Storage Management Software is a system that administers and protects a data storage device together with the data it contains.
Storage management systems increase capacity and performance by offering data compression capabilities and data migration tools that put infrequently used data in low-cost storage locations.
It also provides archival, historical data about performance and availability to determine and learn from past and current issues.
These systems perform virtualization, data security, and backup practices such as mirroring and replication.
Here is our list of the best storage management and monitoring tools:
- IntelliMagic Vision for SAN – EDITOR’S CHOICE A cloud-based solution that leverages advanced algorithms, statistical analysis, and best practices to automatically interpret your data in order to alert you to bottlenecks, configuration anomalies, and capacity risk in your infrastructure. Register for a free trial.
- SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor – FREE TRIAL Tracks the performance of storage disks and devices that come from a long list of providers. Installs on Windows Server.
- Paessler PRTG – FREE TRIAL A collection of system monitoring tools that includes a specialized monitor for SAN systems. Installs on Windows Server.
- Nagios An infrastructure monitor that covers networks, servers, and applications and includes routines for tracking storage system performance.
- AppDynamics A cloud-based infrastructure monitoring platform that covers all types of servers, including those used for storage.
- ManageEngine OpManager A monitoring system for networks and servers that includes special routines for supervising storage servers. Available for Windows Server and Linux.
- PowerAdmin Storage Monitor A monitoring package that covers network equipment, servers, and storage devices. Runs on Windows.
- EG Enterprise A cloud-based monitor for IT infrastructure that includes storage device monitoring.
A Storage management tool benefits the entire network from desktop users to those who maintain the servers by providing efficiency and optimal performance.
Methodology for selecting the Best Storage Monitoring & Management Tools
A dedicated storage monitoring and management tool is essential for all organizations that use dedicated storage. With the help of storage monitoring and management tools, organizations can easily watch over storage capacity and identify potential issues. Additionally, you can look after all your network storage devices from a single console using these tools. You can find many storage monitoring and management tools online that suit your budget requirements.
However, it can be a daunting task to choose the best one when several options are available. Hence, we have listed a few factors apart from the cost that one must consider when making a final call. By following our shared methodology, you can easily make an informed decision and identify the best storage monitoring and management tool for your organization.
- Check if it provides any historical data related to the performance or availability
- Does it address every type of storage?
- Can you check live metrics on storage performance from the selected tool?
- Check if it supports integration with other monitoring tools
- Check if your selected tool allows sending live performance alerts
- Does it support forwarding tailored notifications via email or SMS to the technicians or admins?
- Does it support archive management?
- Can you monitor all types of disks?
- Check if it has the ability to generate in-depth insights in the form of reports
- Can it update you on the health and performance of device ports and controllers?
- Check if it offers storage forecasting and capacity planning
- Check if it includes advanced visualization capabilities
- Can it detect failed batch jobs or storage subsystem problems in real-time?
- Does it provide access to controls that may help prevent storage tampering?
- Does your tool provide free trials or no-cost assessment options?
The Best Storage Monitoring & Management Tools
Below your find a Quick re-cap of each software and tool listed above with some of their Features, Pricing and other pertinent information.
1. IntelliMagic Vision for SAN – FREE TRIAL
One of the key features of IntelliMagic Vision for SAN is its Health insights feature that leverages hundreds of best practices to automatically identify performance risks in your storage, fabric and VMware environment.
Some of the key features of IntelliMagic Vision for SAN are:
- AI-based performance anomaly detection.
- Tracking of activity on all system devices.
- Tracing data flows across the network to the storage cluster.
- Live space usage reports.
- Data accumulation visualization.
- Capacity requirements forecasting.
The dashboard shown demonstrates health insights, near real-time metrics, and end-to-end configuration for storage, fabric, and VMware. These factors include response times, port activity, and throughput constraints. AI routines in the solution identify performance bottlenecks, space constraints, or configuration risks.
Another feature in the IntelliMagic Vision solution, Change Detection, covers a range of infrastructure elements, not just the SAN storage. It tracks switch port activity, storage and VMware statistics and highlights significant changes in workload for those devices and system components.
This tool supports storage capacity forecasting. It’s able to demonstrate increases in occupied space over time and predict the number of days that spare capacity will last.
Pros:
- Performance baselining using AI
- Automatic adjustments to alert thresholds
- Alerts for irregular usage or capacity issues
- Availability and connectivity monitoring
- Networked solution
Cons:
- Not available as a SaaS package
Price: You can request a customized quote based on your needs.
