Context

Tool mentors explain how a tool can perform tasks, which are part of ITUP processes and activities. The tasks are listed as Related Elements in the Relationships section.

You can see the details of how processes and activities are supported by this tool mentor, by clicking the links next to the icons:

•   IT Service Continuity Management
  •   Evaluate IT Service Continuity Management Performance

Details

Business volatility is a more recent and increasingly important business continuity concern. Enterprises continually struggle to gauge marketplace behavior and the demands that employees, customers, and business partners will place on IT systems. Miscalculations can be very costly in terms of wasted effort and wasted resources. Overly optimistic business forecasts encourage IT planners to increase capacity. When business lags, IT investments are underutilized and the total cost of ownership (TCO) rises proportionally. Conversely, pessimistic business forecasts lead to smaller investments in IT systems. When business booms, IT becomes a limiting factor, opportunity costs are incurred due to lost business, and TCO rises as the need to satisfy demand outstrips the normal focus on efficiency.

In their continued effort to meet the sometimes conflicting cost, service-level, and business continuity demands of business executives, IT managers require a number of storage solutions that address specific requirements, whether those requirements are better performance, higher reliability, greater capacity, or lower cost. In response, the industry has seen a proliferation of storage technologies that address specific customer requirements.

IBM® delivers its TotalStorage® Productivity Center (TPC) to improve storage capacity utilization, availability, and administrator productivity through tight integration of diverse storage management applications that are focused specifically on storage infrastructure management. This solution provides a set of storage management products for managing the storage hardware and software products of IBM as well as SMI-S-enabled products from other storage vendors. By integrating these products, IBM is offering a single viewpoint on a customer's entire storage infrastructure. TPC comprises a user interface with these components:

• TPC for Data – automated identification of the storage resources and analysis of how effectively those resources are being used, including evaluation at the volume and file level
• TPC for Fabric – automated management of SAN-attached devices (switches and HBAs) including multivendor switch zone provisioning and visualization of the SAN topology
• TPC for Disk – centralized point of control for disk configuration and performance monitoring
• TPC for Replication – simplified and automated storage replication environments including the ability to ensure that data on multiple related volumes across storage subsystems remains consistent

TPC is also providing tighter integration with Tivoli® Storage Manager (TSM) to enable the automated activation of the backup or archive of key files when utilization or performance thresholds are violated.

When TPC is installed and configured, it can help IT to improve storage infrastructure availability, optimize storage resource utilization, enhance storage personnel productivity, and add intelligence to your data protection practices.

• Prevent out-of-space conditions on file and database systems
• Predict storage network failures before they happen, enabling preventive maintenance
• Intelligently forecast future storage needs
• Quickly pinpoint SAN problems
• Simplify the configuration and management of advanced copy services
• Receive performance-threshold alerts
• Categorize data by conducting database, file system, directory, and file-level analysis
• Identify non-essential data through file-level analysis
• Report on disk subsystem performance
• Recommend best LUN for new storage allocations
• Gain custom reporting and batch reporting capabilities
• Administrators make better, more timely decisions through comprehensive reporting of information and metrics
• Create a single-point of control and administration of the management of heterogeneous storage networks, disk systems, and replication services
• Use policy-based automation
• Simplify administration through the use of common agents
• Improve real-time monitoring of the SAN through event-driven status updates
• Automate capacity provisioning through workflows
• Streamline installation through central installation
• Increase storage administrator knowledge of data location and usage patterns, allowing for more intelligent management of data-protection practices
• Reduce management time and enhance policies
• Protect existing investments by better utilizing existing software
• Improve service levels on data protection by identifying files that have not been backed up

For more information

For more information about this tool, go to the IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center page.