Storage performance monitoring with PRTG

The basics of storage performance monitoring

But let's start with the basics; what is actually meant by the term "storage performance"? Well, first and foremost, it is a critical indicator of how well storage devices, especially hard drives, are performing. This is measured by testing the drive and discovering its capabilities. Storage performance metrics help you assess the effectiveness of your storage system and its ability to support your business organization. Usually, storage performance is evaluated in terms of

• capacity,
• throughput,
• and utilization.

Compared to the more broad and general storage monitoring, the focus therefore clearly lies on the performance of various storage systems.

• ⏰ Storage performance monitoring tools can offer various types of notifications when a slowdown occurs and can track performance metrics to aid monitoring and diagnostics.
• ✔️ They are able to quickly get to the root of the problem and resolve costly performance issues.
• 💪 They can analyze based on storage performance trends over time and use this information to proactively optimize performance to improve resource efficiency.

Storage performance metrics

Many aspects of business can be affected by storage problems. It pays to keep an eye on storage, storage performance, and the metrics that go with it, every step of the way. And importantly, critical problems are not just caused by spectacular data loss due to hardware or software failures.

🛑👉 Even minor disruptions and general slowdowns of a storage system can have a massive impact on overall business performance. Critical business processes can become sluggish because data is not available or cannot be stored in time.

The rapid, often consumer-driven advances in computer technology have focused mostly on CPU and GPU rather than on the storage aspect. Therefore, storage performance has become a kind of bottleneck in data processing, which is why storage devices often have to track various metrics. There are several organizations that help standardizing these metrics, including the Microsoft Exchange Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP) and the Storage Performance Council (SPC). The first is primarily a Microsoft Exchange Server program designed to simplify third-party storage testing and release solutions for Exchange Server. The latter is likewise an American organization that has taken up the cause of optimizing the performance of storage systems. To this end, SPC initiates and carries out benchmark tests. The organization also wants to support and implement storage standards.

Listed below are some of the most common storage performance metrics:

• In- and output operations per second (IOPS)
• Mean time between failures (MTBF)
• Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
• Percent utilization and response time
• Read and write speed

Why PRTG is the right tool for storage performance monitoring

As mentioned above, storage performance monitoring needs to be a standard element in a successful monitoring setup, no matter how small an organization or its IT department is. To avoid negative business impact due to storage problems or complete outages, all storage assets in a given environment must be monitored around the clock. This means monitoring hardware, software and availability. And the focus must not only be on those factors, but increasingly on performance as well. An ideal solution for storage performance monitoring has to meet several key requirements, all of which PRTG fulfills.

🖥️ Comprehensive storage (performance) monitoring

PRTG includes a wide range of predefined sensors for monitoring the most popular storage systems – and their performance. This also includes sensors for monitoring physical and logical disks for these systems, as well as cloud storage.

👍 An infinite number of sensors

Okay, our sensor list may not strictly speaking be infinite, but it is pretty impressive. Here you'll find a good number of sensors that proactively address any problem you may potentially face in both storage monitoring and storage performance monitoring.

🚀 A trial with the full experience

PRTG's trial lets you discover storage performance monitoring in a non-annoying way. You get 30 days of full access and no invoice, the entire range of experience of any PRTG admin, every sensor available, and the best part: all settings you make during your trial will not be lost if you purchase PRTG immediately after your trial or later. Now that we have established that there is nothing to lose: How about a try?