Itzikr's Blog

So far, we have covered the following aspects of Dell Technologies PowerStore:

High Level Overview,   Hardware,   AppsON,  vVols,  File Capabilities,  User Interface ,  Importing external storage, PowerStore local protection works , remote replication , VMware SRM integration , resource balancer , the integration with an upstream Kubernetes and / or RedHat OpenShift & The integration with VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

CloudIQ combines machine intelligence and human intelligence to provide storage administrators with intel they need to take quick action and more efficiently manage their Dell EMC environment. So you can get back to other business needs. Supported on PowerMax, PowerStore, Isilon, PowerVault, Dell EMC Unity XT, XtremIO, SC Series, VxBlock, and Connectrix switches.

We are excited to announce that PowerStore has been integrated to CloudIQ.
CloudIQ is the Software as a Service (SaaS) platform offered by Dell EMC that allows customers to manage all of their EMC arrays in a single pane of management. A Dell EMC customer needs to simply log into the CloudIQ application, and he will automatically be presented with an Overview of all of the Dell EMC arrays deployed. CloudIQ currently supports Unity, SC, XtremIO, PowerMAX and now, PowerStore. CloudIQ is a SaaS application, and as such, no software needs to be installed at the customer site. The fact is SaaS based also means that its keep updating itself with new features that you the customer will benefit from, the moment they are out, it will continue to update itself with new metrics in each release, this is also your opportunity to let us know if you like it and if you would like to see more metrics to be surfaced via it’s portal. The most common use for CloudIQ is to monitor the health of storage systems. By accessing the Health Score, for instance, users can quickly ascertain how storage is behaving, and proactively head off issues that may be currently causing problems or may pose potential threats in the future. However, CloudIQ is more than a simple monitoring solution: it has the ability generate predictive analytics by using machine learning (ML) to look at historical data of systems and to offer best practices and learned knowledge of Dell EMC.

CloudIQ Features
CloudIQ makes it faster and easier to analyze and identify storage issues accurately and intelligently, by delivering:
• Comprehensive monitoring of performance, capacity, system components, configuration, and data protection. CloudIQ also
provides details about Systems, Storage Pools, Block and File Storage Objects, Connectrix switches and VMware environments.
• Predictive Analytics that enable intelligent planning and optimization of capacity and performance utilization.
• Comprehensive Proactive Health scores for monitored storage systems. CloudIQ identifies potential issues in the storage
environment and offers practical recommendations based on best practices and risk management.
Comprehensive Monitoring
CloudIQ provides a helpful Overview Page that summarizes the key aspects of the storage environment so that the user can quickly
see what needs to be addressed. These summaries are especially focused on Proactive Health Scores, Capacity Predictions and
Performance Anomaly & Impact Detection, as discussed below. From here, the user can easily navigate to the areas of interest or the
areas requiring attention.
Intelligent Analytics – Performance Anomaly & Impact Detection and Capacity Predictions
CloudIQ’s advanced predictive analytics differentiate it from other monitoring and reporting tools.
Performance Anomaly & Impact Detection
Using machine learning and analytics, CloudIQ identifies identify performance anomalies (supported on all storage platforms). It
compares current performance metrics with historical values to determine when the current metrics deviate outside of historical ranges.
This provides timely information about the risk level of the storage systems with insights into conditions and anomalies affecting
performance.

In addition to performance anomalies, CloudIQ goes one step further and identifies LUN performance impacts (currently for Unity
systems) where an increase occurs in LUN latency or queue length while IOPS do not necessarily increase, but instead is being
affected by competing resources. CloudIQ also identifies the most likely storage objects causing the resource contention. Additionally,
CloudIQ identifies similar performance impacts at the system level. This enables the Storage Admin to narrow the focus of
troubleshooting specifically where actual impacts to performance may have occurred.
Capacity Trending and Predictions
CloudIQ provides historical trending and future predictions to provide intelligent insight on how capacity is being used, and what future
needs may arise. Since CloudIQ maintains data for a two-year period, it effectively means that CloudIQ is tracking information from two
years ago up to present day, and leverages a learning algorithm to predict when Storage Capacity will become full (Storage Pools for
Unity and SC, Storage Resource Pools for VMAX, and Clusters for XtremIO). This capability assists users with both short-term risk
mitigation and longer-term planning.
Proactive Health Score
The Proactive Health Score is another key differentiator for CloudIQ, relative to other monitoring and reporting tools. CloudIQ
proactively monitors the critical areas of each storage system to quickly identify potential issues and provide recommended remediation
solutions. The Health Score is a number ranging from 100 to 0, with 100 being a perfect Health Score.
The Health Score is based upon the five categories shown in the table to the left.

