Creating a 3PAR document bundle

This guest post by Armin Kerl (Cali) shows three different methods you can use to create a document bundle for your 3PAR.  Lets take a look at the first method:

Service Processor 4.x

Here is a quick tip for 3PAR users that have a Service Processor 4.x. version.

Creating document bundle using the 3PAR service processot

1 Login into the Service Processor Web Site

2 Now Select: Files > Files > Your serial number > Config > Download the most recent File

3 Rename the File to My3PARDoc.html

Service Processor 5.x

1 Login into the Service Processor Web Site

2 Now Select: General > Files and set the filter Type = Collection (CONFIG)

3 Select the latest file and choose Actions > Download

3 Rename the File to My3PARDoc.html

That is all, you just got a full documentation set for your 3PAR.

StoreFront Remote

If you enable 3PAR for call home, there are additional ways:

First is HPE InfoSight

1 Login with your HPE Passport Account.

2 If you have not mapped the 3PAR with your Account, do this by “Register Systems”.Once done wait for 1-2 Days. Then InfoSight > Infrastructure > 3PAR StoreServ > Systems should show the 3PAR Systems.

Register 3PAR with InfoSight

3 Select the 3PAR and on the right Side Actions > “Create PDF”

Creating document bundle using StoreFront remote

StoreVista

The next method uses StoreVista

Here you can generate some reports that the system mailed to you on one-time or regular basis. Be sure to Read the Instructions in the Download Section

StoreVista document bundle method

 

 

3PAR & InfoSight

InfoSIght is now available for 3PAR to get up and running check out my 3PAR and InfoSight Setup Guide

Whilst at HPE Discover I managed to nab some screenshots of the new 3PAR implementation of InfoSight. You can read my post about all the InfoSight announcements.

To get InfoSight up and running with 3PAR  you will need a have a minimum of 3PAR OS version 2.2.x and Service Processor (SP) version 2.4.2, since this is a very old release this should allow most customers access. If however you wish to have the the integration with VMware the requirements are a little more stringent you need to be running 3PAR OS 3.3.1, have an active support contract and have the 3PAR communicating back to base and a service processor on 5.0 MU3. The initial release, available in January will focus on delivering greater insight into the performance of VM’s on the storage.  This is achieved by adding additional functionality to the Service Processor which will allow it to talk to the vCentre in your environment.  Once you have your 3PAR setup with InfoSight you will see two key areas of information, storage information which today will be the same as information being retrieved from StoreFront remote. Secondly you will see the virtualisation layer info being pulled back from vCentre.

Screenshots

Below is the screenshots I managed to gather of InfoSight with 3PAR:

Key host storage performance stats – IOPS, latency and throughput

3PAR InfoSight Storage Performance

More typical storage related information

3PAR Storefront Remote

High level VM overview

3PAR InfoSight VM overview

The following screens allow “noisy neighbour analysis”. They look at various stats to identify which VMs are working your environment the hardest and potentially causing contention in the environment.

Top VMs by latency and IOPs

InfoSight VM IO Contention

Top VMs by CPU usage

Top VM by CPU Useage

Top VMs by data usage

Top VM by data useage

This menu shows all the contention reports available

Seen the 3PAR simulator video setup guide?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3PAR InfoSight

Discover News – InfoSight Comes to 3PAR and gets AI

HPE Discover is due to kick off in Madrid next week and HPE have continued their current tradition of releasing all the big news before the show.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend a few Discovers now and I have noticed some interesting trends in the type of announcements. Previously it was all about physical products, what were the newest models what were the hardware innovations in these products. This year all the key announcements are software based and focus on enhancing user experience.

InfoSight

Ironically for many years whilst storage systems stored lots of data on them, the data analytics for managing the systems was somewhat lacklustre. Data was gathered from these systems and sent back to base but it was a simple affair which alerted you to failed components such as a disk. Nimble Storage saw a unique opportunity in this area and acted upon it by developing their class leading InfoSight analytics platform.

Like other storage systems Nimble sends data home, but where things get different are in the breadth of statistics collected and what happens to them once they are sent back to base. Nimble realised that by taking the data from their entire install base and then using machine learning against this, insights could be developed to predict issues before they even occur. I have two impressive stats to back this up; 86% of issues are being detected and fixed before the customer even knows about it and 54% of issues resolved are outside of storage. This ability to diagnose issues outside of storage closed what Nimble termed the app data gap.

InfoSight adds AI

The first major announcement from HPE Discover is that InfoSight is now able to utilise AI. We discussed previously how Nimble had built a cloud analytics platform from all the data that was being sent home. InfoSight was able to analyse and predict future patterns using machine learning. The introduction of AI allows this to be taken to the next level by enabling more complex issues to be automatically addressed.

Recommendations will go beyond simple problem prevention to include resource optimisations, ensuring you getting the most from your system. Again this is not just for the storage itself but the whole ecosystem for example it may recommend the movement of a VM to a different volume. The name of this new AI functionality “AI recommendation engine” clearly indicates its future direction for further automation.

You can see more about the AI capabilities in the video below:

InfoSight comes to 3PAR

The second piece of InfoSight news is that it is coming to 3PAR. 3PAR has always had a rich amount of telemetry being sent home but up until now it has arguably not been fully utilised. But of course lots of data without the tools to interpret and act upon it is not much use and this is what InfoSight has enabled.

3PAR InfoSight

Like the Nimble system before it InfoSight on 3PAR will not just report on the storage itself but down to the application level. To benefit from InfoSight on 3PAR you need to be running 3PAR OS 3.3.1 have an active support contract and of course have your 3PAR configured to dial home.

Wrap-up

The Nimble AI recommendations and 3PAR InfoSight are both free for customers with a active support contract and are expected in January 2018

I’m sure that the HPE engineering team are working at a furious pace to get InfoSight out across to as many products, as quickly as possible. It’s clear to see that improved analytics would not only reduce operational issues but that the introduction of AI driven resource recommendations will drive the move to an automated data centre. It seems obvious that automated resource allocation recommendations would fit in nicely with Synergy where the ability to spin up and down workloads dynamically could then be orchestrated intelligently.

Looks like that acquisition of Nimble is paying off already.