BVQ Service as perfect addition
BVQ system experts from our partners or from SVA own high experience in analysis and best practices for IBM storage systems. Also, the so-called 'Storage Health Check' is offered with BVQ, representing a very deep analysis of the current memory situation. For complex storage bottlenecks the BVQ team is at your disposal to determine the cause and to find a solution quickly.
New and innovative service concepts
In many cases, a monthly report including all important information about the storage situation is sufficient. Then, a cost-effective service is offered by BVQ which creates and provides a clearly organized monthly report based on measurement data obtained from SVC. The special feature here: thereby historical performance data is archived for a longer period archived, which can also be used later for performance analysis.
Typical forms of analysis
Analysis can be a very broad term - a distinction can be roughly made between planned and unplanned analyses. Unplanned analysis is a critical bottleneck examination, where it is important to respond in a short time to eliminate the bottleneck. The planned analysis can be divided into regular technical Health Checks or Storage Expansion Analyses. With the help of a Health Check the performance of the storage is tested to make improvements in the case of need. With a Storage Expansion Analysis the measured performance needs are compared with an assessment for the planned future storage-expansion. Here, the goal is to find the best cost-optimal storage configuration possible.
Monitoring and Analysis Service
This is conceivable as the most innovative form of a monitoring / reporting service, which also offers in-depth performance analysis of storage environments. Often storage environments are...
One Shot Analysis
In the One Shot Analysis data is collected by an offline scanner and analyzed in our laboratory. The results can then be presented in the form of a workshop. The One Shot Analysis assumes no installed BVQ and can only detect...
Health Check Service
Regularly health checks are a recommended pro-active service for each BVQ supported SVC / Storwize environment. A storage expert checks the systems twice a year to detect issues before they become problems.
Storage Expansion Analysis
With the storage expansion analysis, the best storage mix can be determined to meet future requirements at optimal costs. Our experience shows that...
Remote Service
For the Remote Service SVA-specialists access the locally installed BVQ by using a permanently connected remote access to perform necessary monitoring and analysis...
Storage expansion analysis (BVQ base analysis service)
With the storage expansion analysis, the best storage mix can be determined to meet future requirements at optimal costs. Our experience shows that without any preparatory analysis often storage is purchased at too high performance level. For this reason, this analysis is recommended before each storage expansion.
Example:
- BVQ health check service brochure
- Storage cost savings potentials with BVQ — Describes the cost saving factors with BVQ - this is the BVQ ROI document
- BVQ Use Case: cost effective storage planning — This whitepaper shows how you can use BVQ analysis to exactly determine which kind of storage you need for a specific environment
- Reduction of storage cost made easy — Practical examples which show how BVQ helped to reduce storage cost
Health check service (BVQ base analysis service)
Regularly health checks are a recommended pro-active service for each BVQ supported SVC / Storwize environment. A storage expert checks the systems twice a year to detect issues before they become problems. Regular health checks lower the need for problem analysis. A health check presupposes an installed BVQ at customer side. A health check can be performed as One Shot Analysis Service when no BVQ is installed.
Information:
Problem analysis service (BVQ base analysis service)
This is a special, unscheduled service to analyze performance problems and for planning countermeasures. A bottleneck problem causes costs and trouble until it is solved. With the Problem Analysis Service, a BVQ specialist can access the local BVQ server by remote connection to start an analysis immediately. Other options are the partial transfer of the last measurement period to our laboratory or an on-site visit to perform an analysis. A special form of Problem Analysis Service is the One Shot Analysis.
Examples:
- BVQ health check service brochure
- Storwize V7000 & BVQ customer success story: "Let us make this Storwize run faster!"
Volumes of an RHEV environment performed very poor. In this case the reason was compression which slowed down the performance capabilities of this high performance environment. This doc describes the whole process from analysis until solution with added SSDs for Easy Tier. - Performance bottleneck analysis on IBM SVC and IBM Storwize V7000
Customer example: performance bottleneck due to MDG cache overflow. The following document shows how to find the root cause and with it the volume, which caused the overflow. Also included is SAN (node port) analysis and node plus global cache analysis. - Analyze a SVC, Storwize metro / global mirror performance problem
Use the BVQ Structured Performance Problem Analysis Method to find the root cause of a metro mirror latency peak.
