Sneak Peek – StoreServ Management Console (SSMC)

Last week at HP Discover HP announced the successor to the current 3Par Management Console as the StoreServ Management Console (SSMC).  The SSMC is a from the ground up redesign, and as the admin console is somewhere sysadmins will be spending a good amount of their time I wanted to take a look at it today with some screenshots.

Login Screen

_00_SSMC 2_Login_1680x1050_300dpi

The SSMC is accessed via a web browser, the above screen show the new login screen, straight away you see this is a much more modern and fresh look compared to the 3Par Management Console.

 

Once logged in you will arrive at the dashboard screen.  The purpose of this screen is to give you a high level view of the status and health of your complete environment.  Up to 16 3Par StoreServ systems can be connected to a single instance of SSMC.

Dashboard

The look of the console is to be kept common across HP systems including One View for consistency.  I went to look at the MoonShot system at HP Discover and noticed this was also using the same style of interface.

Working from the top left of the dashboard you first see the number of 3Par systems connected to your SSMC and their status. Next to the right you see the performance status of the connected systems and then all the other donuts are related to capacity. To create thresholds for alerts relating to performance the new CLI command createsralertcrit must be used.

The status of an item is indicated using a colour coding system:

  • Green – no alerts
  • Yellow – there is an alert that should be investigated further
  • Red – immediate action is required

You can click on any item to drill down further, so for example if you clicked on the storage systems area like shown below you would be taken to the systems view where you can see each system individually.  Clicking on a particular segment will just take you to those systems with that status, so for example if you clicked on the green portion of the donut in the below screenshot you would be taken to those systems with a healthy status.

storage systems close up

 

 

Mega Menu

To navigate from the dashboard and indeed between any screen you use the modestly titled Mega Menu

_01_SSMC 2_Megamenu_1680x1050_300dpi

To give you a feel for what’s on the Mega Menu see the close up screenshot below.  You will notice the file persona menu will appear when it’s licenced. Although not all the feature’s of management are in the SSMC, in the longer term the SSMC will be a single stop shop for the management of all features for block, file and object storage. In the short term the 3Par management console will need to be used for functionality such as configuring AO which has not yet been migrated to the SSMC.

mega menu only

Search

Another way to navigate around the system is by using the new global search function.  For example the screenshot below shows that by typing create into the search box you are presented with all the available create options such as create host, create CPG etc.

SSMC2_Search_Create

The search option can also be used to find any item in the StoreServ’s inventory, for example below a user has started to type Win and is being shown all the items that begin with Win.  The search function also remembers previous searches

search 2

Map View

To help to see how items correlate together there is now a map view, the idea is very similar to the map view found in VSphere. The below screen shot shows a map of how the physical components of a system fit together.

map view

Maps can also be used to map the relationship between logical components such as CPG to VV association.

Reporting

System Reporter becomes integrated with 3Par OS 3.1.2 and is on node without the need for an external database.  To accommodate the System Reporter data the 3Par system creates a VV sized according to the model

lvv size

If you do not have a System Reporter licence only real time data can be displayed.

 

Below shows an example of a capacity reporting screen

_05a_SSMC 2_CPG CapacityTooltip_1680x1050_300dpi

Below shows one of the available performance reports, you can zoom into a chart to change the sample time for example from daily to hourly.

_06a_SSMC 2_RealTimePortPerf_Tooltip_1680x1050_300dpi

Availability and Support

The SSMC will be available from mid December and will be available for download from the Software Depot. Access can be from a Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer browser, mobile devices that support Chrome are supported.

The SSMC can be used to manage the seven and ten thousand series. The 3Par will need to be on 3Par OS 3.1.3 or later.

More Information

UPDATE – Since this post was published SSMC 2.1 has been launched, check out this post which details all the new features.  If you want to learn more about SSMC take a look at my beginners guide to SSMC series. To stay in touch with more 3PAR news and tips connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

You can read more information about the announcements from HP Discover here: Part1 and Part2

Plus more information on the SSMC from the following sources:

Blog post from Craig Kilborn

SSMC White Paper

ShortTake 23: 3PAR StoreServ Management Console

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