Manage your storage resources from any Web browser
Systems administrators have an old saying: Users' disk-space requirements always expand to consume all free space on the file server. If you're a longtime systems administrator, you have firsthand knowledge of this phenomenon. Until now, the only available option for Windows NT was to closely monitor users' disk utilization and add disk space as needs grew. HighGround Systems' Storage Resource Manager (SRM) 3.0 Enterprise Edition can help you manage growth and better understand the amount of disk space your users need for different purposes.
SRM is a client/server application that consists of three components: the server, the agent, and a Web-browser interface. The server is responsible for maintaining information about your monitored machines. SRM collection agents that you install on your servers and workstations collect the information. Collection agents are available for Intel and Alpha systems running NT Server or NT Workstation. The collection agents feed the data to the SRM server, which organizes the data.
The Web-browser interface component is a shortcut to launch your Web browser. During installation, Active Server Pages (ASP) installs on your Web server. The setup program adds a virtual page to your Web server's configuration. You accomplish SRM's management and data-retrieval activities through the Web-browser interface. The beauty of this solution is that you can be anywhere, on any Windows machine, and simply launch a Web browser with the appropriate URL to manage and retrieve SRM information. The software doesn't limit you to managing your environment from certain machines with a special client application program.
Features
SRM is a comprehensive collection of Web-based tools for managing your storage resources. Eight categories group these tools: disk space, user quotas, capacity planning, directory management, file management, disk drive management, asset management, and backup reports. You can use the Tasks tab of SRM's Web-based main menu to access each category. The Resources tab of the menu lets you configure the specific resources for the product to manage, and the Options tab lets you choose options to set on the program's operation.
The disk-space tool lets you generate a series of reports on your network's disk-space utilization. Four options are available. The Network-wide option shows all SRM-managed hard disks on your network. The By Computer option summarizes the disk space of each computer. The By Partition option summarizes the disk space of each computer's logical disk volume. The By Directory option summarizes the utilization of each directory on each network computer's logical disk. Click any of the options to access a summary screen, which you can use to drill down to lower levels and view more disk-utilization detail. As Screen 1, page 146, shows, the product gives you advanced charting options to view a graphical representation of your disk utilization.
You can use SRM to establish user quotas. Unlike other products with strict, directory-level quotas, SRM lets you establish quotas that travel with users, regardless of where they store files. You can create networkwide quotas for users, or you can limit users' quotas to specific share points on your network.
SRM's capacity-planning tool is a useful feature. Using capacity planning, you can graphically examine your disk-space utilization by network, computer, partition, or directory. You can examine historical disk-space utilization to identify peak periods and monitor upward or downward trends in overall disk utilization. You can use the information to predict when you'll need additional storage, how much additional storage you'll need, and how long the additional storage will last.
SRM's directory-management and file-management tools have somewhat limited capabilities. The directory-management and file-management tools report usage but don't provide management of files and directories (e.g., creating shares, modifying security). The directory-management tool lets you view your largest directories, obtain usage reports on directories, and view established share points. The file-management tool lets you view a list of large files on your machine, obtain a report on the file access load (i.e., the total files accessed per machine), and conduct a stale file analysis (i.e., files not accessed for a period of time).
You use the disk-drive-management and asset-management tools for physical inventory management instead of network storage management. Using the disk-drive-management tool, you can view your hard disks' defect rates, take an inventory of your computers' hard disks, and calculate your hard disks' performance rates. The asset-management tool lets you view inventory information on all the computers, hard disks, partitions, and directories that you configured and manage with SRM.
The final tool, backup reports, provides several reports to assess your system's risk of data loss. The file-modification option shows an interactive graph that lets you click the graph to obtain details about the files you've modified over a period of time. The files-at-risk option provides a list of files susceptible to serious data loss. The coverage-analysis option reports file vulnerability for the computers in your managed domain.
Setup
The SRM software is advanced and requires the latest of several supporting Microsoft components to set up and function correctly. SRM's setup was difficult in my environment. SRM requires a Web browser, Web server, and SQL server machine (not on the same machine).
I installed SRM on two machines to distribute the product's load. The first machine was my Digital Prioris HX590 running NT 4.0 and Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0. The second machine was my Micronics-based dual-Pentium II running NT 4.0 and SQL Server 6.5.
I placed the SRM CD-ROM into my Prioris server to start the installation. After launching the installation program, the product performs a prerequisite check to determine whether your server meets or exceeds SRM's requirements. SRM requires NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 (SP3), IIS 4.0, ASP, and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). I found that my server lacked nearly every prerequisite. Despite a previous installation of SP3, SRM's install program insisted that I didn't have SP3 installed. I also needed to upgrade IIS from version 3.0 to 4.0, and my system showed neither the ASP nor the ADO components.
I reinstalled SP3, but SRM's installation program still insisted that I didn't have SP3 installed. I performed a fresh installation of NT 4.0 followed by SP3. To install IIS 4.0 and the accompanying ADO and ASP components, I installed Internet Explorer (IE) 4.01, then the NT 4.0 Option Pack from which I installed IIS 4.0. I had a copy of the Option Pack in my Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) CD-ROM library.
After I rebuilt the entire system, my server passed SRM's stringent prerequisite check. The installation program then asks which components you want to install. I opted for all three: server, agent, and Web-browser interface. Individual installation routines run in succession for each component.