12-27-21 | Blog Post
Today’s digital technologies and high-performing applications need fast and reliable storage solutions to support their data needs. Cybercrime, hardware failures, human error, and natural disasters also pose a threat to data security. IT professionals need to ensure that storage systems can maintain high levels of performance and availability to meet data demands while protecting business-critical data from data loss and other security threats.
Storage monitoring systems help IT personnel to identify and resolve issues in real-time and provide historical insights into storage activity that can aid allocation of resources, reveal problem areas, and fine-tune storage resources for better performance.
Even fail-safe storage systems can let you down. Nothing lasts forever. At some point, the device will fail. A storage system disaster can *threaten the existence of a company in the business environment. An effective storage monitoring solution can alert you to potential problems in your storage systems to prevent irrecoverable loss of data.
Storage monitoring helps administrators evaluate, monitor, and manage the health and performance of virtual, cloud-based, and on-premise storage systems. With a storage monitoring system, IT administrators can monitor the health and performance of the multiple storage components supporting an organization’s applications and systems. Storage monitoring solutions allow administrators to predict, diagnose, and resolve issues related to the storage environment.
Storage monitoring tools provide advanced diagnostic and troubleshooting features that give information on device configuration, performance status, and network traffic. Some solutions store network information in a database for further analysis as well as monitor backup hardware, applications, and servers to help administrators identify and remedy backup and restore.
Using a storage monitoring solution helps you to stay informed of issues related to business-critical applications and storage allocation.
Finding the source of a performance bottleneck can be challenging. When multiple applications and systems depend on data storage devices, it’s difficult to pinpoint if a performance issue is storage-related or is caused by some other component.
By using a storage monitoring solution, you can review several performance metrics to evaluate your storage devices and diagnose storage performance problems
CPU Utilization is the percentage of processing unit time used by processes on the systems. Low CPU usage (under 50 percent) could show that the processor is waiting for the storage system to complete application requests.
Latency is a measurement of how quickly input/output requests are processed. Latency can occur if there is a high level of data fragmentation on the drive or if a system, e.g. database, is accessing an extensive amount of data. Lower latency means that an I/O operation takes less time, resulting in faster performance.
I/O Operations per second(IOPS) measures the maximum** number of read/write operations that occur per second to a storage device. When combined with latency measurements, IOPS can show whether your storage system is under strain. A higher IOPS suggests better performance, but a steady reading could mean that your storage is under stress and needs to be upgraded.
Queue depth is the number of I/O requests waiting to be read or written to the disk during a specific interval. High-performance demands can cause higher latency, which then adds to the number of queued requests.
Key Elements of IT Storage Monitoring Include
Storage systems, whether used for active data, backups or archiving, are a repository for an organization’s data. A storage solution uses physical resources like servers, disks, or virtual storage and resides in on-premise data centers, the cloud, or hybrid environments. Storage monitoring tools look for, collect and review data associated with a company’s various storage systems and use the data to identify problems and record and communicate the details of the problem.
Storage management receives the information about the problem, evaluates its impact, and determines the best solution for resolving the problem.
An effective storage monitoring solution is an integral part of storage management. Both storage monitoring and storage management are essential elements of a productive and profitable business.
Evaluated Capacity: the ability to evaluate storage capacity allows a business to ensure that there are enough resources available to support business needs and optimal performance.
Increased Visibility: with a unified view of underlying storage elements, infrastructure, dependencies, and data flow, IT teams can better understand the overall health status and performance of all storage components.
Troubleshooting: storage monitoring allows you to detect and resolve issues faster to prevent performance dips and minimize downtime.
Increased Performance and Availability: a storage monitoring solution ensures that storage resources and business-critical data are always available and performing at the highest levels.
Performance Metrics: track performance metrics across storage devices to aid with monitoring and diagnosis. Use performance trends to fine-tune settings to improve resource usage and optimize performance.
Organizations are now producing enormous amounts of data, making it harder to manage and monitor storage solutions. With an increasing variety of storage services, devices, and vendors available, you need a storage monitoring solution that makes it simple to manage your storage resources and keep your data safe.
Otava Backup as a Service (BaaS) provides unified monitoring and reporting across on-premise, cloud, and virtual storage. Built-in analytics help you resolve common backup and misconfiguration problems while capacity planning and forecasting help you manage your storage needs. Backing up your data to the cloud also allows you to protect your data from accidental deletion, natural disasters, and human error while supporting greater flexibility to expand storage capacity as demand increases.
Contact us to find out how Otava can help you manage and protect your data.