... more here
One Shot Analysis
A one shot analysis can be used for any of the 3 base analysis services. The One Shot Analysis uses the BVQ offline scanner to collect data which will then be sent to the next BVQ service point for analysis. The One Short Analysis comes with a 3 months BVQ license and in this time frame subsequent scans can be made to find recommendations, implement them and watch the effect to the system. A disadvantage using the One Shot Analysis for solving performance problems is, that one either has to reproduce the problem or wait until it happens again.
BVQ Monitoring and Analysis Service
The BVQ Monitoring and Analysis Service gives an overview of the current performance and capacity utilization of the storage the SAN or the VMware environment. In addition, the collected data will allow deeper analysis.
The service is offered in two versions, the Basic Service and Premium Service. The basic service records 14 days of data that can be used for analysis. The premium service has longer recording periods and can be adapted to the wishes of the customer. In addition, the Premium Service includes SAN and a reporting component, in which an SVA service employee creates reports for the customer once a month and provides explanation to the customer if required.
Details:
Remote service
Specialist of our partners or SVA can easily access BVQ by using a permanently connected remote access to perform necessary monitoring and analysis steps.
Please contact us to talk about needed services.
Contact us: to start a BVQ Health Check
Analysis
- Ad hoc Analysis
An engineer will do this analysis together with you. There is no further preparation from our side
The content of this analysis is: Health Check for SVC and Storwize
To conduct this kind of quick analysis, BVQ has to collect at least 4 days of data.
Please send us an email for scheduling support
mailto:bvq@sva.de - Complete health check analysis
This analysis needs two days of preparation and is going much deeper into other sections.- Capacity and usage analysis for investigation of the following points:
Free space in the managed disk groups.
Is the performance of your managed disk groups suitable to support 100% capacity usage of the groups?
Is striping in managed disk groups well balanced?
Are all servers connected correctly? - Storage Tier analysis: in what kind of storage should be invested when capacity has to be expanded?
Often it is astonishing that often high performance capacities have not to be increased.
Just shift low performing volumes to cheaper storage and invest in this class for more capacity!
This analysis will not provide a list of volumes because things can change.
It will give you a more precise knowledge how you should invest in the future - Storage efficiency analysis
How well is your Thin Provisioning and/or compression working? - Easy Tier analysis
How effective is Easy Tier working in your environment? - More analysis points on special request
- Capacity and usage analysis for investigation of the following points:
Preparation
- Today we use the BVQ offline scanner for the BVQ health check
The new BVQ Offline Scanner - PoC installation
English: Find more regarding a PoC license - Download BVQ software and prerequisite software from the BVQ server
English: Releases - Install TeamViewer for remote access
Download TeamViewer from www.teamviewer.com- You can install TeamViewer on the BVQ server if this server can be accessed via the Internet.
In this way we can access the BVQ server directly. - You can install TeamViewer on any system (laptop, workstation) which can run a RDP session to access the BVQ server.
This is done if the BVQ server is in a lab environment and not accessible via the Internet.
The BVQ server will then be accessed via the open RDP session on this workstation. - To connect to your system the ID and password is needed.
The password normally changes on every start of TeamViewer.
SVA has a full license for TeamViewer.
- You can install TeamViewer on the BVQ server if this server can be accessed via the Internet.
Installation
- Do it by yourself
Installation manuals can be found in the support pages.
For a complete installation a valid BVQ license is needed- please finish this step before you start!
English: Releases - Request installation support (approx. 1h)
Please ask for support via:
mailto:bvq@sva.de - If you are also interested in testing BVQ a first training session can be provided (approx. 1h)
Please ask for a training session via:
mailto:bvq@sva.de
Thank you for your interest in BVQ!
We are pleased that you are interested in BVQ and would like to help you take the next step.
You have to contact us before you can start a POC.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU PLEASE CONTACT US NOW!
- Please use our online form to contact us:
https://www.bvq-software.de/en/contact/ - We want that you get the most out of the BVQ POC, therefore, we will support you whilst the POC is running.
Find details in the BBQ POC process document.
BVQ POC process
THANK YOU!
- To start with a BVQ POC installation, you will need a POC license - please send the following information to bvq@sva.de, so we can create a license for you.
- Prepare a Windows server which can also be a VMware guest system,
BVQ server requirements & supported environments - BVQ installation is easy. Just download the newest BVQ version (all in one package) and follow the BVQ POC installation - step by step
If you need help we will support you in the BVQ POC process (read about the installation event) - BVQ is easy to use - the output from BVQ is very detailed - we will provide you an introduction in how to interpret the results including tips and tricks and 3 more workshop sessions
BVQ POC process (read title called "content of workshop sessions)