More on DASD monitoring - OMEGAMON XE For Storage

We've discussed DASD monitoring and the cost of monitoring for several of the OMEGAMON solutions. Now lets consider OMEGAMON XE For Storage, and the cost of monitoring considerations for this solution. As the name implies, OMEGAMON XE For Storage is an OMEGAMON solution focused on the monitoring of DASD on the z/OS platform. But, OMEGAMON Storage provides more than just DASD monitoring. OMEGAMON Storage also provides information on virtual tape, channels, control units, cache controllers, HSM activity, shared DASD, and even more. Another thing to be aware of is that OMEGAMON Storage has been evolving over the years, and has morphed into a much broader storage management, as well as a monitoring tool. OMEGAMON Storage now includes integration with a array of Tivoli Storage solutions, including HSM and backup tools, via the Tivoli Enterprise Portal.

Referring back to a primary consideration I mentioned in earlier posts, the more data you ask for, the more potential cost from a cost of monitoring perspective. OMEGAMON Storage certainly falls into this area. OMEGAMON Storage provides the ability to monitor storage at many different levels: shared DASD, the individual LPAR, the channel level, the controller level, the UCB level, even down to the individual dataset level. The user also has the ability to monitor DASD, I/O, and space utilization from the perspective of the workload applications on z/OS, and also to make user defined groups for monitoring and space analysis.

Clearly, OMEGAMON Storage provides useful and detailed information. It is important that the user have a well conceived plan when deploying OMEGAMON Storage to avoid redundant monitoring cost. When installing OMEGAMON Storage, the tool is usually installed on each LPAR in the z/OS environment. In a shared DASD environment, probably the first recommendation is to have the OMEGAMON Storage instance on a specified LPAR in the shared environment be the primary collection point for DASD information, thus avoiding redundant collection of DASD information on multiple LPARs.

There are quite a few more considerations for the set up and optimization of OMEGAMON Storage, and I will get into these in more detail in later posts.