Server Manager

Storage Landscape

What's the Issue?

It is not uncommon for networks today to have hundreds of servers with many huge amounts of data storage space in use. Millions of files are stored, backed up and often even migrated to a new storage solution, for no reason other than the fact that they exist! Much of the storage space in use is redundant, with old files, or even users who have left the organisation some time ago.

A number of essential ‘unknowns’ often exist regarding the data distribution and its pertinence within the migrated environment. Organisations have difficulty answering relatively simple questions like:

• How many TB of data (accurately) is presently being stored?
• How much of this data is live?
• What is the distribution of files between the File and Email Systems?
• What storage is in use for Personal vs. Shared storage?
• How should a data migration be tackled?

What's the Solution?

One of the Server Manager's key features is the Storage Landscape which provides a highly detailed view of all audited server storage. Server Manager is able to help answer some of the above questions by providing an accurate and up-to-date analysis of the entire server estate’s storage in use from a variety of perspectives:

• Storage consumption by file model (1)
• Consumption by file size (2)
• Consumption of space by user
• Block size translation (3)
• The above can be detailed month by month and by total storage use

(1) File models are groups of wildcards under genre headings like ‘Office Documents’, or specific file masks. By having clearly defined file models, it is possible to identify files accurately for cross charge purposes

(2) File sizes are in logical bands ranging from small (0 – 1KB) to large (over 8MB) files in a number of categorisations

(3) Block size translation is used to vary storage requirements for file migration between systems with different block sizes. This is especially important when moving between NetWare volumes with Sub-Allocations onto NTFS volumes with fixed block sizes

The above is reported on with numerous levels of granularity as follows:

• Estate wide
• By site
• By server
• By volume
• By Directory Tree
• By owner (NDS or AD Object)

For this service, Server Manager implements a number of components on the existing servers to quickly identify the overall storage landscape. For Microsoft NT and above servers, the functionality to gather the necessary information is built into the regular Server Manager agent. With NetWare servers a dedicated NLM is run via CRON job, drawing the necessary information. The data gathering period is normally set to run after hours to avoid adding additional workloads on the servers during business hours.

Report Outputs

The following graphic shows one volume's summary in report "1470.00 - Month by Month Storage Growth Graphs":

Specific to the Storage Landscaping requirement, the Lanboss Console Advanced Reporting Engine has a number of standard reports that you can generate including:

• 1470_00 - Month by Month Storage Growth - Graph
• 1470_01 - Month by Month Storage Growth
• 1470_20 - Server Storage Files by Type
• 1470_21 - Files By Modified Date
• 1470_30 - Server Storage Files by Owner
• 1470_31 - File Owners with more than 30MB in use
• 1470_32 - Volumes by File Owners
• 1470_33 - Volume Cumulative Summary
• 1470_34 - Owner Storage by Context
• 1470_35 - Owner Storage by Context Summary
• 1470_40 - Server Storage Files by Size
• 1470_50 - Overall Volume Summary
• 1470_51 - Directory Usage By Directory
• 1470_52 - Directory Usage By Size
• 1470_53 - Directory Usage Summary By Directory
• 1470_54 - Directory Usage Summary By Size
• 1470_55 - Home Directory Summary

The Console also allows you to create your own customised reports, query, filter, group, select, chart, and export the information to a variety of common formats. The query system is SQL based and follows industry standard selection methods, giving you the ability to find the information you need, without needing to be an SQL expert.

With Lanboss Storage Landscaping...

Having the right levels of information about your server storage will help you to:

• Find out what you are dealing with… before the event
• Base decisions on fact, not assumptions
• Be able to plan ahead