Topics | How To | Filters | Troubleshoot | Related Topics
Managing storage resources is a critical job for any organization, which can be challenging because these resources are distributed across the network. SRM Reports simplify this complex task by presenting a consolidated view of all storage resources, including logical and physical components, providing unified tools to analyze storage requirements and plan storage infrastructure for the purposes of asset management, capacity management, content management, and historical data management across the entire enterprise.
SRM reporting provides a sleek, versatile, and easy-to-use reporting framework that enables you to easily and effectively choose, view, and analyze vital data. Reports are generated by selecting Options and either displaying the report immediately or scheduling it run daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Reports can be saved in various output formats (HTML, EXCEL, PDF) and in a supported language. When scheduling or running a report, notifications can also be configured so it can be emailed, sent via an SNMP trap, or an RSS feed. Customized reports per need basis can be saved as template reports as well.
The following features are provided by SRM Reports.
Customized reporting is available through the selection of filter criteria (e.g., individual columns, specific clients, specific client computer groups, etc.). Each report in turn allows selecting the following Filters:
Client Selection. Select one or more Clients and/or Client Computer Groups to generate a report. This is required.
Column selection. The columns vary according to the report selected (e.g., Microsoft SharePoint). Select a category (e.g., Disk Details) first to display the available columns (e.g., Allocated Space) for that category. Then select one of more columns to include in the report. For the initial templates, the columns are preselected, but can be adjusted as necessary.
Report Options. Controls how data is presented in the report with these options:
General:
Chart Options:
Once the report is generated, you can group and filter the data, add and remove labels, save the report in various output formats, schedule it and have it emailed or sent to an SNMP trap or RSS feed, or save the report as a template for running it at a later point.
When reports are run or scheduled, notifications can be configured so the report can be emailed, sent in an SNMP trap, a page, or sent in an RSS feed. A Run Command can be executed as well when a report is scheduled or run.
Reports can be e-mailed to selected recipients. The recipient can be either a CommCell user, a CommCell user group, a domain or external user (e.g., yahoo, gmail, etc.), or a pager address. If more than one recipient is specified, separate the addresses with a comma.
To send an email notification:
Reports can be sent by a CommServe, using the SNMP protocol, to other computers in the form of SNMP traps, provided that the SNMP Enabler software is installed on the CommServe computer. See SNMP Enablers for more information. SNMP traps can be customized by adding tokens to the trap.
To send an SNMP Trap notification:
A message can be sent to the Event Viewer on the CommServe when a report is run or scheduled. Event Viewer notifications can be customized by adding token arguments to the message. The tokens will be included in the body of the alert notification message.
To send an Event Viewer notification:
A notification when a report is run or scheduled can be sent by configuring a Run Command. The script can be run on the CommCell or a client machine. The script can optionally be configured with arguments.
To send an Run Command notification:
A notification when a report is run or scheduled can be sent for Archiving Operations using SRM. If a supported Archiver Agent is installed on the client computer and an On Demand Archive Set is configured with SRM enabled, the list of files and directories will be read and an archive operation will be performed on the default subclient of the archive set.
To run a Data Archiver operation notification:
A message can be sent in an Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed when a report is scheduled or run. The RSS feed can be automatically integrated with your Web Browser. RSS Feeds can be customized by adding tokens to the feed.
To send an RSS Feed notification:
Run-time SQL queries can also be applied to the data to provide further filtering, such as to display files of a certain size or with a particular file extension (e.g., mp3).
The full SQL query can be generated if necessary after adding the condition and selecting the Get SQL Query tab. This can be used in a third-party tool (e.g., SQL Server Management Studio) and used there to collect and report data.
For more information, see Filters for SRM Reports.
Forecasting is prediction of data usage in future, based on the usage pattern in the past. Since Prediction allows visualizing data usage in future, it helps make business decisions accordingly. Prediction is available on history reports and can be done on Daily/weekly/Monthly data. In the graphs, the predicted data is shown in the shaded area.
With trend analysis, you can predict and eliminate problems before they occur. For example, using the File System Usage History template, you will be able to use historical data that has been collected to predict when the infrastructure can no longer handle current data levels and when new hardware may be needed. Predictive reporting can also help in scheduling regular updates to avoid unexpected emergency downtime by lessening the possibility of servers crashing because disks are low on space.
