Download a free trial of Wizards Storage Portal today at http://bit.ly/15ffqDe

February 27, 2013 – Viby J, Denmark – Debriefing Software has released an upgraded version of its cloud-based Storage Resource Management (SRM) software, Wizards Storage Portal, with new performance analysis tools to help IT departments and IBM resellers get the best performance out of IBM Storwize and SAN Volume Controller (SVC) installations.

Wizards Storage Portal is an award-winning SRM application that continuously monitors and analyses IBM backup and storage installations in real-time. With a customizable dashboard that provides an overview of all important performance indicators on one screen, more than 200 preconfigured charts and graphs that can be accessed instantaneously, and automated reports and system alerts, Wizards Storage Portal reduces the amount of time spent managing IBM TSM, Storwize and SVC by up to 70%.

Building on Wizards Storage Portal’s existing success in monitoring more than 60,000 servers worldwide, Debriefing Software’s new performance analysis tools for IBM Storwize and SVC will make it even easier and more cost-effective to ensure the effective management of IBM backup and storage.

With the upgrade, Wizards Storage Portal is the only tool in the IBM backup and storage environment that allows IBM Storwize and SVC users to generate detailed performance analysis reports, set defined workload performance levels, and receive automatic alerts when boundaries are approached.

The new features introduced today include new Heat Maps; new Delta Reports demonstrating the difference in workloads between two days; an updated performance overview that can check workloads as frequently as every five minutes; a new wizard to notify users when performance thresholds are about to be breached; and a new cluster capacity chart contains a graph showing capacity and usage measured by Cluster, Mdisk or Volume.

Jesper Matthiesen, Chief Technology Officer of Debriefing Software, said, “We’ve seen many large corporations across all industry segments using Wizards Storage Portal because of its ease of setup and use, comprehensive real-time information, and automated alerts. However, our customers have encouraged us to go even further and provide detailed performance analysis, enabling them to set defined workload performance levels and receive automatic alerts when boundaries are approached. These new features are truly unique in the IBM backup and storage environment.”

Download a free trial of Wizards Storage Portal today at http://bit.ly/15ffqDe 

In this upgrade release is the new Heat Maps for Storwize and SVC feature.

The new Heat Map report for Storwize and SVC users visualizes the workload across volumes or hosts that relate to one or more storage pools. This allows you to pinpoint exactly where the storage hot-spots and dead volumes are located and then decide whether a volume should be migrated to another pool, freeing up bandwidth or capacity for the remaining volumes. For example, you could create a storage pool for high capacity/low performance hard drives and another for high performance/low capacity SSD drives. If the high performance drives are reaching capacity while the high capacity drives are remaining idle, you will want to ensure that the right activities are allocated to the appropriate storage pool.

Other changes have been made to the Performance Overview report which can now select time intervals as frequent as five minute intervals so that the most recent workload across Storwize and SVC.

It is also possible to select multiple types of entities such as pull up a Top-10 list of Hosts and  Pools in the same view.

Additional New Features in Wizards Storage Portal 3.18

Delta Reports
Delta Reports illustrate the difference in workload between two different dates.

"Performance Counter Reached Estimated Threshold” wizard.
This wizard warns users when the value of a performance counter reaches a specified threshold. Users can configure a time interval for the wizard to monitor. The threshold is specified as a percentage of the estimated maximum value for the counter.

New Cluster Capacity Chart
A new Charts tab has been added to the Cluster Detail page. It contains a graph showing capacity and usage measured by Cluster, mdisk or Volume.

From the Clusters LIST, you can also select multiple clusters, click Continue and get a combined graph for two or more clusters.

Support for mdisk performance high watermarks
A high watermark is the highest value of specific counter for specific entity (mdisk in this case) from the time when the value has been reset by a user or an all time high in case when it has never previously been reset).

Ability to show/hide high watermark trendlines on performance charts has been added.

"Registered At" value of a high watermark now has a link to the performance charts page when the selected counter is shown.

All of these new features are included in the free 30-day trial version Wizards Storage Portal available at www.debriefingsoftware.com so can be tested immediately.