The CommNet™ management tool has been designed to manage and administer the CommCell Groups efficiently and in a timely manner in order to minimize administration costs. Additionally, you can analyze concise summaries and comprehensive reports showing various aspects of secondary and primary storage in order to resolve problems proactively rather than reactively. The software also provides features such as remote administration capabilities, alert mechanisms, user administration, job and resource management, and scheduling. All of these features are discussed in detail in the following sections.
The CommNet™ Server monitors the CommCell® group that are registered in the CommNet Server. It also gathers vital information from all the cells based on the frequency established in the Data Collection Policy. It also serves the CommNet Browser which is the user interface. Microsoft SQL Server is used to store all the data gathered from cells.
The CommNet Server is the coordinator and administrator of the CommNet domain. It allows you to configure, schedule and administer various activities.
The CommNet Server gathers data from the CommCells that are registered in a CommNet domain and maintains a database containing information collected from the various Cells. This is performed using the CommNet Server Service which runs the CommNet Server.
The CommNet Server can either be installed on the computer which has the CommServe software installed or on a totally independent computer. If the CommNet Server is installed on the CommServe computer, the CommNet Server database is also created on the same Microsoft SQL Server instance used by the CommCell.
To protect the CommNet Server database against disasters, such as computer failure, application failure, etc. it is recommended that you have a Disaster Recovery strategy in place.
The CommNet Browser provides a user-friendly interface to administer and generate summaries and reports on the CommNet domain. The user interface is specifically designed to help a system administrator isolate problems and drill-down to the root cause of the problem without having to generate multiple reports. CommNet Browser can also be accessed using a web-browser.
See CommNet Browser for a comprehensive list of features provided in the CommNet Browser.
CommNet Explorer provides a way to query information on the CommNet components directly from the SQL database. You can use the views provided with CommNet Explorer or customize them to reflect the data in any manner appropriate to your organization.
See CommNet Explorer for more information.
The software provides summaries for all entities in the CommNet domain; from a comprehensive CommCell® summaries to more detailed Client, Media Agent and Library summaries. Summaries provide information at a glance about the primary and secondary storage wherever applicable, and include vital troubleshooting information crucial to any administrator.
The software gathers critical information from the CommCell® group at specified frequencies, allowing you to view:
Up-to-date status of any entity within a Cell.
Detailed data protection activity and storage distribution.
Comprehensive, historical trending information.
For addition information, see Summaries.
The software contains various reports that help you to manage your CommNet™ domain. Some of the important reports are described below:
Data Protection reports can help you to understand the whether or not a particular client has data protection coverage on a given day, week, month, or year. The coverage report also displays the status of the coverage on a copy basis to determine if the coverage is from a primary or an auxiliary copy. In addition, you can also view valuable trending analysis such as job success rate, media consumption and primary and secondary storage growth.
The software provides flexibility in defining the Data Protection Windows for the CommCell® group for reporting purposes. You can use these customized reports to fine tune various parameters of a CommCell configuration in order to meet the data protection window. A Window Utilization report is also provided, which can be used to determine the Clients, iDataAgents, and Data Protection operations that are not meeting the specified window within a specified amount of time.
Data Protection Window Utilization Report can help you determine how well the data protection window is being utilized in the CommCell® groups. This report provides a summary of data protection operations relative to the data protection window specified in the CommCell group, including the number of jobs completing outside the window.
Data Recovery reports can help you to understand the details of the recovery operations performed in the CommCell groups, including information on the restore destination and the job successes associated with the recovery operations.
Media Management related information, such as MediaAgent, library and drive performance are provided in a concise manner in various Media Management reports. The software also generates performance reports for a given MediaAgent, library and drive, to help analyze media management aspects such as throughput, data size transferred, number of data protection operations handled, and library and drive usage times.
The software provides the capability to predict the following, by looking at past consumption and usage:
SLA is a scale to measure how well the data protections operations are performed in a CommCell® group. This is determined based on the short-term and long-term coverage. In order to customize the calculation based on your specific environment, facility to define the weights for several aspects in the short-term and long-term coverage and an acceptable SLA is also provided.
Media based costing mechanism provides the facility to determine the cost associated with hosting an application and its protected data, based on the type of media in which the data resides. This feature includes the facility to define cost categories and the media associated with each cost category, and billable entities, such as departments within a company.
A comprehensive Billable Charge Back report can be generated to view the cost, related expense, storage size, and ranking information for all vital primary and secondary storage entities. The report can be generated for clients or billable entities.
The costing model can be defined centrally and automatically distributed to all CommCell® group within the CommNet™ domain.
Load information refers to the job activity status for the CommCell® groups, which includes their peak load status, the range of time with the largest amount of job activity. Users can use this report to quickly determine better data protection job schedule solutions so that the network is not overloaded at specific times. This report is extremely useful for troubleshooting network issues.
For addition information, see Reports.
There are a host of other features designed to help you manage and administer your CommCell® group. Some of the major features are described below:
The CommNet software installation is a component of the CommServe software installation removing the need for the separate installation. When installing the CommServe software, you have the option to install the CommNet software components, which includes the CommNet Server, CommNet Browser, and CommNet Explorer. Additionally, during the installation of the CommServe software, the CommNet Agent is automatically installed. The CommNet Agent no longer requires an independent install on the CommServe computer. Note that the automatic installation of the CommNet Agent does not signify that the CommServe must be registered with a CommNet Server for reporting purposes.
During installation of the CommNet Server software, you must specify the CommCell with which the CommNet Server will be associated. When installed, the CommNet Server appears as a client computer in its associated CommServe's CommCell Console. This does not register the CommCell with the CommNet Server, nor does it merge the user interfaces; however, this enables the CommNet Server to act as a client computer in the CommCell, which allows for the CommNet Server computer to support automatic updates as well as the following:
If another CommNet Server is installed in this environment, it cannot be associated with the CommCell that is already associated with a CommNet Server. It must be associated with another CommCell for deployment and license purposes.
Ability to launch multiple CommCell® Consoles to remotely administer and monitor individual cells.
In addition, to provide additional monitoring capability, the Event Viewer and Job Controller associated with the CommCell group are displayed in the CommNet™ Browser.
Alert mechanism provides the capability to notify users of critical conditions using E-mail, Pager and SNMP traps. This feature also provides the mechanism to escalate the conditions if it has not been addressed for a specified amount of time or if the condition worsens.
The software supports a very flexible user security scheme that can be customized to provide access to only the designated administrators for a given Cell.
Scheduling provides the facility to run tasks such as reports and summaries on a consistent basis. Further, scheduling also provides the capability to send critical organizational information to multiple users at multiple times and intervals in easy to use formats to specified recipients.
Jobs and Resources is a CommCell® task in the CommNet™ Browser. It allows users to troubleshoot their environment and control CommCell® jobs and manage its resources. For more information, see CommCell® Jobs and Resources.
You must acquaint yourself with the following concepts before using the software:
media usage.