Prediction is available only for templates and columns that provide historical data.
The following procedure is an example of enabling the Trending options for a Windows File System Using History report:
| 1. | From the CommCell Browser, click Reports, and then click SRM Report Manager. | |
| 2. | Click File Systems and then click Windows. Then click Usage and History and then the File System Usage History template. | |
| 3. | Click the Client Selection tab and select the client computers or client computer group. This is a required step. |
|
| 4. |
Click Column Selection tab.
For an out-of-the-box template, the columns are displayed here. To change the columns, select a category and click Add or Remove to move the columns between the Available and Selected boxes. Clicking Remove All will remove all previously selected filters for the reports. |
|
| 5. |
Click Report Options tab and enable Include Trending. For this
example, the default selections are used:
|
|
| 6. | Click Run to generate the report immediately and view the results. The predicted data is shown in the shaded area. |
|
File Level Analytics allows you to see properties of files (e.g., file size, file name, type, file locations) in your storage environment by clicking on data points such as volume level. A detailed view of all the folders and files for that volume is displayed. The data can be sorted by size of files, or type, for example, to identify large files that can be deleted to increase your storage capacity. This can be combined with Filters where you can filter the data further to display files of a certain size or with a particular file extension (e.g., mp3). For more information, see SRM File Level Analytics.
When viewing a report in the CommCell Console, you can copy any chart to the clipboard in .bmp format by right-clicking the chart and selecting Copy Chart. This allows you to easily copy a chart into other applications like emails, presentations.
Reports can be customized as follows.
File Categories are used to generate reports on groups of files and are configurable for each SRM File System Agent (Windows, UNIX, NetWare, and NAS). Each File Category is comprised of an editable list of file types. After performing an Analysis level data collection job, you can generate reports with detailed information based on these File Categories.
For example, the Multimedia Types category contains a list of file types that are commonly associated with media. After an Analysis level data collection job, you can generate reports which detail how much space is dedicated to media files on a given client.
If you edit the File Categories for a given agent, you must run another Analysis level data collection job before reports will reflect the changes.
For step-by-step instructions, see File Type Categories for Reports.
The following table details the default file categories reported by each SRM Agent. Refer to File Type Categories for Reports to make changes to these lists. Default File Categories are configurable only for SRM File System Agents (Windows, UNIX, NetWare, and NAS.)
| File Category | SharePoint | NetWare File System |
Network Attached Storage | UNIX File System |
Windows File System |
| Prohibited Files | jpeg mp3 mpeg qt |
jpeg mp3 mpeg qt |
jpeg mp3 mpeg qt |
jpeg mp3 mpeg qt |
jpeg mp3 mpeg qt |
| Executable Types | bat dll exe msi msp |
bat dll exe msi msp |
bat dll exe msi msp |
N/A | bat dll exe msi msp |
| Multimedia Types | avi bmp gif jpeg jpg mid mp3 mp4 mpeg mpg png qt wav wmv |
avi bmp gif jpeg jpg mid mp3 mp4 mpeg mpg png qt wav wmv |
avi bmp gif jpeg jpg mid mp3 mp4 mpeg mpg png qt wav wmv |
avi bmp gif jpeg jpg mid mp3 mp4 mpeg mpg png qt wav wmv |
avi bmp gif jpeg jpg mid mp3 mp4 mpeg mpg png qt wav wmv |
| Archive Types | arj bz2 cab cpio gz jar rar tar tgz Z zip |
arj bz2 cab cpio gz jar rar tar tgz Z zip |
arj bz2 cab cpio gz jar rar tar tgz Z zip |
arj bz2 cab cpio gz jar rar tar tgz Z zip |
arj bz2 cab cpio gz jar rar tar tgz Z zip |
| Document Types | csv doc docx dot mpp ppt pptx ps rtf txt xls xlsx |
csv doc docx dot mpp ppt pptx ps rtf txt xls xlsx |
csv doc docx dot mpp ppt pptx ps rtf txt xls xlsx |
csv doc docx dot mpp ppt pptx ps rtf txt xls xlsx |
csv doc docx dot mpp ppt pptx ps rtf txt xls xlsx |
| Exchange Personal Folders | N/A | pst | pst
|
N/A | pst |
| Junk File Types | N/A | N/A | swp | #*# ~* core* swp |
N/A |
| System Files | ini sys |
ini sys |
ini sys |
ini sys |
ini sys |
| Web Page Files | asp aspx htm html jsp mht xml |
asp aspx htm html jsp mht xml |
asp aspx htm html jsp mht xml |
asp aspx htm html jsp mht xml |
asp aspx htm html jsp mht xml |
| Temporary Files | tmp | tmp | tmp | tmp | tmp |
| For Junk File Types in UNIX Agents, the extensions represent regular expressions used to match file names. For example, core* will try to match all file names which begin with the word “core”. |
Time Categories are supported by the SRM File System Agents (Windows, UNIX, NetWare, SharePoint, and NAS) to allow custom grouping within time-based distribution reports, such as the File Distribution by Modification Time report.