CloudIQ provides intelligent infrastructure insights by leveraging Machine Learning to help users Reduce Risk, Plan Ahead and Improve Productivity by helping you answer questions about your data center to enable the optimal health of your environment.

You can solve issues faster with CloudIQ. Check this research conducted by principle technologies:
“Compared to HPE InfoSight with an HPE Primera array, CloudIQ with a Dell EMC Unity array let us identify potential issues and troubleshoot problems in less time and fewer steps”
https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/collaterals/unauth/comparative-intelligence/third-party-content/cloudiq-vs-hpe-infosight-whitepaper.pdf

REDUCE RISK: Intelligently identify and avoid potential vulnerabilities across your data center with proactive health scores

Leveraging a suite of advanced analytics CloudIQ helps answer key questions Storage Admins deal with regularly, pinpointing deviations and performance impacts in an environment so users can focus on expediting troubleshooting.

• Health Score, Performance Impact Analysis & Anomaly Detection, Workload Contention Analysis
  

PLAN AHEAD: Anticipate business needs and avoid outages with capacity full projections and anomaly detection

• Capacity Full Prediction and Forecasting, Capacity Anomaly Detection
  

IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY: Improve staffing and infrastructure productivity with a single pane of glass view

• Single pane of glass, Trusted Advisors, Immediate time to value and easy access
  

If you are new to CLoudIQ, i highly suggest you start reading about it here

https://itzikr.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/vmworld-2018-xtremio-integration-with-cloudiq/
or here

and also download the below white paper (Click the screenshot)

In order for PowerStore to share data with CloudIQ, SupportAssist must be enabled in PowerStore Manager, with the Connect to CloudIQ checkbox selected. Any of the four connection types may be selected.

Enable CloudIQ during the Initial Configuration Wizard, or later by going to Settings > SupportAssist.

The Overview provides a visual look at overall system health and connectivity.

Alerts, performance anomalies, and storage issues are also available at a glance.

Clicking blue text on this page opens information specific to that item. For example, clicking the 2 critical alerts on this page shows the alert details.

Under the Health heading, view system health (shown here), issues

Displays a comprehensive view of all current health issues across all storage systems in the environment.

, alerts

Displays any alerts reported in the last 24 hours.

, and updates.

Icons indicating component, configuration, capacity, performance, and data protection issues provide a quick reference to the health score of the system. The health score of 95 for the PowerStore 1000X is quickly described here as having lost 5 points due to capacity issues.

For a list of systems and hosts in CloudIQ, view the inventory. Find the system software version, physical location, and last contact time.

The System Capacity page displays the system level storage capacity. Quickly see usable and free storage on each system and storage efficiency metrics.

The System Performance page displays key system level performance metrics across all systems. This includes IOPS, Bandwidth and System Latency.

The second option under Performance is the Metrics Browser. Use this browser to select metrics to create custom performance dashboards. Click here to see metrics available for PowerStore.

Under Admin, manage the connectivity and users in CloudIQ. Use this view to add or remove systems and add or remove user privileges.

To troubleshoot a system becoming disconnected from CloudIQ, go to Connectivity, shown here.

PowerStore System Information in CloudIQ

CloudIQ shows high level information about all the systems that are sending data to it. This makes it easy to monitor performance overall.

You can access information about any specific system in CloudIQ by clicking its title on any of the CloudIQ views. Click to see how to get to these pages.

This tab focuses on the health score of this particular system, showing the details about any issues affecting the health score.

The Configuration tab shows configuration data about the system. Additional tabs below show details about the appliances, drives, hosts, storage, Virtual Machines, and Storage Containers. If VMs and Storage Containers are not used, the tabs are shown but hold no information.

The Capacity tab displays detailed capacity information for the system, including total, used, and free capacity, as well as efficiency metrics and how capacity is allocated to different storage objects.

The Performance tab shows key performance metrics for storage objects sorted by their 24-hour averages. These are the resources with the highest latency, IOPS, and bandwidth. The bottom part of the page provides more detail about each of those performance categories.

Ok, Let’s recap, CloudIQ is getting better and better with every new release which is a great benefit because it’s run as a Saas, so you the customer don’t need to upgrade anything

Lets watch Fatemeh Azmandian explain some CloudIQ Advanced concepts behind it’s engine:

still with me? Awesome! Now You can see an (early) demo of how it all works with PowerStore, below