Often times, there are complicated environments that have a large number of storage objects. Mapping them can be difficult, but often necessary to understand how data is being moved. Like many of my colleagues, documentation can be a chore and is prone to misinterpretations, as well as time consuming. Being a Linux engineer my first thought is "How do I automate this so I can do more interesting things?" After dragging my feet and going in kicking and screaming, I decided to dive into PowerShell. The following is an example of a dynamically created Visio 2010 diagram of the physical storage configuration of my NetApp Filer simulator.
Tools Used
- NetApp PowerShell Toolkit
- NetApp Visio Stencils (Extracted to "My Shapes" under Libraries->Documents)
- Visio 2010
- At minimum, RemoteSigned permissions (Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned)
- At least Read-Only Access to a NetApp Filer
How this diagram is created
- Script logs into the Filer
- Data is collected
- Script opens Visio and Stencils
- Objects are placed on the workspace in logical order
- Next version will have data from each point in a table (Latency, I/O, Growth Rate, Overwrite Rate, Days to Full) and exported to Sharepoint team portal
- Data points will be active and retrievable to all whom has Sharepoint team portal access
- Business Workflows will monitor the data points and take action when conditions are met (Create request for new storage, warn current use for remediation, etc...)
It won't turn any heads, but that is just a formatting process that is simple to design. Nothing with this process is particularly amazing (which is why I didn't include the code), but using the collection of tools like these can come in handy when trying to troubleshoot a complex system. Seeing the visual data paths and their associated metrics helps put a scenario into perspective and helps move teams troubleshooting exercises to a solution based orientation rather than a problem based orientation (think of doing a maze from start-to-finish or from finish-to-start...which one is easier??). It also has the added benefit of creating nice diagrams if you are "artistically" challenged like me.
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