Brief product description
BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize integrates all products that use IBM Spectrum Virtualize software into the BVQ infrastructure end-to-end monitoring. From a hardware point of view, these are the products around the IBM SAN Volume Controller SVC, IBM Storwize and IBM Flash System. In the BVQ end-to-end infrastructure, these products can be monitored with the system health map, end-to-end monitoring, reporting and analysis are also available. With the integration into the end-to-end infrastructure of BVQ, questions can be clarified, like for example how individual VMs load the storage system, whether problems in the SAN affect the storage system or whether storage problems affect other systems.
BVQ for IBM Spectrum virtualize is part of the BVQ overall product. A more detailed description of BVQ can be found here:
BVQ Base Product and BVQ spec sheet
Supported IBM Spectrum Virtualize products and licensing
BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize supports SAN Volume Controller, Flash and Storwize productse
Details here: e
System type BVQ support Comment SAN Volume Controller (SVC, except SA2/SV2) any IBM Storwize V7000U yes IBM Storwize V3500 yes IBM Storwize V5000 Gen1 yes IBM Storwize V7000 Gen1 IBM FlashSystem V840 yesmin. BVQ version Licensing
based onyes TiB any Enclosure
IBM Storwize V3700any Enclosure
IBM Storwize V5000 Gen2any Enclosure
V5010, V5020, V5030
IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2yes any Enclosure
IBM FlashSystem V9000any Enclosure IBM FlashSystem FS840
IBM FlashSystem FS900yes any Enclosure no performance stats gathered IBM FlashSystem FS91xx yes 5.5 Enclosure / TiB IBM FlashSystem FS92xx yes 6.1.3 Enclosure / TiB IBM Storwize V5000 Gen3 yes 5.7.2 Enclosure V5010E, V5030E, V5100 SVC model SA2/SV2 yes 6.1.3 TiB IBM FlashSystem FS92xx yes 6.1.3 Enclosure / TiB
Spectrum Virtualize (SVC) & Storwize Code version BVQ support BVQ version Comment / Limits <7.6.0.0 not supported Out of IBM support (BVQ support on special request) 5.6.2 → current Versions which are not mentioned above are considered as 'not supported'. IBM FlashSystem FS840 / FS900 Code version BVQ support BVQ version Comment / Limits Tejas performance stats currently not gathered Versions which are not mentioned above are considered as 'not supported'. N/A 7.6.0.0 → 7.6.1.8 supported 4.0 → current Toleration support - Support of new V7.6 Feature: DRAID integrated in 4.1 7.7.0.0 → 7.7.0.5 supported 4.1.1 → current Toleration support - Support of new V7.7 Features: NPIV Hosts, IO throttling planned for H2 2020 7.7.1.1 → 7.7.1.9 supported 5.0.1 → current Toleration support - Support of new V7.7.1 Feature: Host groups planned for later release 7.8.0.0 → 7.8.0.2 supported 5.0.2 → current Toleration support - Support of new V7.8 Features: Cloud tiering planned for later release 7.8.1.0 → 7.8.1.12 supported 5.2.7 → current Toleration support - Support of new V7.8.1 Feature: Port congestion stats integrated in 5.5 8.1.0.0 → 8.1.0.2 supported 5.4 → current Toleration support - Support of new V8.1.0 Feature: Hot spare node planned for H2 2020 8.1.1.0 → 8.1.1.2 supported 5.4 → current Toleration support - Support of new V8.1.1 Feature: Thin-Provisioned MDisks planned for H2 2019 8.1.2.0 → 8.1.2.1 supported 5.5 → current Toleration support - Support of new V8.1.2 Feature: Data Reduction Pool integrated in 5.6.3 8.1.3.0 → 8.1.3.6 supported 5.5 → current Toleration support - Support of new V8.1.3 Feature: Deduplication integrated in 5.6.3 8.2.0.0 → 8.2.0.4 supported 5.5.3 → current Support for FS9100 & V7000, no new relevant Features in V8.2.0.0 8.2.1.0 → 8.2.1.11 supported Toleration support - Support of new V8.2.1 Features: NVMe + others planned for H2 2020 8.3.0.0 → 8.3.0.3 supported 5.7.1 → current Toleration support 8.3.1.0 → 8.3.1.2 supported 6.1.0 → current All other on request N/A
Please contact us in this case! We reserve the time to test new versions internally first.1.3.0.2 → 1.3.0.9 supported 4.0 → 5.4.0 1.4.0.7 → 1.4.0.10 supported 4.0 → 5.4.0 1.4.3.0 supported 4.0 → 5.4.0 1.4.4.0 → 1.4.6.1 supported 4.0 → 5.4.0 1.4.7.0 supported 5.4.1 → current 1.4.8.0 supported 5.4.1 → current 1.5.1.0 → 1.5.1.2 supported 5.4.1 → current 1.5.2.0 → 1.5.2.6 supported 5.4.1 → current 1.6.1.0 → 1.6.1.1 supported 5.4.1 → current All other on request N/A
Please contact us in this case! We reserve the right to test unknown versions internally first.
BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize licensing
BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize is licensed by capacity. We offer license packs of 10TiB. Please contact your SVA sales representative for pricing information.
Details here: License information
BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize data collection
BVQ collects data from the IBM Spectrum Virtualize environment for visualization and analyzing purposes. The collected information consists of capacity, topology, performance and event data. BVQ scan the IBM Spectrum Virtualize environment by reading the already available performance data from the SVC nodes and retrieves topology information using the SVC CLI. The connection between BVQ & IBM Spectrum Virtualize is secured via HTTPS, so no data is sent without encryption. The collected data is stored in the authentication protected BVQ database.
Typical scan intervals for IBM Spectrum Virtualize platform are between 1 min and 5 min.
More base information about BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize
We have a lot of valuable information in our BVQ Release Notes.
You will find more interesting detail information here.
BVQ features and functions
Typical BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize use cases
Finding answers to the following questions:
- How healthy is my storage? Do I have risks, do I exceed limit values?
- How does my storage interact with the infrastructure, are servers or networks overloaded and cause problems e.g. at application level?
- How strong is the current utilization, when does it have to be expanded?
- How is the load distribution? Can I improve utilization by redistributing?
- How available is my data? Are the data mirrors & remote connections working? Can I adhere to the specified RPO?
- How will the storage behave when more load is added?
- Are there any risks or optimization potential that I have overlooked?
End-to-end infrastructure use case
- Which VMs are using my storage?
- Which SAN ports are loaded by a special server IO?
- Is the communication between cluster node free of SAN blockage?
General BVQ Use cases
ITSM systems use BVQ because it has access to all data and is strong in communication. This reduces the development times and costs for connecting and maintaining these systems.
General application scenarios:
- Fully automated infrastructure analysis
BVQ continuously monitors all connected systems and reports deviations and problems. Violations of best practice, configuration rules or self-defined threshold values are recognized and reported immediately. The results are displayed on just one screen using the BVQ System Health map. BVQ is delivered with a large number of tests that only need to be switched on.
- Easy-to-use monitoring and efficient reporting
BVQ has a browser interface for monitoring and reporting.There are reports or dashboards for all platforms that can be used immediately. So you can start working immediately and achieve important results.
- Deep problem analysis with the BVQ GUI
If you find performance bottlenecks in monitoring or alerting that are not easy to explain, use the BVQ Analysis GUI to start a deeper root cause analysis. The BVQ Analysis GUI is well prepared for this task because it allows you to quickly discover the problem areas and easily jump between the layers of one or more systems. Drill-downs allow the analyst to go deeper and deeper to find a problem causer. Drill-ups help him to visualize the effects of a problem. End-to-end analysis makes it easy to determine if problems are due to misbehavior in the system itself or to other systems. One of the great strengths of the BVQ Analysis GUI is that it displays the results of many objects simultaneously on a single chart to speed up the analysis process. The results of several 100 or 1000 objects can be visualized in seconds to find outliers. Another great strength of the GUI analysis is that it automatically keeps track of the topology so that drill-downs and drill-ups do not give false results. With this feature, you can also easily switch between systems, such as VMware to the storage or the SAN network to start an end-to-end analysis. - BVQ connect module for the ITSM infrastructure connection
The REST interface allows to use the BVQ results in applications like Splunk, Elastic, ServiceNow, Power BI or SAP BI and many more. The REST interface is easy to use and dramatically reduces the development effort and data volumes in the connected systems by providing results in tabular form or as chat data. The full strength of BVQ can be used, such as End-to-end relations, all metrics, means or peak values or aggregations at all levels.
Tools and definitions included in the scope of delivery
BVQ comes with many tools and pre-defined definitions so you can get started right after the installation. These tools include analysis favorites, monitoring dashboards, reports and prepared alert templates, and probes for the Systems Health map.
