What is new in 3.7

HPE SSMC 3.7 (HPE SSMC) includes the following new or enhanced features.

General

  • The product name is changed from HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console to HPE SSMC.

    The login screen and main menu drop-down on the Management Console displays Primera and 3PAR SSMC.

General – Settings

The new capacity formats MB, GB, TB, and PB (multiples of 1000) are added in Global Settings. The new capacity formats are an addition to the existing formats MiB, GiB, TiB, and PiB (multiples of 1024).

Block Persona – Common Provisioning Groups

For Primera arrays (OS 4.2 and above), only Auto is visible in the Set size drop-down. For HPE 3PAR arrays, multiple set sizes are visible in the drop-down.

Block Persona – Virtual Volume
  • Added Performance Metrics widget in the Overview page. The Performance Metrics widget indicates Average Read and Write Throughput in KiB/sec and Average Read and Write Latency in ms.
  • Introduced the following charts in the Analytics page that helps to monitor and analyze the volume latencies and Throughput:

    • Read Latency: Displays a Read Latency trend for the system over the selected time.

    • Write Latency: Displays a Write Latency trend for the system over the selected time.

    • Read Throughput: Displays a Read throughput trend for the system over the selected time.

    • Write Throughput: Displays a Write throughput trend for the system over the selected time.

    The Read and Write Latency graphs are also scored depending upon the relative latency to other volumes in the community. If there is an issue in a particular duration of time, the system displays the list of factors that might be responsible. The data points are marked as Unusual latency detected when the latency exceeds the prediction based on other volumes in the community that share a similar configuration.

  • Markers appear in the 24-hour hi-res view on peaks in the latency graph if the factors contributing to the latency spike are known. Hovering over the marker displays the top System and Workload factors.

    The factors reported for latency peaks are arrived by determining what correlates with the rise in latency values during a specific time period. This does not necessarily indicate that the factors reported are causing the increase in latency. This information provides an idea of what workload or system factors might have changed in a way similar to how the latency also changed.

  • Workload factors include increased workload for any of the following IO size buckets.
  • System Factors include - CPU Utilization %, Disk busy %, Host port busy %, Enclosure port busy %, Read Cache Miss % for Read Latency graph, Write Cache Miss %, and Delayed ack for Write latency graph.
NOTE: The following panels are removed from the Dashboard screen:

  • Top Performance Outliers

  • Top Volume Hotspots By Latency

  • Top Systems Hotspots By Latency

Data Protection – Remote Copy Groups

  • Support for smaller refresh intervals with Async Periodic replication to achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of one minute.

  • SSMC supports the creation of additional Remote Copy groups on the periodic leg of Synchronous Long Distance (SLD) setup.

Storage Systems – Systems

  • Remote Access Manager feature is available from HPE SSMC 3.7. This feature enables you to grant access for support personnel to customer arrays and perform remote support actions simultaneously on multiple systems in HPE 3PAR and Primera systems.

  • Remote Access Manager feature is available on both HPE 3PAR (HPE 3PAR OS 3.3.1 onwards) and Primera arrays. To use the Remote Access feature on HPE 3PAR arrays, you must first add Service Processor 5.0.6 or later in SSMC.

  • A Download Eventlog action option is included in the Actions menu. The option allows you to capture and download the event logs for a storage system. For HPE 3PAR arrays (if Service Processor 5.0.6 or later is configured in SSMC), you can download the rda.log along with event log.

  • The Collect support data and Restart call home service action options are now supported on HPE Storage OS 3.3.1 (MU2 and above) and HPE Storage OS 3.2.2 (MU4 and above) using SP 5.0.6 or later.

  • HPE Primera 4.2 supports 10 G and 25 G iSCSI Target Driver Support. SSMC supports the provisioning and volume export with both types of iSCSI connectivity.

  • HPE Primera 4.2 supports NVMe NAND capacities with up to eight NVMe NAND drives per node pair.

  • Markers appear to indicate that the known factors are shown for spikes in latency in the displayed graphs.

Storage Systems – Controller Nodes

The Internal Drive view in the detail pane displays encryption status of internal drives. The Encrypted column in the Internal Drive view displays encryption status on the internal boot drive.

Federation – Federation and Migration Configuration

HPE 3PAR to Primera peer motion in this release offers the following salient features:

  • SSMC 3.7 allows unidirectional data migration from all 3PAR systems to Primera systems.

  • Using the Peer Motion functionality, users can now migrate hosts, host sets, virtual volumes, and virtual volume sets from HPE 3PAR to HPE Primera Systems.

    For more information on Federation and Migration, see HPE 3PAR Peer Motion and HPE 3PAR Online Import User Guide.

    For more information on HPE 3PAR to HPE Primera migrations, see the Migrating data from HPE 3PAR to HPE Primera guide.

VMware – Virtual Machines

  • VASA/VVOL feature is enabled on HPE Primera OS 4.2 and later.

  • For Primera arrays (OS 4.2 and later), in the VMware Storage Policy section, Data reductions attribute refers to enabling Compression and Deduplication.

  • The application associated with a VM is listed in the Virtual Machines table and Topology > VM block. This is based on the App Volume Sets associated with the VM.

  • The Correlation view is now available in Topology. This view compares virtualization and storage performance trends.

  • Performance Contention Map available at System, Host, and Datastore levels to view the neighboring datastores and VMs performance at one glance.

    NOTE: If you upgrade to version 3.7, the start time in the Performance Contention Map is applicable only from the time of 3.7 updates. The Performance Contention Map allows you to select a period of time within the past seven days.

  • A host, is marked with a blue color if it is found to be a relative outlier by latency based on Advanced analytics feature.

  • The historic health state degradation or criticality cause is tracked and displayed over a time period. The health status description is available for a system and a host.

  • The latest, last hourly maximum throughput, and latency metrics' columns are added. These columns can be filtered and sorted.

  • A Volume, is marked with a blue color and the same reflects in the time slider if found to be anomalous by latency as detected by Advanced analytics feature of SSMC.

  • The lens icons at top-right corner is available to enable zoom in and also to reset the time slider zoom.

  • While navigating across time slider, boxes' expansion or collapse is retained for easy view of data over time.

  • The collapse of blocks of entities' data while navigating from one time stamp to another does not occur.

  • The total of read and write aspects appear for each bar for throughput and latency.

NOTE: When a VV entity is renamed, the performance data may not appear in Topology until the entity contains an old timestamp. Also, in the Correlation View > Select Objects, the list might show old name for selection. After approximately seven days, when the Topology map does not show the old named entity, the Correlation View shows the latest name for selection.

Administrator Console

The following enhancements are included for Editing Preferences:

  • FIPS mode can now be enabled or disabled by toggling the FIPS mode enabled switch in the Application panel.

  • Custom login banner message can now be enabled or disabled by toggling the Login banner message switch in the Application panel.

See the HPE SSMC Administrator Guide for compatibility, support, and version information.