Itzikr's Blog

Innovation in Storage Provisioning with the new WebUI application

The previous blog Innovation in Storage Troubleshooting with the new WebUI application we reviewed how the innovations of the XtremIO new WebUI adds simplicity and intelligent capabilities to the Storage Admin Troubleshooting processes.

In this blog, we will focus on the simplicity and flexibility of the WebUI in supporting the leading Provisioning Flows.

Flexible provisioning flows – Nest Step Suggestions

There are multiple provisioning flows that need to be supported. Here is the list of the most popular flows identified by our customer base:

Deploying a new Application:

1. Creating a New Consistency Group (optional)

   Note: This is optional as not all Applications require Consistency Groups

2. Creating New Volume/s
3. Adding Volumes to Consistency Group (optional)
4. Defining Protection Scheduler for Consistency Group (optional)
5. Creating New Initiator Group/s
6. Mapping the Volumes or Consistency Groups to the Initiator Groups

Note: Sometime for the Admin convenience he would like to first create the Initiator Groups and then the Volumes.

Increasing Volume Capacity:

1. Creating New Volume/s
2. Adding to Consistency Group (optional)
3. Mapping to existing Initiator Groups

Increasing Host Compute resources:

1. Creating New Initiator Group/s
2. Map to existing application Volumes or Consistency Groups

Create Repurposing Copy

1. Create Repurpose Copy for Test/Dev
2. Map to Initiator Groups

As can be seen, there are a various set of provisioning flows that need to be supported.

The WebUI Nest Step Suggestions feature is a provisioning engine that offers the user the most Popular Next Steps.

If we zoom in to the Deploying a new Application provisioning flow, the provisioning engine offers the following next step logics:

Each next step selected by the user defines the next set of suggested operations.

In the case the user wants to perform: (1) Create Volumes; (2) Add to Consistency Group; (3) Create New Initiator Group; (3) Map – the provisioning engine will navigate the user to the following steps:

How is the provisioning engine implemented in the Web Application’s user interface?

At each decision junction, the application offers the list of the most popular next step suggestions. So for example, if the user created a volume, he will receive the following Next Suggestion screens:

Nest Step Suggestions feature allows a user to navigate in a simple manner between multiple provisioning flows.

Pretty cool, what do you think?

Flexible many-to-many Mappings

Sometime a storage admin needs to create multiple Volumes and multiple Initiator Groups and map them together.

The WebUI offers a very flexible mapping screen.

Once the Volume/s and Initiator Group/s are selected by the user, the screen automatically generates the Lun Mappings with auto-suggested Lun IDs. The user can than review the mappings, change the LUN ID if needed, and create the lun mappings.

The mapping screen is very flexible. It can map Volume/s or Consistency Group to one or more Initiator Groups. He can also add / remove mappings when needed.

Create & Refresh a Repurposing Copy

As we have read from analysts over the past year, 60% of enterprise data is Copy Data. Copies refer to Development, Test, Reporting, Analytics copies of the Production or Golden copy image.

XtremIO has streamlined the repurposing flow by offering 2 dedicated flows:

1. Creating a Copy

As creating a Repurpose Copy in XtremIO is a very efficient meta data memory operation, the form above completes immediately.

1. Refreshing a Copy

In order to refresh the Copy, the user selects the Copy and selects the Refresh operation.

The flow visually displays the Refresh operation that is going to be performed. Once the user approves the Refresh action and Applies the change, the Copy data is automatically refreshed. Here again, as the Copy is an efficient meta data memory copy transaction, and therefore is executed immediately.

Which other Storage Management application has the above flexibility and features?

Below, you can see a demo of the new XtremIO Web UI (start at minuted 6:13 if you are interested in the provisioning flow)