Target.

  5. On the Connection overview page, configure the following settings:

    • Hostname or management IP address

      Specify the hostname or management IP address of the FlashSystem cluster.

    • Username

      Specify the username for a dedicated Turbonomic user account on the FlashSystem instance.

    • Password

      Specify the password for the user account that Turbonomic uses to connect to the target.

Entity mapping

After validating your targets, Turbonomic updates the supply chain with the entities that it discovered. The following table describes the entity mapping between the target and Turbonomic.

FlashSystem Turbonomic Description
Volume (VDisk) Storage A logical disk that the system presents to attached hosts. You create Volumes from the extents that are available in the pool.
Pool (MDiskGroup) Logical Pool An allocated amount of capacity that jointly contains all of the data for a specified set of volumes. All MDisks in a pool are split into extents of the same size.
MDisk (Array) Disk Array A logical unit of physical storage. MDisks are not visible to host systems.
System (Enclosure or Controller) Storage Controller A FlashSystem control enclosure.

IBM FlashSystem Cluster targets add Storage Controller, Disk Array, and Logical Pool entities to the supply chain. Logical Pool entities provide Storage entities, which the supply chain stitches to Hypervisor storage (for example, vCenter datastores).

Monitored resources

To discover and monitor resources, Turbonomic uses the Spectrum Virtualize REST interface, and it securely retrieves iostats files from the configuration node.

Turbonomic monitors the following resources:

  • Storage

    • Storage amount

      Storage amount is the measurement of storage capacity that is in use.

    • Storage provisioned

      Storage provisioned is the utilization of the entity's capacity, including overprovisioning.

    • Storage access (IOPS)

      Storage access, also known as IOPS, is the per-second measurement of read and write access operations on a storage entity.

      Note:

      When it generates actions, Turbonomic does not consider IOPS throttling that it discovers on storage entities. Analysis uses the IOPS it discovers on Logical Pool or Disk Array entities.

    • Latency

      Latency is the measurement of storage latency.

  • Logical pool

    • Storage amount

      Storage amount is the measurement of storage capacity that is in use.

    • Storage provisioned

      Storage provisioned is the utilization of the entity's capacity, including overprovisioning.

    • Storage access (IOPS)

      Storage access, also known as IOPS, is the per-second measurement of read and write access operations on a storage entity.

    • Latency

      Latency is the measurement of storage latency.

  • Disk array

    • Storage amount

      Storage amount is the measurement of storage capacity that is in use.

    • Storage provisioned

      Storage provisioned is the utilization of the entity's capacity, including overprovisioning.

    • Storage access (IOPS)

      Storage access, also known as IOPS, is the per-second measurement of read and write access operations on a storage entity.

    • Latency

      Latency is the measurement of storage latency.

  • Storage controller

    • CPU

      CPU is the measurement of CPU that is reserved or in use.

    • Storage amount

      Storage amount is the measurement of storage capacity that is in use.

      The storage allocated to a storage controller is the total of all the physical space available to aggregates managed by that storage controller.

Actions

Turbonomic supports the following actions:

  • Storage controller

    • Provision

      This action is disabled by default.

  • Disk array

    • Resize

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Move

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Provision

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Start

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Suspend

      This action is disabled by default.

  • Logical pool

    • Resize (add or remove MDisk)

      This action is recommended by default.

    • Move

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Provision

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Start

      This action is disabled by default.

    • Suspend

      This action is disabled by default.

  • Storage

    • Delete

      This action is manually executable by default.

    • Resize

      This action is recommended by default.

    • Move

      This action is recommended by default.

    • Provision

      This action is recommended by default.

    • Start

      This action is recommended by default.

    • Suspend

      This action is disabled by default.

  • Virtual machine

    • Storage vMotion

      This action is recommended by default.