Solution packages included in BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize
- Accounting support for BVQ Spectrum Virtualize platform
- Copy Services Support for BVQ Spectrum Virtualize Platform
- SLM support for BVQ Spectrum Virtualize platform
- opt. Global Mirror Change Volume monitoring and analysis
Systems Health map support and alerting templates for IBM Spectrum Virtualize
These results are based on a large number of system tests already included in the delivery of BVQ.
The BVQ Systems Health Map is integrated in the BVQ Server in the overview page of the entire BVQ system and can be accessed via a web interface
It collects the results of all system tests and, depending on their status, displays red, green or yellow. Optimization potentials are displayed in blue.
The results are topologically aggregated so that one can derive an overall statement about the system and its components via the individual statements.
Pict.: Image section from the BVQ Systems Health Map.
The Systems Health Map is interactive and can be set with simple mouse clicks to exactly the level you are interested in.
In another presentation the Systems Health Map is not organized topologically but thematically. This is especially helpful if you want to group organizational units or risk priorities.
The Systems Health Map is currently shipped with a large number of prepared probes and can be extended with specialized, custom-tailored alerts.
The System Health map is a constantly updated analysis of the overall system and can be used by the administrator as a daily task list to constantly improve the system and eliminate risks.
But one can also see the Systems Health Map as an attractive representation of a wallboard (monitor on the wall of the data center) where you can see at a glance how good the current system status of the monitored IT infrastructure is.
The Systems health map can be easily configured and put into operation. Alerts delivered with the Systems Health Map can be toggled on or off with a button or customized.
included best practice tests, typically have no additional parameters where the ranges of performance limit can easily be customized in tabular form.
Pict.: The configuration of the Systems Health Map is very clear and simple.
The included system tests are turned on or off. The parametrization is carried out in a table.
In addition occurring System Health map statuses can be sent as notification or written in freely definable log files. Access via REST interface allows systems such as ServiceNow, Nagios, ELK, Kibana, Splunk, ... to actively use the System Health Map data.
System Alerts for the BVQ systems health map
In total, more than 250 alerts are available for the Systems Health map today. These alerts are fully defined and can still be adjusted using parameters in the Predefined alert section of the BVQ server
The Systems Health map for this platform includes alerts from the following areas:
- System limits
- Configuration
- License compliance
- Status
- Capacity
- Performance
- Transmission
Alerting templates to create detailed alerts
More detailed alerting can be set up via alerting templates or using the free definition of alerts.
The alerting templates are very easy to use and are filled out using dialogue system. With these templates you can tailor alerts in many ways to the current environment.
For more special and complex alerts use the advanced editor in the custom rules area of the BVQ Server. The SVA Service Team can support you with creating complex alerts.
Monitoring for IBM Spectrum Virtualize
The interface is very powerful and allows access to all measured values in different groupings.
Pict. : BVQ monitoring via a browser. BVQ uses the very common Grafana for the Monitoring Interface.
This makes it very easy to operate BVQ monitoring in conjunction with existing monitoring.
Grafana is part of the BVQ Installation process and can be installed optionally. For all layers and platforms pre-prepared dashboards are delivered with the installation and Grafana .
It is always possible to create your own dashboards. The implementation is clearly displayed in our online documentation.
We are available for targeted training according to your requirements. Special dashboards can be created by us as a service measure.
Monitoring dashboards are always updated and extended.
Starting with the Entry Edition, you can design your own dashboards or adapt the existing dashboards.
- Available dashboards
SVC - All clusters overview
This dashboard displays central metrics from SVC and Storwize nodes. It is recommended that this dashboard is used for all clusters of the complete installation.
SVC- Cluster performance overview
This dashboard provides an overview of a Storwize or SVC cluster
- SVC - MDisk detail ... — This dashboard displays performance metrics of several selected MDisk.
- SVC - Node detail .. — This dashboard displays central node metrics from SVC and Storwize nodes.
- SVC - VDisk detail ... — This dashboard displays tables and performance metrics of several selected MDisk groups and VDisks.
SVC - Cluster capacity overview
Displays the essential capacity information with additional information on the efficiency of SEV and compression.
