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New Free Tool from SolarWinds: SAN Monitor

by Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ - Last Updated: September 1, 2022

UPDATE: The Free SAN Manager Mentioned in this post is now deprecated. You will find comprehensive SAN Performance Monitoring with  the following SolarWinds tools:

The rest of this post appears in its original form for archiving and posterity purposes.

SolarWinds continues their trend of releasing high-quality free tools by releasing the new Free SAN Manager.  SAN Manager is a multi-vendor management tool that promises to help with the complexities of SAN management.

SAN Manager will help you keep a watchful eye on how your storage systems are performing, including ability to monitor performance and I/O functions.  It will also help inventory disk and LUN details.

According to Josh Stephens, Vice President of Technology at SolarWinds, the SAN Manager will be particularly useful for optimizing virtualized systems that have dynamic and varied storage requirements:

“As enterprises of all sizes move toward virtualization, the need for visibility into SAN performance is increasingly important. Whether your focus is on optimizing SAN performance or optimizing virtualized systems that leverage storage area networks, our free SAN monitor is easy to use and gives you the critical visibility you want.”

SolarWinds points out some features of the new tool:

Quickly and easily monitor Dell, SUN and IBM SAN storage subsystems (see supported models)

Gain at-a-glance insight into storage performance and I/O latency

Organize LUNs by size, busiest LUNS or under-utilized LUNs

Drill down into LUN inventory details, including LUN size, physical disks, RAID type, total IOPs, IO response time and more

Easily track storage asset information, including array name, model, manufacturer, serial number, firmware version, number of controllers, number of disks (allocated and spare), and total raw capacity

SAN Monitor is closely related to the more sophisticated SolarWinds Storage Profiler software.  But, we’re always happy to see software companies release mini-versions of their more expensive enterprise software.  It allows administrators to test out the features of the software in a no-risk setting.  And, it might be all that some customers need for basic management today, but provides an easy upgrade path when you’re ready to expand.

SAN monitor tracks storage asset information, including array name, model, manufacturer, serial number, firmware version, number of controllers, number of disks (allocated and spare), and total raw capacity.