Register for a free trial: https://www.intellimagic.com/contact/start-trial/
EDITOR'S CHOICE
IntelliMagic Vision for SAN is our top pick for a storage monitoring and management software package because of its extensive use of AI to automatically identify performance, capacity, and configuration risks in your infrastructure. With Health Insights, you get AI-driven assessments of the performance of each VMware server and the solution will alert you if issues such as capacity or connectivity problems arise. The IntelliMagic service will monitor multiple SAN systems simultaneously, providing both aggregated and individual performance metrics for analysis.
Official Site: https://www.intellimagic.com/contact/start-trial/
OS: Delivered as a SaaS solution
2. SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor – FREE TRIAL
SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor software has a slick and comprehensive interface that provides real-time storage monitoring for a wide range of vendors. It handles a full range of both virtual and physical storage devices. It also features a handful of pre-configured alerts and monitoring options, which are customizable.
Some of its key features are:
- 1200+ application performance monitoring templates
- Centralized asset management
- Easy and fast install
- Built on the SolarWinds Orion Platform
- Automated discovery of applications and infrastructure
- Storage performance and health
With its storage utilization performance, users gain vital insights into storage utilization to avoid failures and forecast capacity issues. It also has extended visibility into virtualization and application layers with the application stack environment.
This tool makes it easy for users to switch between different vendors and monitor multiple arrays with a single dashboard. It also sends alerts for users to notice and early detect performance issues. It comes with a 30-day free trial and you would have to contact support for the cost of each software component.
Pros:
- Live performance monitoring
- Capacity planning assistance
- Integration with other SolarWinds system monitoring tools
- Includes hotspot detection
Cons:
- Doesn’t monitor cloud storage
Download: 30 Day Free Trial Download! http://www.solarwinds.com/storage-resource-monitor/
3. PRTG Storage & SAN Monitoring – FREE TRIAL
PRTG has come a long road to become an All-around contender for being one of the Top Storage monitoring Solutions in the IT Software realm. They have the ability to monitor SAN (Storage Area Networks) along with NAS devices, Physical Disks, Logical Disks and Clustered Disks.
Some Main features of PRTG Storage Monitoring and Mangement portion of their Software include:
- Monitor All Types of Disks including NAS, SAN, Physical, Logical, Clustered Disks, Volumes Input/Output and Virtural Disk Storage Solutions (VMWare, Hyper-V & XenServer)
- Additional Access Management control of Files, Folders and Shares
- Linux/Unix Disk Monitoring Functionality As well!
- WMI, SNMP and SOAP for Monitoring Hard-drives and more!
- Vendor Support includes: Dell Storage Devices, NetAPP, EMC, QNAP, Synology, HP, IBM, LenovoEMC, Buffalo and Many MORE!
Data Reliability and Availability is more crucial than ever in the World of computing and networking thus keeping a hawk-eye on it really does help alleviate the stresses of not knowing what’s going on in your systems.
Pros:
- Networked storage solution monitoring
- Storage device activity tracking
- Expandable to network, application, and server monitoring
Cons:
- Monitoring only, no management functions
Download a 30-day free trial:
Monitor 100 Sensors FREE – https://www.paessler.com/storage-monitoring
Related Post: Best NetApp Monitoring Software
4. Nagios
Nagios provides a complete monitoring of storage systems – including directory size, disk usage, file count, file presence, file size, and more. It detects failed batch jobs and storage subsystem problems.
Its key features and capabilities include:
- Advanced planning for system upgrades
- Detection of failed batch jobs
- Fast detection of storage subsystem problems
- Reduced risk of unexpected downtime
It has advanced planning for system upgrades. It reduces the risk of unexpected downtime by early detecting potential future failures. It’s highly modular and offers great flexibility and functionality.
Pros:
- Free and paid options
- Live monitoring and capacity planning
- Covers a range of storage devices
Cons:
- No version for Windows
Nagios offers a free trial, starting at $1,995 and up.
5. AppDynamics Server Performance Monitor
AppDynamics has a very solid full-feature option that covers the full range of network-based monitoring and management. From application, transactions, services, nodes, servers, database calls, remote services and many more.
