MSys Develops Storage Management and Monitoring Solutions

MSys Technologies (MasterSys Tech Pvt Ltd.) has resolved several storage management issues by developing solutions for recognized storage device manufacturing companies.

Among these, the most noteworthy are its development projects that have helped clients manage and monitor their storage systems:

• VDS/VSS hardware provider
• vCenter web client plug-in
• SMI-S management plug-in and admin tool

VDS/VSS Hardware Provider Development
The VDS/VSS hardware provider was developed by implementing the Microsoft VDS/VSS interface. This interface manages storage in a heterogeneous environment on Windows 2003/2008 and 2012 Server platforms. The VDS provider provisions, monitors and maintains storage hardware, whereas the VSS provider sets up the infrastructure for VSS to invoke the crash-consistent snapshot creation operation.

The VDS/VSS hardware provider was developed for both enterprise storage arrays, and flash and cloud-based storage appliances. It allows storage vendors to interoperate their storage servers with enterprise management and backup solutions built on top of VDS and VSS respectively

vCenter Web Client plug-in
This plug-in was created to manage and monitor the storage system from the vSphere client application for a leading provider of flash-optimized hybrid storage solutions. It supports management operations like creating a new volume and pattern in VMFS, creating a new volume with remote replication, cloning and so on.

It also has the following functionalities for monitoring purposes:

• IO monitoring per volume,
• IO monitoring per storage pool, and
• Graph generation support and reports downloading.

SMI-S Management
The SMI-S storage plug-in interacts with the SMI-S compatible WBEM server internally and takes care of CIM operations like CIM Enumeration, CIM Association, CIM Reference and CIM Indication and profile methods (extrinsic methods).

The vendor-agnostic SMI-S admin tool provides a Java-based GUI/CLI for administering storage systems.

The tool also provides the following functionalities:

• SLP feature discovery for all the WBEM services running on the subnet
• Execution of CTP test cases
• Enabling and disabling the CIM trace. Once the CIM trace is enabled, the tool caches the CIM-XML request and response

As an added advantage, the SMI-S admin tool supports multiple OSs and can be adapted for future program releases without changing the base tool framework.

The MSys Edge
When it comes to storage management, the reasons for MSys’ success include:

• Experience in delivering management software and customized solutions for both traditional disk-based arrays as well as newer flash-based arrays.
• Technology understanding and product management which enables delivery of core technology pieces ahead of the estimated time.
• Experienced in working with virtualization tools and technologies for VMware ESX server and Hyper-V.