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SAN monitoring

Storage area networks (SANs) help reduce network performance issues caused due to storage latency. A high-performing SAN also ensures an exceptional user experience as it helps load applications faster and supports faster data transfer.

Prevent data bottlenecks and cut downtime costs with our unified SAN performance monitoring.

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Comprehensive SAN monitoring tool

A single storage device malfunction might make your organization unable to access essential data correctly. So, monitoring your SAN is vital to ensure that your business continues delivering incredible user experiences without compromise.

Site24x7, an SNMP-based SAN monitoring tool, provides several essential features that make monitoring and managing storage simple and secure.

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Customizable device templates

Manage storage devices from any vendor using prebuilt or custom templates.

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Unified dashboard

View all your storage devices and their metrics from a single, centralized dashboard.

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Maps for easy visualization

Visualize your entire storage environment with mapped views of device status, health, and connectivity.

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In-depth reports

View performance insights as detailed reports and receive them in the channel of your choice.

Monitor any storage device, from any vendor

Site24x7 offers agentless, SNMP-based SAN monitoring for devices across vendors and technologies. Add custom SNMP devices using out-of-the-box or custom templates for any of your devices.

Device Type Examples
RAID storage NetApp FAS2200, EMC Clariion CX3, Hitachi Thunder
NAS Synology, QNAP, Dell EMC Isilon
Tape libraries IBM TS4500, Quantum Scalar
Fabric switches Cisco MDS, Brocade
Storage arrays HPE 3PAR, Pure Storage, IBM FlashSystem

One solution for all your network management needs

Site24x7 is more than just a SAN monitoring tool. It offers a complete suite for end-to-end network management:

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Network traffic analysis

Analyze traffic patterns by conversations, applications, and protocols.

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Network configuration management

Track configuration changes, ensure compliance, and identify firmware vulnerabilities.

Overview of SAN monitoring

1. What are the different types of storage devices?

Some storage devices used that can share data with several devices in a network are:

  • Network-attached storage (NAS): Dedicated file storage that enables several heterogeneous clients to access a centralized server
  • Redundant array of independent disks (RAIDs): Stores the same data in multiple solid state drives (SSDs) or hard disk drives (HDDs) as insurance against data failure.
  • Tape libraries: A collection of magnetic tape drives and tape cartridges.
  • Fiber Channel (FC) switches: Help create large SAN fabrics that interconnect thousands of servers and storage ports.
  • Storage array: A collection of HDDs and SSDs to store large volumes of data, managed by a central management system (i.e., a RAID). Storage arrays help distinguish networking functions from data functions and allow multiple servers to access the stored data.
  • Storage pool: An aggregation of several physical disks or RAID arrays into a single large storage space. There are three types
    • Primary storage pools: For any user action, the data will be fetched from or modified here. These pools can be arranged in a hierarchy.
    • Copy storage pools: Contain data backed up from the primary storage pool (both active and inactive versions) to protect against unforeseen failures or disasters.
    • Active data pools: Contain only the active data backup versions for faster data restores.

SAN monitoring involves tracking and monitoring devices within the storage network to simplify capacity planning and also take proactive actions for alerts related to the health, performance, and availability of storage devices.

Suppose a single storage device is not running or has reached full capacity. In that case, the user experience might get affected as it takes more time to load an application and store or retrieve data. Here's where SAN monitoring helps.

A SAN monitoring tool alerts you if a device is in trouble or is close to its storage capacity, enabling you to take the appropriate action quickly before the event impairs network operations. Additionally, a SAN monitoring tool like Site24x7 also analyzes capacity trends and helps forecast capacity needs.

Site24x7 provides a unified dashboard with detailed information regarding the storage devices in your network. It also helps with capacity planning by letting you know when your storage devices are approaching full capacity, and it also analyzes consumption trends to accurately predict when you'll need more storage. With proactive alerting and detailed reports that help with analytics, Site24x7 remains the best choice for SAN monitoring.

Storage devices form the backbone of any enterprise, and monitoring them is essential to ensure no unexpected outages. Apart from tracking device status and health, there are many more benefits to having a SAN monitoring tool.

  • Detect storage issues quickly: Receive alerts on threshold breaches to act on issues immediately.
  • Improve visibility into your storage network: Check how your devices are faring on a single window without having to juggle between multiple screens.
  • Save administrative time: Get insightful reports that provide detailed information in your preferred channel, as and when needed.
  • Cut overhead costs: Receive alerts that let you know about an issue before it becomes a significant problem, thereby saving the cost of downtime.
  • Cut overhead costs: Receive alerts that let you know about an issue before it becomes a significant problem, thereby saving the cost of downtime.
  • Streamline capacity planning: View capacity forecasts for well-informed planning and prudent purchases based on past consumption rates.
  • Get reports anytime: Generate reports based on parameters like growth trend, storage summary, RAID latency, and capacity utilization.

A SAN is a collection of storage devices and computers connected over high-speed cables that stores and protects your organization's data. When you use a separate network for storage, activities such as data transfer, backup, restoration, archival, and retrieval become faster, giving you an edge over competitors and helping you deliver fabulous user experiences. To ensure that your storage network continues to deliver top-notch experiences, you must monitor your SANs.

Site24x7's cloud-based SAN monitoring involves the following steps:

  • The On-Premise Poller, a lightweight agent that helps monitor your internal and external networks, collects relevant metrics.
  • The metrics collected show the device performance with respect to availability, health, latency, read and write speed, IOPS, and drive and disk count.
  • Some other vital metrics tracked are the volume and capacity of the storage pool—free, used, and remaining.
  • Site24x7 sends an alert to your preferred channel when the storage capacity breaches a threshold.

Start SAN monitoring with Site24x7

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