Frequently asked questions

Find answers to frequently asked questions about IBM® Storage Insights.

The questions are categorized as follows:

Orders and subscriptions

How do I license IBM Storage Insights?
IBM Storage Insights is included with many IBM Storage purchases, or can be licensed separately. The following table shows the various ways to get IBM Storage Insights.
Table 1. Licensing IBM Storage Insights
Purchase method IBM Storage Insights entitlement Entitlement type

Expert Care Basic or Advanced

 IBM Storage Insights

Entitled for Expert Care duration

Expert Care Premium

 IBM Storage Insights Pro

Entitled for Expert Care duration

Storage as a Service

 IBM Storage Insights Pro

Entitled for STaaS duration

Spectrum Control Select

 IBM Storage Insights Pro

Entitled by enclosure

Spectrum Control

 IBM Storage Insights Pro

Entitled by SCU

Subscription

 IBM Storage Insights Pro with availability guarantee

Entitled by capacity

Virtual Storage Center Bundle

 IBM Spectrum® Control and IBM Storage Insights Pro

Entitled by SCU

(Starter edition by capacity, Storwize edition by enclosure)

Storage Suite

 IBM Spectrum Control and IBM Storage Insights Pro

Entitled by capacity
Do I need multiple IBM Storage Insights instances if I’m entitled via different licenses?
No, you can use a single instance of IBM Storage Insights Pro, but all the devices added to that instance must be entitled. You need a separate IBM Storage Insights instance for devices that are not entitled to Pro functionality.
What is an enclosure entitlement?
An enclosure entitlement covers up to 25 slots, regardless of whether they’re populated, or up to 500 TiB of populated raw capacity. If your storage device exceeds either of these limits, then you need to purchase further enclosure licenses.
What is a Storage Capacity Unit (SCU)?
A graduated capacity metric based on storage technology. Older technologies such as HDDs and Safeguarded Copy target capacities can be licensed at a lesser cost than newer SSD tiers of storage.
What’s the difference between the available products?
How do I sign up for IBM Storage Insights?
If you manage IBM block storage systems, but don't already have the free version of IBM Storage Insights, sign up today at https://ibm.biz/insightsreg.

With IBM Storage Insights, you get a unified view of a storage environment that includes diagnostic event information, an integrated support experience, and key capacity and performance metrics. It's also free and provides you with an easy path to try or buy IBM Storage Insights Pro, so why wait?

Can I also license Storage Insights Pro through a subscription-based license?
Yes, you can get a subscription-based license that is billed monthly, based on the amount of capacity that is being managed. The default subscription periods are 3, 6, 9, 12, or 24 months. To explore and obtain a subscription-based license, see Want to try or buy IBM Storage Insights Pro?
How do I know if I exceed the capacity that I'm entitled to manage?
From the Configuration menu in IBM Storage Insights Pro, click Managed Capacity to check how much capacity IBM Storage Insights Pro is currently managing and then check how much capacity you are entitled to manage in your Proof of Entitlement document. You are notified when you exceed your capacity limit and, you are charged for overage until the capacity that is managed drops to your licensed capacity limit.
To upgrade your license, go to your Products and services page on IBM Marketplace.
How do I renew my subscription?
Your subscription is automatically renewed, and you have the opportunity to change the subscription period at each renewal. Subscription periods are 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months. If you want to change the subscription period, go to your Products and services page on IBM Marketplace or contact your IBM sales representative or Business Partner.
Can I transfer my subscription to other IBM products or offerings?
No, currently, you can't transfer credits from IBM Storage Insights Pro to other IBM products or offerings.
How do I cancel my subscription?
Go to your Products and services page on IBM Marketplace or notify your IBM representative or Business Partner 90 days before your subscription expires.
If I cancel my subscription, what happens to the data that was sent to IBM Storage Insights Pro?
Your data is deleted unless you renew your subscription within 15 days of the receipt of your cancellation.
How often is the service updated?
IBM is constantly improving the reliability, security, and capabilities of IBM Storage Insights and IBM Storage Insights Pro. To do that, planned updates are scheduled to occur about four times per year, or once per quarter.

See Updates and maintenance for IBM Storage Insights.

How do I transfer the ownership of a subscription to another employee in the same company?

You can open an IBM Support case against IBM Storage Insights and request the change. See Changing the owner of IBM Storage Insights.

IBM Storage Insights Pro offering

What are the additional benefits do I get with IBM Storage Insights Pro?
IBM Storage Insights Pro offers more features compared to the standard version. For a detailed comparison, see IBM Storage Insights vs IBM Storage Insights Pro.
Is there a trial option available for IBM Storage Insights Pro?
Yes, if you already have IBM Storage Insights, you can easily activate a 60-day trial of IBM Storage Insights Pro. To start your trial, open IBM Storage Insights, click Try Pro for free in the menu bar, and follow on-screen instructions.

