Storage Resource Reporting Tool

While storage array capacity is finite, it can be difficult to tell when your storage arrays are about to run out of space. For businesses with a wide array of storage arrays, storage reporting helps update you on how much storage capacity remains and can provide visibility into any potential problems. 

Storage reports are built to inform on different storage capacity updates in real time, so any time-sensitive capacity issues can be quickly addressed and resolved. Storage health check reports generally come in a preset report template, which can also be monitored and customized when specific areas of storage require greater attention. Storage reporting can also help identify trends in storage use on your system. 

In addition to traditional storage devices, applications and virtual machines dependent on storage elements can be affected by storage performance issues. A comprehensive storage report will be able to provide in-depth analytics on virtual storage as well as storage arrays to offer the most in-depth analysis of overall storage capacity and performance.

Checking your disk drive can be a crucial way to prevent malfunction, overheating, and data loss. Mechanical hard drives are fairly delicate and issues like shock, mishandling, or simple wear and tear can cause disk errors and corruption. Regardless of your operating system, disk drive checks have the potential to save your storage in case a major malfunction is on the horizon. Disk drive health checks can be manual, or they can be automated with drive monitoring tools. Common ways to check your drive health include: 

• Perform a speed test. There are ways to test how fast your drive can read and write data. Simple programs allow you to measure the drive’s current capabilities, offering some insight into its health. 
• Use the SMART program. The self-monitoring analysis and reporting program (SMART) is typically embedded on hard drives and solid-state drives. Use the command prompt to check for warning signs. The command “wmic” and “diskdrive get status” should return a “Status ok” message if the disk is in good order. 
• Automate health checks with SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor. To help to ensure all aspects of your storage array are running smoothly, a comprehensive software that monitors and alerts for storage drive issues is your best bet. Storage Resource Monitor can take the complexities of monitoring off your shoulders and automatically let you know when an error might be around the corner. 

Storage reporting software works by collecting storage capacity and disk health metrics across various managed arrays and storing these historical and real-time data points within a centralized interface. Admins can then easily run reports based on the criteria of their choosing to demonstrate storage health to report recipients. This report is an important step in the storage capacity monitoring process. 

Storage reporting software is built to compile various data management observations into a view you can export to other applications, provide analytics of SAN and NAS storage capabilities, and send reports with real-time metrics when something might be causing the system to slow down. 

When you use storage reporting software, all your system’s data containers—including LUNs, RAID groups, and CIFS shares—can be monitored for their input and output, which can be included in storage reports. Storage report software is a useful way to serve digestible and intuitive storage monitoring information.

Storage performance reports help prevent slowdowns—and even shutdowns—from overextension of your data storage devices. Storage performance reports can help admins be proactive about allocating storage and managing resources. At the same time, reports are important for proving storage practices and data security comply with required regulations. 

For storage systems processing a lot of information, data capacity can be a constant challenge. Storage performance reports can help simplify the storage capacity monitoring process with insights into how to better allocate storage resources moving forward. Storage performance metrics in reports can help you flag bottlenecks and hotspots, and some reporting software can even provide cross-platform alerts. Storage capacity will always be limited, but storage performance reports allow you to be proactive about managing your capacity shortcomings. Your reliability and day-to-day system functions shouldn’t be damaged because you were unable to detect a shortage in storage capacity. Performance reports can help you make informed decisions about capacity growth.

SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor provides hundreds of preconfigured report templates, which can be customized to fit your specific storage reporting needs. SRM also has multi-vendor capability, meaning you gain cross-vendor monitoring and reporting on storage use with a consolidated view of insights you’d traditionally get from separate Dell EMC storage reporting tools, NetApp tools, and more. 

When a capacity issue is urgent, SRM is designed to activate its real-time alert system to let you know there’s a critical issue. You can configure the system to send automated reports based on alerts as well. SolarWinds SRM is designed to keep you updated on storage capacity trends and can help you conduct more informed troubleshooting.