IntelliMagic Direction for SAN
IntelliMagic Direction is a unique disk storage system performance modeling product that enables organizations to reduce time, money, and risk associated with storage system purchases and performance planning.
IntelliMagic Direction is a unique disk storage system performance modeling product that enables organizations to reduce time, money, and risk associated with storage system purchases and performance planning.
IntelliMagic Direction for SAN provides in-depth knowledge of how your specific workloads will perform as a result of growth and/or hardware configuration scenarios. It shows current and expected response times, component utilization levels, and throughput limits for your storage environment. IntelliMagic Direction for SAN is formerly known as Disk Magic.
In 2021 IntelliMagic announced end of support for IntelliMagic Direction for SAN.
Use Cases
For most organizations budgets are tight and there is more pressure than ever on storage management to contain the spiraling storage growth within a steady or decreasing budget. Compounding this challenge, enterprise disk storage becomes increasingly complex every year as more and more options that influence performance and throughput emerge. When it comes to storage configurations, IntelliMagic Direction gives you the power to determine the best configuration for your workload so you can purchase with confidence.
During large storage migration projects project managers and architects struggle to ensure that required activities such as server preparation, data migration and capacity planning are completed on time and on budget. Performance planning and performance management are those kind of activities that are often forgotten until there is a crisis. One of the primary reasons for this reality is the lack of tools for predicting and planning performance impacts. IntelliMagic Direction addresses this challenge by providing a way to model existing workloads and combine new workloads on any major hardware platform. Take the guesswork out of the migrations and use IntelliMagic Direction to help you avoid running out of performance capacity.
Do you ever wish there was a way to see into the future? If your job requires you to maintain peak performance from your systems it sure would be nice to predict when your current storage environment will run out of steam. With IntelliMagic Direction you can create as many future scenarios as you want to try to better understand how future workload changes or hardware changes will impact your storage environment. IntelliMagic Direction can provide a long term predictive view of your storage environment's growth and behavior.
IntelliMagic Direction models copy services allowing you to see the impact on response times and storage component utilizations.
Features
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Broad Platform Support
IntelliMagic Direction supports storage systems from all major vendors, attached to Unix, Windows, Linux or i/OS servers. See Supported Hardware for the list of supported storage platforms. There is also a specific version of IntelliMagic Direction for z/OS.
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Interactivity
IntelliMagic Direction for SAN runs on a Microsoft Windows PC. No connection to the actual storage system is needed to perform any of the functions. Results are presented in the graphical user interface and in text reports or Excel charts. See Sample Results for some examples of the GUI output.
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Automated Input
IntelliMagic Direction can load the workload and configuration data using input created automatically by IntelliMagic Vision. If IntelliMagic Vision is not available, it can alternatively read summary workload measurement data from reports created with tools such as iostat (UNIX), perfmon (Windows), Performance Tools Reports (i/OS) and IBM’s TPC for Disk. For a full list of supported inputs please see Supported Data Sources.
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Scenario Modeling
After loading the data, IntelliMagic Direction for SAN creates a base model of the current environment. Once the base is created it is very easy to model the impacts of changes to the hardware and workload. The following list contains some specific examples of scenarios you might entertain:
- Determine if your workload can run on large capacity drives
- Evaluate the effect on response times of moving workloads to different tiers of storage
- Understand and track the utilization levels of Disk Subsystem processors, channels, host adapters, and RAID ranks
- Assess the performance impact of moving from Fibre to SATA or from Fibre to Flash/SSDs
- Compare bandwidth requirements and response time impact of various copy services solutions
- Assess the result of consolidating multiple storage systems into one larger storage system
- Predict the performance benefit gained from increasing cache size, adding channels, etc.
- Assess which drive types and tiers will support service levels demanded by business needs
Supported SAN Storage Systems
IntelliMagic Direction is a vendor-independent modeling software product that supports a wide variety of SAN storage systems. There is also a specific version for z/OS attached storage.
