Due to rapid growth in the datacenter over the last several years, inefficient resource use has unfortunately almost become the standard. Even as infrastructure managers do everything in their power to keep up, the issue of inefficient resource use pervades environments of all sizes and structures. Inefficiency might come in the form of misused storage resources, with some being overutilized while others remain largely unused, inaccurate chargeback reporting, or increased compliance costs due to complexity.
With the vendor-agnostic visibility provided by Veritas APTARE IT Analytics, resource optimization becomes the new standard.
Gaining visibility is the answer to resource inefficiency. By accessing a clear picture of storage resources and how they are used, infrastructure managers have the information needed to both improve the way existing resources are allocated and create the metrics needed for accurate chargeback reporting. Along with visibility into the IT environment, Veritas APTARE IT Analytics provides IT professionals with the ability to make immediate changes and track them for future reference.
APTARE IT Analytics allows infrastructure managers to gain a better grasp on existing processes, exposing areas in which improvements can be made. While exhibiting many practical applications, this clear picture of the IT environment is particularly helpful in optimizing existing storage use. Storage Optimization is one of the common use cases for APTARE IT Analytics. Using this clear picture of the storage environment, customers can analyze where storage is being misused with ease.
What Storage Optimization Looks Like
Last week I had an opportunity to chat with a couple of our users, and John – a storage system admin from one of our clients – shared a great example of how his organization is using APTARE for storage optimization and chargeback. John uses Dell EMC ECS as the target for TSM backups via the ECS device’s S3 interface. His organization has over 4 PBs of data across HDS, NetApp, and EMC, but had no method of reporting on storage utilization or the resulting charges. Due to their datacenter’s size and complexity, John’s team had to spend 10 hours every week on manual chargeback research. Additionally, the in-house development of an automated chargeback system proved far too large of a task to be tackled by the team. Manual chargeback was their only path forward, until they discovered and implemented APTARE IT Analytics. With APTARE, John and his team saved a great deal of time and resources.
APTARE IT Analytics operates seamlessly across these varying technologies, as it isn’t limited to any specific backup solution, providing end-to-end visibility of the full storage environment.
Dell EMC ECS uses buckets for storage, and John told us that his management asked him to report on storage usage, meaning that they faced the challenge of storage reporting without having a solid grasp on what each bucket contained. Therefore, it was very hard for them to provide an accurate picture of storage usage by department.
APTARE, which provides instant IT resource visibility, gave John and his team the insight needed to associate each bucket’s usage with specific applications, locations, business units, etc. Beyond uncovering what each bucket held, IT Analytics provided the means to track bucket growth over time and even delivered clear metrics that allowed John to talk to his management about real cost savings.
Thanks to its vendor-agnostic capabilities, APTARE can be used to inform resource optimization strategy regardless of the technologies used to make up individual applications. IT Analytics also enables an unprecedented level of accuracy within storage reporting, allowing infrastructure managers to more effectively manage resource use across heterogeneous IT environments.
Storage optimization is just one of the ways APTARE IT Analytics can be used to improve the cost-effectiveness of the IT environment. From storage to backup to virtual environments to management of unstructured data, APTARE allows its users to make sweeping changes to the full environment as well as surgical improvements down to specific hosts, all within the same dashboard.
Interested in learning more? Check us out on Veritas.com and schedule an APTARE IT Analytics demonstration.