- SVC - MDisk group capacity detail — Displays the essential capacity information with additional information on the efficiency of SEV and compression for several MDisk groups
SVC - VDisk to virtual machine
This dashboard provides an overview of the SVC VDisk performance and the related VMware Virtual machine performance on different levels
BVQ for IBM Spectrum Virtualize also provides in depth Global Mirror Change Volume (GMCV) monitoring and analysis
Reporting for IBM Spectrum Virtualize
This means you can quickly implement general and very specific reporting requirements.
Pict.: Two examples of reports that were generated with different methods.
Reporting via BVQ Reporting engine and via external data access through Excel.
These reports can be created in the background as an HTML or PDF file. Reports can be sent by mail after creation, or you can use an HTML link that refers to the latest report at any time.
With these you can easily incorporate reporting into the corporate communication.
BVQ ships with prepared reports for Storage, SAN and VMware. The creation of own reports is possible and explained in our online documentation.
There is also the possibility of training or creating special reports as a service.
Reports are always updated and extended.
Starting with the Entry Edition, you can design your own reports or adapt the existing reports.
- Available reports
SRS Performance report
This report is covering average IO rate (IO/s) aggregated by volumes or MDisks, grouped by SVC/Storwize system, pool or storage system.
Cluster capacity report
Capacity report covering current and historical allocatable, allocated, unallocated and virtual as well as licensed capacity (TiB) grouped by SVC Clusters and MDisk groups.
SRS capacity report
This report is covering current allocated and virtual capacity (GiB) grouped by SVC/Storwize system, pool or storage system.
Backend Storage Capacity Report
Capacity report for backend storage providing objects like SVC cluster, disk controller, disk type and disk array, reporting their current allocated and unallocated capacity (TiB) and their number of arrays and disks.
Accounting report
Accounting report covering current cost (€), real and virtual capacity (GiB) and 7d average IO rate (IO/s) grouped by the business organizational units: BVQ Cost center, Application group, Application and VDisk group.
Analytic favorites for IBM Spectrum Virtualize
The Expert GUI provides access to a very large number of metrics that can be used in various combinations and hierarchies. Special features of this GUI are an extremely high level of interactivity and performance in the analysis analysis and an extremely fast representation of large series of measurements.
For example, the GUI allows you to render 1000s of volumes or VMs on a chart in a very short time.
This is very important because it allows you to spot outliers in no time and the speed of analysis is high.
Pict.: The analysis GUI offers prepared analysis dashboards with which most problem cases can be solved directly.
A goal in the BVQ analysis is to make problems visible at a glance. To achieve this special analysis dashboards have been developed, which are included in the scope of delivery. These dashboards cover most problem cases and are clearly documented in the product.
Interactivity is a top priority in the BVQ Expert GUI. It is always possible to branch from a measured value to the entire topology via drill down or drill up. BVQ takes the lead here and assists the user when traveling through the data, in the form, that correct objects are always selected automatically.
This speeds up the work of the analyst and reduces potential errors and misinterpretations.
In the case of multiple platforms or infrastructure layers, BVQ enables seamless movement between the worlds. This makes very complex analyzes, such as to visualize the load of individual storage volumes through operations in VMs, at the push of a button (see section True End to End Analysis)
During installation, you are introduced into the use of the analysis GUI. In-depth analysis training can be added on demand.
Analyzes can become very complex. For this reason, a special analysis can also be requested as a service of SVA. Typical analyzes are problem analyzes, health checks or planning analyzes.
The way how to use favorites and some of the major favorites are explained in more detail in the BVQ quick start guide.
The favorites tree consists of the areas.
- General Section: Topology and performance overview
- Analysis Section: Favorites used from experts for deeper analysis
- Table View Section: Tables for all objects. These can be used for reporting or the REST interface.
List of included analysis favorites
The analysis favorites are shown here as a list, the details of which can be opened if you are a customer and have access to the detailed BVQ documentation.
Otherwise the names of the analysis favorites are very meaningful and give a good impression of the possible applications.
- Folder: SVC
- Folder: Alerts & Events
- Folder: BVQ Alerts
- Folder: Events
- Folder: Analysis
- Folder: Performance
- Folder: Capacity
- Folder: Configuration
- Folder: Tiering
- Folder: HA & DR
- Folder: Provisioning
- Folder: SVC SAN analysis
- Folder: Table views
- Folder: Storage consumer
- Folder: Virtualization layer
- Folder: Storage provider Frontend
- Folder: Storage provider Backend
- Folder: Ports
- Folder: Copy services
- Folder: Localities