For more information, see Want to try or buy IBM Storage Insights Pro?

How much does IBM Storage Insights Pro cost?
The cost of IBM Storage Insights Pro varies based on the licensing method that is chosen, as detailed in the Licensing IBM Storage Insights table. For specific pricing details, contact your IBM sales representative. Alternatively, for IBM Storage Insights Pro subscription, you can use our quick and easy pricing calculator to determine your cost. See External link iconhttp://ibm.biz/insightspricing.
What certification does IBM Storage Insights Pro have?
IBM Storage Insights Pro, on the basis of regular audits that are carried out by Bureau Veritas Certification Holding SAS, UKAS Management Systems, London, United Kingdom, has External link iconISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management certification.
To find out about the security polices that are in place to collect, protect, and store the metadata that is collected for analysis, download the External link iconIBM Storage Insights Security Guide.
How do I get started?
Download and install the data collector, and then specify the storage resources that you want to monitor and analyze in the GUI. The data collector works in the background, which allows you to focus on the data and analytics that are shown in IBM Storage Insights Pro.
Learn more Downloading and installing data collectors.
What does IBM Storage Insights Pro do?
IBM Storage Insights Pro is a software as a service offering that provides you with the information that you need about the storage in your data center. You get insights that help you to reduce costs by reclaiming unused storage and by placing the right data on the right tiers. With IBM Storage Insights Pro, you can also rapidly detect storage availability and performance issues at the data center, storage system, and application level. The data that you collect not only provides insights into current capacity and space usage but, over time, provides insights into your future capacity needs.
Learn more Gaining insights.
Can I manage multiple data centers with IBM Storage Insights?
You can download multiple data collectors to connect to storage systems located in different data centers and gain insights into the asset, capacity, and performance data that is collected and analyzed in IBM Storage Insights.
How many storage systems can I monitor with IBM Storage Insights?
Subject to licensed capacity restrictions, you can monitor as many storage systems as you want.
As the number of devices grows, the analysis might take more time to complete.
Can I export the data that is collected by IBM Storage Insights Pro to other IBM products?
This is not currently supported, but the data that is displayed in the tables can be manually exported into various file formats.
Do IBM Spectrum Control and IBM Storage Insights Pro work together ?
You can use IBM Storage Insights Pro to monitor storage systems that are not being managed by IBM Spectrum Control, but you can't share information between the IBM offerings or export information from one offering to the other offering.

Get support

Support is available for subscribers and for IBM Storage Insights users.

My IBM Storage Insights dashboard isn't working. How can I get help?
For information about how to get help, see Getting support.
How do I get help for storage systems?
If you encounter issues with the IBM block storage systems that you're monitoring, you can create and update tickets and automatically upload logs directly in IBM Storage Insights and IBM Storage Insights Pro. You can also give IBM Support permission to collect and upload log packages for storage systems without contacting you every time.
See Opening, updating, and tracking IBM Support tickets and Giving IBM Support permission to collect log packages.
Are there any online resources that I can use to help troubleshoot issues myself?
Yes. Multiple online resources are available to help you troubleshoot issues or learn more about the product. See Getting support.
I need to comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations so my storage exists within a Blue Diamond Enhanced Secure Support environment. Can I use IBM Storage Insights to open tickets and upload logs for my storage devices?
You can open tickets and send packages for Blue Diamond customers. The packages are sent to the Blue Diamond Enhanced Secure Support environment.
Can IBM Support access my data?
IBM Support can access metadata and collect support logs remotely if you have set the permissions to do so. IBM Support has read-only access to your data and IBM Storage Insights instance and can't change any of your settings.
See Giving IBM Support permission to collect log packages.
Are there service description and agreement documents available for the offering?

Data collection and other questions

Do I need a data collector if I'm using IBM FlashSystem® devices?
Usually, IBM Storage FlashSystem devices do not require a data collector. However, if you need to add switches, hosts, and legacy systems, a data collector is essential. For more information about downloading and installing data collectors, see Downloading and installing data collectors.
Do I need to prepare my environment before getting started with IBM Storage Insights?
Because IBM Storage Insights is an IBM Cloud service, getting started is a snap. However, every environment is different, so to ensure that your getting started experience goes smoothly, see this handy checklist for some hints and tips: Before you begin checklist for IBM Storage Insights.
What operating systems are supported for the data collector?
You can install the data collector on the following operating systems:
  • Windows Server 2012 and later.
  • The Linux® data collector runs on 64-bit Linux operating systems on x86-64 and PPC64LE systems only. The supported Linux operating systems for x86-64 are Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 7 or later and CentOS 7 or later.
    The supported Linux operating system for PPC64LE is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x on POWER8®® and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x. on POWER10®. The data collector on Linux PPC64LE has the additional limitation that you cannot monitor IBM FlashSystem A9000, XIV®, IBM Storage Accelerate, and non-IBM devices.
    Restriction: The data collector is not supported for Linux operating systems on IBM Power® systems (PPC64, Big Endian).
  • POWER6® or later systems that use AIX® 7.x or later. The AIX data collector can run on a physical AIX installation or a logical partition (LPAR).
Tip: To avoid potential problems, ensure that the operating system on the server or virtual machine where you install the data collector has general or extended support for maintenance and security.
Important: IBM support for AIX 7.1 on POWER6 systems ends in April 2023. At that point, IBM Storage Insights will no longer support deploying data collectors to those platforms. It's strongly recommended that you deploy your data collectors to supported versions of AIX and POWER®® systems. For more information about end of support for AIX versions, AIX support lifecycle information.
What is involved in downloading data collectors?
Data collectors are downloaded as compressed files that can be extracted and installed on any server that runs Windows, Linux, or AIX operating systems or virtual machines that have access to both the internal SAN attached infrastructure as well as access to the internet to communicate with the cloud portal.
See Downloading and installing data collectors.
What compute, network, and memory resources do data collectors use?
The data collector is a light-weight application. On the server or virtual machine where you install the data collector, you must provide at least 1 GB of RAM and 3 GB of disk space.
Learn more about how disk space is used during service outages.
How can I configure the data collector to use a proxy server?
You can specify whether you want to connect to a proxy server when you install the data collector. You can also add the user's credentials to authenticate with the proxy server.
See Adding or changing the connection to the proxy server.
What do I need to configure on my firewall to enable the data collector to access the IBM cloud?
If you do not have a proxy server, then ensure that the default HTTPS port 443 is open on the firewall. You should not need to configure it for the FQDN.
Tip: If a firewall exists between the data collector and the storage systems that it monitors, configure the firewall to allow SNMP traffic.
Can I get a new data collector if something happens to my current data collector?
If the data collector is deleted or otherwise stops operating, IBM Storage Insights Pro will be unable to gather any new information. Information that has already been collected by IBM Storage Insights Pro will be kept. To restart the data collection, download a data collector and reinstall it.
What data does IBM Storage Insights collect? How is it used?
IBM Storage Insights collects two types of data: metadata for devices and diagnostic data for support logs.
Metadata for devices
The following metadata about your devices is collected regularly and streamed to IBM Storage Insights:
  • Information about the status of a device and its internal resources.
  • Information about the configuration of a device, such as name, firmware, and capacity.
  • Information about the internal resources of a device, such as volumes, pools, nodes, ports, and disks. This information includes the names and the configuration and capacity metrics for each internal resource.
  • Information about the performance of devices and internal resources such as pools, volumes, and ports.
This metadata is never stored locally, and is encrypted with 128-bit encryption while streaming and 256-bit encryption while at rest. For more information about the metadata that is collected and how it's used, check out the External link iconIBM Storage Insights Security Guide.
Diagnostic data for support logs
Support logs for your IBM block storage systems are only collected when a support ticket is open and you request it. The logs include diagnostic information so that IBM Support can more efficiently and quickly investigate and close tickets. In Blue Diamond environments, support logs are sent to a Blue Diamond Enhanced Secure Support environment, just as if you were to do it manually.
Important: IBM Storage Insights can't access the actual application data that is stored on your storage systems.
When is metadata and diagnostic data collected?
IBM Storage Insights collects metadata about the configuration, status, capacity, and performance of your monitored devices. Diagnostic data is also collected into log packages and added to support tickets. The following types of tasks are used to collect that information:
Probes
Probes collect status, configuration, and capacity metadata once every 24 hours.
For some devices, additional probes are automatically run when specific events occur on those devices, or when many events are detected in a short time period. To avoid performance bottlenecks in those cases, probes are not run more than once every 20 minutes.
Performance Monitors
Performance Monitors collect performance metadata every 5 minutes.
  • For Dell EMC storage systems that manage block storage, performance metadata is automatically collected every fifteen minutes.
  • For IBM Spectrum Scale storage systems that are enabled to collect performance metadata for file storage, the collection schedule can be configured when or after the storage system is added for monitoring. The intervals that can be selected for collecting performance metadata are every 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 60 minutes.
Tips:
  • After probes and performance monitor run, the GUI is updated automatically to display the latest metadata for your monitored devices.
  • Only metadata about your monitored devices is collected. The actual data that is stored on devices is never accessed or collected.
How will I know if a data collector stops working?
You will get an email and a message is shown at the bottom of the page of the GUI. To check the status of the data collector, you can click Configuration > Data Collectors.
Learn more Resolving connection issues.
How do I uninstall the data collector from a server and install it on a different server?

To uninstall the data collector, log in as Administrator on Windows operating systems or as a user with root privileges on AIX or Linux operating systems. After you uninstall, remove the data collector entry in the GUI. You must log in to the GUI as Administrator.

To install the data collector, choose an operating system, copy or download the data collector to the server where you want to install it, extract the data collector, and then add the storage systems that you want to monitor.

See Removing and uninstalling data collectors and Downloading and installing data collectors.

When I add a storage system, I provide user credentials and an IP address for that storage system so IBM Storage Insights can collect metadata about it. Is that information stored onsite at my location or is it storage in the IBM Cloud?
The user credentials and IP addresses that you provide for connecting to a storage system are encrypted and stored securely in the IBM Cloud instance for IBM Storage Insights. To collect metadata for the storage system, that information is transmitted over a secure channel to the locally installed data collector. The information is never stored on the host where the data collector is installed; it exists temporarily in the application memory for the data collector only.
Do the user credentials (user name and password) that I provide for connecting to a storage system have any special requirements?
Yes. The role or user group that is assigned to the user name must have the appropriate privileges to collect configuration, capacity, and performance metadata about the storage system. The type of storage system and the metadata that you want to collect determine the privileges that are required.
Learn more User roles for collecting metadata.
How often can I collect performance metadata for the storage resources that I monitor with IBM Storage Insights Pro?
The performance metadata for IBM storage systems that manage block storage is automatically collected every five minutes and the performance metadata for Dell EMC storage systems that manage block storage is automatically collected every fifteen minutes.
For IBM Storage Scale storage systems that are enabled to collect performance metadata for file storage, the collection schedule can be configured when or after the storage system is added. The intervals that can be selected for collecting performance metadata are every 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 60 minutes.
Do I need to back up my metadata on-premises in case a restore is required?
No, and it's not necessary. A backup of all IBM Storage Insights metadata is automatically stored in the ISO-certified IBM cloud in the unlikely event that a restore is required.
Can I create different views of the dashboard?
Yes. If you have the Administrator role in IBM Storage Insights, you can create dashboards to selectively monitor specific storage systems in your environment. For example, you might want a dashboard for each of your data centers that monitors all of the storage systems in the data center and another dashboard for your production systems.
If you don't have an Administrator role, contact a person within your organization who has that role to help create a custom dashboard for you.
See Creating customized dashboards to monitor your storage and Adding and removing users.
How can I add a DS8000® storage system that uses SSL 3 or earlier versions or that use MD5 signed certificates?
See Adding DS8000 storage systems that use SSLv3 and MD5 signed certificates.
Are there any special characters that are restricted?
When you define custom tags, specify alert policy names, customize device names, and enter other configurable text, avoid using the following special characters: $ ~ ` \ / [ ] | ; : ' " < >.

User IDs, roles, and access

Why do I need an IBM ID? How do I get one?
You need an IBM ID and password to log in to IBM Storage Insights or the External link iconIBM Support portal. To register for an IBM ID, complete the following steps:
  1. Go to External link iconCreate your IBM account. The My IBM registration form is displayed.
  2. Complete the form, create a password, and click Continue.
  3. Review the information about email and communications. Check the boxes if appropriate.
  4. Click Submit. You can now log in to IBM Storage Insights or the IBM Support portal with your IBM ID.
Tip: Your IBM ID is also your passport to IBM applications, services, communities, support, online purchasing, and more. The information that you provide is maintained and kept in a secure location. If you have any questions about IBM IDs, review the Help and FAQ for IBMids.
Who is notified when there are issues with the data collectors?
By default, only the subscriber is notified. The subscriber can open a ticket to remove themselves from the notification list. The subscriber can also open a ticket to add or remove other email addresses from the subscription list.
How do I control access to IBM Storage Insights?
By default, only the initial subscriber is authorized to use IBM Storage Insights Pro. To add or remove users and assign roles to users, go to your Products and services page. Alternatively, you can go to the External link iconIBM Storage Community or contact IBM Support at External link iconIBM Marketplace. To assign a role, you must provide, the IBM ID of the user, the user's user name, the email address of the user, and the type of role you want to assign to the user.
Can I control the information that is visible to specific users?
No, currently all users are able to view all of the information that is shown in IBM Storage Insights Pro.