Storage Analytics, Monitoring and Reporting, SRM..... Whats the difference?

I'm sure someone else will chip in here but you are right there is a degree of overlap,  we perfer to call it complementing features

With the Storage Analytics Suite it's all about predictive analytics and dynamic thresholding when monitoring.  By applying advanced analytics to the incoming data Storage Analytics can assist in cutting down on alert storms,  i.e. with dynamic thresholding it learns what is abnormal behaviour and only alerts on that.  With predictive analytics you also get warnings to building problems within the infrastructure.  If you use the dashboard feature you can also create custom views that will give you a health view of what's happening within the storage,  it's not finding the needle in the haystack however it's finding the handful of hay the needle is in,  helping you resolve issues quickly.

If you combine the Storage Analytics adapter into vCenter Operations Manager Enterprise (vCOPs) then it provides you with a great operational view of what's happening in your virtual infrastructure from top to bottom, now that's pretty cool!!

The SRM suite is slightly different,  it consists of three main parts all accessed from a single interface.

Storage Configuration Advisor - SCA which is used to verify storage connectivity vs EMC best practice / eLab support matrixes (downloaded regularly).  This happens from Storage level,  through the SAN Fabric all the way up to the host.  SCA can also be used to model change to ensure that updating of firmware / code level in the data path will not cause incompatibility / support issues.

ProSphere - The below is from the EMC website and when you read it you could say that there is a little overlap with the storage analytics offering,  however it doesn't apply the same deep analytics to the data but is performing a more basic trending capability / dashboard capability "Cloud storage management software to monitor and analyze storage services across your virtual infrastructure. Understand how capacity is being used, identify conditions that require attention, and view performance trends to ensure consistent service levels." 

Watch4Net - the Watch4Net component is in my opinion the strongest part of the SRM suite.  It's a cross domain monitoring tool that consumes SNMP MIB information from all sorts of devices including a huge range of Storage,  SAN, Host, and applications.  The information in here is a longer term view of what happened within an infrastructure as opposed to something like Storage Analytics which I see as a real time / predictive toolset.  With all the cross domain information brought in to Watch4Net it's possible to build up views of all the components that make up a service,  i.e. the application,  VMware host,  Physical Hardware, SAN connectivity, Storage Virtualisation Solution,  Underlying Storage components.  It's a really powerful tool that is so customisable you can monitor just about anything in it as long as it has an SNMP MIB.

With regard to them complementing each other.  I look at vCOPS / Storage Analytics as being a real time dashboard capability for operational support purposes.  I look at SRM as being a toolset geared towards storage operations / service management teams providing a wider function than just standard monitoring.

Hope that helps and doesn't confuse the issue more

Craig Stewart

Senior Systems Engineer

EMC UK