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Data Insights Product Specification

Use of this document​

This document is the functional specification definition of the product's functionality.

Overview​

The Data Insights product automates inventory of PowerScale file system metadata for the purpose of reporting on file system usage.

Terms​

Search & Recover GUI - User monitoring, alarms and reporting.

Functional Specification Description​

Dependencies​

  • Cluster must be licensed for Data Insights
  • Only available in vmware OVA and hyper-v appliance format

Product Use Case​

  • File system reporting
    • Age of data (last modified or last accessed data stamps)
    • File extension reporting
    • Data owner reporting
      • SMB AD user only
    • Archived data reporting (Dell Cloud pools only)
    • Storage pool usage reporting (Dell Storage pools only)
  • Automated Scheduled reports with CSV or Excel
  • GUI graphical reporting
  • Path level selection to limit the reporting of usage
  • Forecasting path level or device level data usage trends

Patching​

The product does not support hotfix patching and requires and complete upgrade of the software version or build number to apply any patch

Operating system patches are not provided and must be downloaded directly through an out of band method and requires physical access to the secured physical equipment to apply patches, updates, or upgrades.

Compatibility​

The product does not support forward compatibility with target devices and will require a software upgrade to support a forward version of a target device. This includes minor or build number changes of the target device.

Appliance Modifications​

Modifying the operating system packages, removing or adding packages, changing the OS configuration and support of these changes is not covered by support and customers must support OS modifications and perform necessary testing. No support for customer modifications with the exception of applying open suse OS package patches that shipped with the original appliance or published procedure in documentation.

Operational Procedures​

If documentation does not list a procedure, it is explicitly unsupported unless support provides a procedure.

Installation​

This product is customer installable.

Use limitations​

Combining this product with any other product is in violation of the specification & documentation unless it is found in documentation. Only equipment listed in documentation is considered authorized for use. If not listed, a written response by Superna to use alternate equipment in a vault solution is required.

Virtual appliance cpu, memory and disk latency minimum requirements must be met to maintain access to support and product warranty.

Data Insights software Automates​

  • Treewalking file systems and collecting metadata
  • Indexing metadata
  • Reporting on metadata
  • Scheduling reports via email delivery
  • Storage Administrator is the target user for this software solution
  • Reporting via email to end users
  • API access to the index

Data Insights Functions​

This function automates reporting on file system data on Dell PowerScale

2 different product options are available with outside the vault network automation of and inside the vault with a different license required for inside the vault automation.

License Subscription

Data Insights based on the source device total capacity

Management

  • Monitor daily treewalk jobs
  • monitor disk usage of the appliance and expand if needed to maintain less than 80% disk utilization
  • Monitor scheduled email errors
  • Monitor index database errors

Reporting

Run on demand or scheduled reports to monitor storage usage

Monitoring

email alerts or syslog alerts

Configuration

  • CLI only configuration
  • GUI is partial configuration of the product
  • reporting GUI or API

Data Security

Index data is not encrypted at rest

Installation Knowledge Transfer post installation​

The product includes installation knowledge transfer on usage.

Operational Expectations for all deployments​

Data Insights is a component of an reporting solution that must include the following best practices in order to correctly deploy the solution. The operational steps below are expected to be followed for correctly using and integrating Data Insights into a solution.

A data insights solution provides data to act on or make decisions. The product does not automate actions based on reporting.

The specification and operational management of this product Requires:

  • May not be in sync with the file system due to failure to monitor treewalk jobs or failure to monitor alerts that indicate database or other environmental issues that prevent the product from indexing file system metadata.
  • Patching and firmware updates to all hardware components that make up the vault network, vault storage and vault compute and management
  • Product usage assumes endpoint protection Anti-virus software is in place on all operating systems, devices, computers.
  • All computers with operating systems are patched regularly
  • All CVE's are acted upon with patches and remediation applied to all devices within the IT infrastructure.
  • All firewalls, security devices are running current versions and configured correctly to protect networks
  • The compute infrastructure is maintained and provides minimum product requirements for cpu, memory, disk latency.
  • The end users and IT are trained to respond to a Data Insights attack and have a run book to respond to an incident.
  • End users are trained regularly for phishing attacks and social attacks intended to compromise computers with Malware/Data Insights
  • All product alerts are acted on in a timely manner to ensure processing of audit data is protecting the file system.

Daily Mandatory operational tasks​

Monitor indexing jobs are completing successfully, ensure no external network, vmware host or permissions access to the source cluster storage interfere with normal operations. Configure reports and reviewing reports and acting on report data.