IntelliMagic is continually adding support for new storage systems and features based on customer requirements. If you have a need for a platform that you do not see listed, please contact us to discuss.
| Vendor | SAN Storage System Model | Supported? |
| EMC | VNX |
✔ |
| EMC | CLARiiON (CX) |
✔ |
| EMC | DMX |
✔ |
| EMC | VMAX |
✔ |
| HDS | USP |
✔ |
| HDS | VSP |
✔ |
| HDS | VSP G1000 |
✔ |
| HDS | NSC |
✔ |
| HDS | HUS VM |
✔ |
| HPE | EVA |
✔ |
| HPE | MSA |
✔ |
| HPE | XP |
✔ |
| HPE | XP P9500 |
✔ |
| HPE | XP7 |
✔ |
| IBM | ESS |
✔ |
| IBM | DS4000/DS5000 |
✔ |
| IBM | DS8000 family |
✔ |
| IBM | XIV |
✔ |
| IBM | Storwize V7000, V3500, V3700, V5000, V7000 Flex |
✔ |
| IBM | SAN Volume Controller (SVC) |
✔ |
| IBM | FlashSystem 900 |
✔ |
| IBM | FlashSystem V9000 |
✔ |
Supported Data Sources
| Data Source | Description |
| IntelliMagic Vision | The best and most complete source of data for IntelliMagic Direction is the input that IntelliMagic Vision creates automatically. This contains all the relevant workload performance measurements as well as the configuration data of the current storage systems. |
| iostat | IntelliMagic Direction supports automated performance data input for AIX, LINUX, SUN and HP/UX based on iostat text reports. If you use iostat, there is a limited level of detail and configuration data would need to be manually added. |
| perfmon | Windows performance data can be used by using Windows perfmon reports. If you use perfmon, configuration data would need to be manually added. |
| IBM i (i/OS) | IBM i/OS support in IntelliMagic Direction supports input based on reports produced by the IBM i Performance Tools. Configuration data will need to be manually added.
For i/OS, IntelliMagic Direction shows workload and performance characteristics for each ASP individually. This also allows you predict what would happen if you moved certain ASPs to another tier, or even to a different Disk Storage System, while retaining the others at their current storage. |
| esxtop output | VMware statistics can be logged by the tools esxtop and/or resxtop. These include statistics that reflect disk I/O activity and performance, as well as a lot of others. These statistics (esxtop reports) can be automatically processed by IntelliMagic Direction, provided they were generated following the instructions. |
Sample Results
With IntelliMagic Direction for SAN you can easily assess the impact of workload or hardware changes and quickly generate dozens of charts for a presentation of findings to management or technical audiences. The following samples represent just a few of the options available within IntelliMagic Direction.
Evaluate Impact of Changing Disk Capacity
IntelliMagic Direction provides insight into any number of hardware changes providing you the ability to determine the right configuration for your workload and budget. In the following example IntelliMagic Direction demonstrates the impact to service time when the individual capacity of the drives is changed from 450 GB to 300 GB while keeping the net capacity the same. In essence, the number of spindles is reduced placing more load on a few number of drives. In the example below a Managed Disk Group (MDG) from SAN Volume Controller composed of 450 GB drives on a DS8700 becomes saturated at 34,856 I/Os per second.
Component Utilization
IntelliMagic Direction for SAN not only provides response time predictions, but it also shows the utilization of key internal components of the disk system, such as the internal processor, bus, and host adapters. This way you can determine which parts of your disk system are most heavily used. This information is very helpful when consolidating workloads or when hunting down performance problems.
Related Resources
The Total Economic Impact of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS
Discover the benefits of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS. Watch the webinar for insights on cost savings, risk reduction, and ROI.
Should There Be a Sub-Capacity Processor Model in Your Future? | IntelliMagic zAcademy
In this webinar, you'll learn about the shift towards processor cache efficiency and its impact on capacity planning, alongside success stories and insights from industry experts.
A Mainframe Roundtable: The Leaders | IntelliMagic zAcademy
Join industry leaders as they discuss the evolution of mainframes, sharing personal experiences, challenges, and future insights, along with practical advice from their careers in the Z ecosystem.