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Status Delivered
Workspace IBM Storage Insights
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 18, 2022

RELATED IDEAS

Storage Insights Should Not Consider an Offline Host as an Error Status for an Entire Array

In the most recent update to Storage Insights, the tool started counting any Offline host connections as an Error condition for the entire array.

In our environment we have many hosts/connections which for various reasons (eg AIX LPM, DR sites, &c) are always offline. So what this means is that every array DS8 and V7K array in our environment suddenly showed up as in an Error status all the time.

This has made it nearly impossible to use SI as a monitoring tool since the Offline hosts mask any real problems in the environment.

In SI Pro there is the option to Acknowledge the status of a host connection, however that requires manual effort across potentially hundreds of host objects and HBAs and be constantly updated as the environment changes. However, even acknowledging every offline host Error status does not make the Array no longer be in an error status. Also in SI non-pro there is no option to Acknowledge status so it is impossible to clear any error conditions introduced by this design change.


I would like to propose:

1) The user should be able to configure in each instance if they want to consider offline hosts as a problem or not.

2) An offline host should be considered no more severe than a Warning level status for the host only, and not for the entire array.

Idea priority Urgent
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 27, 2022

    Thanks for raising and voting on this. We're aiming to revert the behaviour back to what it was in the 3Q/September release. I'll close this out as a defect, if there are changes to the original design that anyone would like to see, I'd welcome new ideas being submitted for review.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 26, 2022

    We support a large environment and I agree entirely with the request and other comments.

    Perhaps a global switch in SI under Configuration > Settings - could allow users choose whether offline host port should cause any warning at the device level. I would also suggest a switch to severity level for offline host ports. Personally I would set it to info and I do not need to see it at the storage device level.

    IBM PowerVM servers that support LPM (live partition mobility) have half the host ports offline by design

    Environments with Global/Metro mirror are usually offline - by design.

    Large environments with auto-privisioning have too many changes and servers that are offline for whatever reason to keep track of at the storage side. Server/App teams can track HBA/path status for their servers. And even then auto-ticketing should take care of this.

    Monitoring our environment has become unworkable with half our devices showing an error for offline host ports.

    *Update.. I was informed this problem is being looked into by SI devs. Thanks in advance for your support!

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 22, 2022

    Totally agree, have multiple hosts offline all the time for various reasons, this feature now makes monitoring via the dashboard impossible.

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