Some of its key features include:
- AppDynamics APM automatically discovers, maps and visualizes critical services and components
- Integrates directly with ServiceNow, PagerDuty and Jira that allows for immediately alerting
- Deep diagnostic capabilities that identify the root cause of issues
- Real time correlation of data
It offers real-time visibility into inbound and outbound throughput, protocol operations and performance metrics for all storage servers throughout the network which makes it easy to get to the root cause quickly and resolve performance problems effectively. It analyzed and alerts by tracking storage performance trends over time.
Pros:
- Integrates server and application monitoring
- Watch over file servers
- Link server performance with services and other infrastructure
Cons:
- Not specifically a storage monitor
It offers a 15-day free trial. Users must contact support for pricing.
Download:
https://www.appdynamics.com/product/infrastructure-monitoring/server-monitoring
6. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine’s OpManager offers a robust and comprehensive network monitoring solution that tracks network performance, detects network faults in real time, troubleshoots errors, and prevents downtime. It’s a powerful tool that supports multi-vendor IT environments and scales it to fit user requirements.
Some of its key features are:
- IT Workflow automation
- Network Configuration Management
- Server and Virtualization Monitoring
- Automated Layer 2 Topology maps
- Network traffic analysis
It allows users to gain complete visibility and control over the entire network infrastructure via live dashboards and graphs that measure critical metrics like packet loss, errors and discards, etc. This tool detects, identifies and troubleshoots network issues with threshold-based alerts.
Users can set multiple thresholds for every performance metric and receive notifications. It offers a fast fix with its reactive network monitoring techniques like alarm generation, reading or forwarding syslog and trap messages, and many more.
This tool can be setup in under two minutes and has more than 100 built-in reports that can be customized, scheduled and exported.
Pros:
- Monitors storage and servers along with networks
- Dashboard available on a mobile app
- Monitors RAID and tape libraries
Cons:
- More functions for network monitoring than storage monitoring
It has a 30-day free trial on all three editions and pricing can be found on this page:
Download:
https://www.manageengine.com/network-monitoring/
7. PowerAdmin Storage Monitor
PowerAdmin is more lightweight and straightforward that focuses almost exclusively on storage management. It features Disk Space Monitor where users can add drivers that they want to monitor and then set the alert threshold.
Some of its features are:
- Rich scheduled reports
- Alert types and other configurable actions
- User and directory quota monitoring
- Specific file size monitoring
- File and directory change monitoring
- File system analyzer with reporting
- Disk space monitoring
Users can also monitor specific folders that are volume mounted from another server/device. It has a File System Analyzer that inspects a volume (local drive, network drive, etc) and records information about each directory, file and owner.
The PowerAdmin tool can act as an intrusion detection system by keeping watch of all server changes. It allows users to schedule reports to be automatically generated at the end of a data collection session and send HTTP based reports for viewing within the storage manager software console or from a web browser.
Pros:
- Low-cost solution
- Live performance tracking for multiple sites
- Capacity planning tool
Cons:
- Doesn’t integrate with other monitoring systems
It offers a 30-day free trial and costs $250 and up with a year of support and maintenance included.
Download:
https://www.poweradmin.com/products/storage-monitor/
8. EG Enterprise
EG Enterprise storage monitor is a unified monitoring, diagnosis, and reporting solution for storage infrastructures. Administrators can monitor all storage devices and can correlate storage performance with other tiers, all from a central web console.
Some of its key features are:
- End-to-End performance visibility
- Monitors User experience
- Traces web transactions as processed by applications and displays them in flow graphs
- Delivers in-depth insights on intuitive dashboards
- Supports cloud applications and infrastructure
- Auto-discovery of network objects and presents them into intuitive maps
- Automatic Root cause diagnosis
This makes it easy to detect and fix situations when storage is the cause of a performance bottleneck. It offers a broad coverage and deep visibility into storage sub-system components: fiber channel switches, host ports, controllers, LUNs, physical disks, caches, enclosures and hosts.
Pros:
- Covers a long list of storage device types
- Part of a full stack monitoring system
- Provides alerts when storage is the cause of performance issues
Cons:
- Very comprehensive but all of the screens can be a little overwhelming
It provides historical trends, baselines and reports to help calibrate the current infrastructure and plan for future growth. It’s EG SAN Monitoring can reveal abnormality within any temperature sensors and UPS failures. It isolates storage performance bottlenecks by performing health checks on all device ports, disk groups, etc. EG offers a free trial.
Users must contact support for pricing.