When custom Time Categories are defined, time-based distribution reports will group information by Time Category, and additional sorting can be performed using the Time Category as one of the parameters. This allows information to be grouped in a manner that is meaningful to a particular environment.
When Time Categories are modified, it is necessary to first run an All File System Resources (Analysis) data collection job on affected clients to update the SRM database, and then new reports must be run. The pre-existing reports in the database will continue to show data based on the old Time Category definitions; if you modify Time Categories and then generate reports without running an Analysis data collection job, the data reported will be incorrect.
For step-by-step instructions, see Time Categories for Reports.
The category count can be specified for reports of the top 'N', such as the Largest File report, affecting the number of entries to be displayed, e.g., top 10, top 20, etc. This parameter is specified separately for each Agent with Top 'N' reports, so that you can, for instance see the top 50 in all such reports for Windows, and the top 10 for UNIX reports.
If Top 'N' Category Counts for Reports are changed for returning more rows, data collection job must be run for the changes to take effect.
The following reports can be configured for category counts:
| SRM Agent | Reports |
| Windows File System | Largest Files Least Recently Used Files Oldest Files |
| Network Attached Storage | Largest Files Least Recently Used Files Oldest Files |
| Novell NetWare | Largest Files Least Recently Used Files |
| UNIX File System | Largest Files Least Recently Used Files |
| Microsoft SharePoint | Top 10 Documents by Size Top 10 Documents by Version Size Top 10 Lists by Document Size |
For instructions in how to configure category counts, see Top 'N' Category Counts for Reports.
Before an SRM Report can be generated and viewed, a data collection job needs to be run. SRM Reports can be scheduled to follow Data Collection; this can be accomplished by configuring a Schedule as described below.
After data collection, you can generate an SRM report by specifying filter criteria. This criteria includes client computers, columns, display units, etc. Optionally, filters can be defined using SQL queries for more refined filtering. Once the criteria is specified, a report can be generated.
After specifying criteria for the report, these options are available to view or schedule the report:
When scheduling, patterns can also be applied to the report so it runs on a specific time, repeated every so many days, or run for a particular number of times. Some reports allow enabling Forecasting by specifying default trending interval and number of data points on which the trending interval is based. For more information on trending, see Forecasting.
See Run, Schedule, or Save a Report Manager Report for step-by-step instructions.
| TIFF is no longer a supported output format. SRM supports saving Reports in these formats: HTML, EXCEL, and PDF. |
SRM Reports allow you to easily view and analyze data related to various aspects of the different entities in an enterprise. The information available in each report is based on the types of data and information it gathers.
From the CommCell Console, the SRM Report Manager provides these types of reports:
Initial templates are provided for each type (e.g., Cost History by Application, Capacity by File System, etc.) where columns have been preselected. The only requirement before generating and displaying the report is to specify one or more client computers. For most reports, a data collection job must also have been run prior to generating the report.
Reports can be customized by adding or removing columns in the initial templates or specifying additional Filter Criteria.
These reports are available and can be tailored for a given set of installed client resources:
Data for the Cost History and Usage History reports (e.g., Cost History by Application, Usage History by Application) is compiled at regular intervals by a background process on the SRM Server. The default interval is one week, which means the Cost History reports will show one data point per week, no matter how often data collection is scheduled for them; thus, data collection for these reports should be synchronized to the summary interval. You can configure the interval using the SRM Options (General) dialog box which is located in the control panel of CommCell Console.
For a newly installed SRM Server, no data will appear in these reports until either the default interval, or a user-specified interval has elapsed from the time of installation, at which time the first summary process will run, and data will be available for these reports.
Review the following considerations: