What's new for IBM Spectrum Control 5.4.1

New features and enhancements are available in IBM Spectrum Control 5.4.1.

Monitoring snapshot information for volumes that are protected by Safeguarded Copy

With Safeguarded Copy in DS8000® 8.5.0 and later, you can improve cyber resiliency by frequently creating protected, point-in-time backups of critical data, with minimum impact and effective resource utilization.

In IBM Spectrum Control, you can now view snapshot information for volumes that are backed up using the Safeguarded Copy feature across all your monitored DS8000 storage systems. Use this information to monitor the volume capacity that is protected and the capacity that is used to store volume backups for Safeguarded Copy.

You can view the following information:

The total pool and storage system capacity that is used to store volume backups that are created by Safeguarded Copy.
The volumes that are backed up, the pool that backup copies are written to, and the capacity that is used to store the volume copies.

From the Storage menu, click Block Storage Systems, and double-click a DS8000. Then, click Volumes in the Internal Resources section.

Volumes page for DS8000 showing Safeguarded volumes

On the Copy Data page, the summary information was updated to include the volume capacity that is protected by Safeguarded Copy. The value for the capacity that is protected locally now includes the volume capacity that is protected by Safeguarded Copy, FlashCopy®, and VDisk mirror. You can also view the capacity that is used to store volume backups for Safeguarded Copy.

Copy Data page for DS8000 showing the Safeguarded Copy tab

Want to see more information about the protected volumes? Click Safeguarded Copy to view the volumes that are backed up, the pool that the copies of a volume are written to, and the capacity that is used to store the volume copies.

You can also complete the following tasks for the Safeguarded Copy feature:

Define alerts to notify you when the capacity for storing volume backups exceeds a specified amount for a storage system, pool, or a specific volume.
See Triggering conditions for storage system alerts and Triggering conditions for storage system internal resource alerts.
Use chargeback and consumer reports to view the capacity of the volume backups for Safeguarded Copy. See Capacity metrics for chargeback and consumer reports.

Don't forget to update tools that use the REST API: The REST API for IBM Spectrum Control was also updated so that you can retrieve snapshot information for volumes that are protected by Safeguarded Copy. Ensure that you update any 3rd-party tools or reports that you use to show information that is retrieved by the REST API.

Viewing topology and location information for DS8000 Fibre Channel (FC) ports

You use IBM Spectrum Control to monitor DS8000 storage systems, and you need to understand the port topology and the location of the ports in the hardware hierarchy? Not a problem. From the Storage menu, click Block Storage Systems, double-click a DS8000, and click FC Ports.

You can now quickly check whether an FC port uses the FICON® or the SCSI FCP protocol and view the frame, I/O enclosure, and host adapter for the port.

You can also quickly investigate the performance of a host adapter. Select the ports that are associated with the host adapter and click View Performance.

Enhanced platform support

The following platforms are now supported:

DB2® 11.5.4
IBM® Cognos® Analytics 11.1.7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 8 and Windows 2019 are now supported for all components of IBM Spectrum Control.

Free 90-day trial of IBM Spectrum Control is now available!

From a single console, get insights into the health, performance, and capacity consumption of your storage environment.

Discover, explore, and try out the features that help you manage your storage environment, such as:

Monitoring the health of your storage systems and devices
Monitoring the performance and capacity of your storage systems, fabrics, and switches
Performance troubleshooting and reporting
Capacity planning, management, and reporting
Alerting and alert policies

Go to free 90-day trial of IBM Spectrum Control.

Note: The trial version of IBM Spectrum Control runs on a virtual machine in an Open Virtualization Format (OVF). It is not intended for use in a production environment, or for customer distribution, and the trial version isn’t supported by IBM Support. A getting started guide is included in the download package and you can access the IBM Storage Community to get help from storage management experts and other IBM Spectrum Control users.

Product fixes and security updates

In every release of IBM Spectrum® Control, IBM fixes issues that are reported by our internal teams and by our customers. Along with fixes, improving the operation and security of the product is also a priority. See what's been updated and fixed in this release:

Limitations and known issues

For information about limitations and known issues that might occur when you use IBM Spectrum Control 5.4.1, see External link icon Limitations and known issues.