Tag: InsightIQ

PowerScale InsightIQ 6.2 Features

In this second article in the InsightIQ 6.2 series, we’ll dig into the details of the additional functionality that debuts in this new IIQ release. These include:

Feature IIQ 6.2 Functionality
Expanded Ecosystem ·         Ecosystem support extended to include ESXi v9.0.1 and PowerScale OneFS 9.13.
Trusted Domain Support ·         Enables seamless authentication and unified access across domains, while ensuring automatic trust management.
Customizable partitions and networking ·         Enables the user to select datastore path of their choice.

·         Resolves network conflicts.
Datastore Migration ·         Admin can change the datastore path after installation.
Link & Launch ·         Simplifies WebUI access directly from IIQ Dashboard and Reports.
Configurable Network Port ·         Enables monitoring PowerScale with user defined TCP port.

Starting with code updates, the simple and robust InsightIQ 6.2 online upgrade process follows the following flow:

First, the installer checks the current Insight IQ version, verifies there’s sufficient free disk space, and confirms that setup is ready. Next, IIQ is halted and dependencies met, followed by the installation of the 6.2 infrastructure and a migration of legacy InsightIQ configuration and historical report data to the new platform. The cleanup phase removes the old configuration files, etc, followed by the final phase which upgrades alerts and removes the lock, leaving InsightIQ 6.2 ready to roll.

Phase Details
Pre-check •       docker command

•        IIQ version check 6.0.1 or 6.1

•       Free disk space

•       IIQ services status

•       OS compatibility
Pre-upgrade •       EULA accepted

•       Extract the IIQ images

•       Stop IIQ

•       Create necessary directories
Upgrade •       Upgrade addons services

•       Upgrade IIQ services except alerts (if 6.0.1)

•       Upgrade EULA

•       Status Check
Post-upgrade •       Update admin email (if 6.0.1)

•       Update network

•       Update IIQ metadata
Cleanup •       Replace scripts

•       Remove old docker images

•       Remove upgrade and backup folders
Upgrade Alerts and Unlock •       Trigger alert upgrade (if 6.0.1)

•       Clean lock file

The prerequisites for upgrading to InsightIQ 6.2 are either a Simple or Scale deployment with 6.0.1 or 6.1 installed, and with a minimum of 40GB free disk space.

The actual upgrade is performed by the ‘upgrade-iiq.sh’ script:

The specific steps in the upgrade process are as follows:

  • Download and uncompress the bundle:
# tar xvf iiq-install-6.2.0.tar.gz
  • From within the InsightIQ directory, un-tar the upgrade scripts as follows:
# cd InsightIQ

# tar xvf upgrade.tar.gz
  • Enter the resulting ‘upgrade’ directory which contains the scripts:
# cd upgrade/
  • Initiate the IIQ upgrade. Note that the usage is same for both the Simple and Scale InsightIQ deployments.
# ./upgrade-iiq.sh -m <admin_email>

Upon successful upgrade completion, InsightIQ will be accessible via the primary node’s IP address.

Trusted Domain Support

InsightIQ 6.2 introduces Trusted Domain Support, enabling seamless authentication and unified access across multiple domains with automatic trust management. The release adds Active Directory (AD) as a new authentication provider, allowing organizations to leverage existing AD infrastructure for simplified configuration and improved compliance. Joining AD requires three mandatory parameters—domain name, username, and password—along with optional advanced settings such as mapping to the primary domain, ignoring trusted domains, and specifying domains to always recognize or ignore.

Access to InsightIQ is controlled through AD groups, and administrators must assign users from the AD forest or cross-forest to these groups to grant appropriate privileges. InsightIQ supports a single AD connection, and prerequisites include InsightIQ 6.2 installed on Simple or Scale machines, EULA acceptance, and ensuring no conflicting LDAP configuration exists for the same domain. Additionally, Windows AD and DNS servers must be properly configured, and the InsightIQ virtual machine must use the correct DNS server.

With this enhancement, organizations can enable login from multiple trusted domains, providing seamless cross-domain authentication, unified resource access, automatic trust management, and consistent security enforcement.

When investigating troubleshooting AD configurations, the InsightIQ logs can be found under /usr/share/storagemonitoring/logs/iam/, and include krb5_trace.log, error.log, insightiq_iam.log, and insightiq_iam_access.log.

Customizable Partition

InsightIQ 6.2 introduces customizable partition support, allowing dynamic data to be stored in a user-specified local directory on any partition. This capability applies only to fresh installations of InsightIQ Scale; for upgrade scenarios, datastore mobility should be used after the upgrade. NFS configurations remain unchanged. Static data continues to reside under /usr and /var, while dynamic data can now be placed in a user-defined location.  By default, this is under /usr/share/storagemonitoring.

Updated storage prerequisites are as follows: for 0–32 nodes, allocate 75 GB for static data partitions (/usr + /var) and 250 GB for dynamic data; for 32–252 nodes, dynamic data requires 500 GB; and for 252–504 nodes, 1 TB is needed. If /usr and /var are mounted on separate partitions, /usr must have at least 25 GB and /var a minimum of 50 GB.

An absolute path for the datastore can be specified in the InsightIQ install script using the ‘-d’ flag, as below:

Customizable Network Config

InsightIQ 6.2 introduces a new customizable configuration option for the internal network IP address in both Simple and Scale deployments. A single iiq_network will be used, and the docker0 bridge has been removed. An IP range of 255 addresses is reserved for iiq_network, with a default range of 172.18.254.0/24. If an IP conflict is detected during installation, the user can provide an alternative IP up to three times before the process exits. To bypass the conflict check, use the –skip-network-conflict-check option, for example:

# bash install_iiq.sh -m <admin_email> --skip-network-conflict-check
Installation logs are available at:
/usr/share/storagemonitoring/logs/installer.log.

The network IP address can be specified in the OVF template as below:

Or from the Scale installer as follows:

REST APIs

InsightIQ 6.2 now includes RESTful API endpoints for all its configuration and settings, enhancing the existing API framework by adopting the OpenAPI standard and providing comprehensive Swagger documentation. The documentation includes detailed request and response models, endpoint descriptions, and usage examples. These API primitives are version-safe and cover all InsightIQ settings and alerts, including user management, SMTP, LDAP, Active Directory, monitored cluster management, and alert configurations.

The Swagger specification file can be found at /usr/share/storagemonitoring/scripts/insightiq-swagger.json.

Online Migration from Simple to Scale

InsightIQ 6.2 introduces online migration from Simple to Scale within the same version, enabling seamless transfer of data and functionality without downtime. This feature supports migration from InsightIQ 6.2 Simple (OVA) deployments to InsightIQ 6.2 Scale environments, with migration only available for IIQ version 6.2 and later.

Prerequisites for online migration include an InsightIQ Simple machine running v6.2 and an InsightIQ Scale machine with v6.2 installed and the EULA accepted. Migration can be initiated by running the following migration script:

# cd /usr/share/storagemonitoring/scripts/online_migration

# bash iiq_data_migration.sh

In addition to the script’s output, the migration’s general status and progress can also be monitored from the WebUI as follows:

Datastore Mobility

InsightIQ 6.2 provides deployment support for migrating both Simple and Scale environments. This capability is designed to enable smooth migration across these deployment types without disruption. Migration is supported for configurations that include NFS or non-root partitions. Specifically, the following configurations are supported for each InsightIQ installation type:

Scale Simple
·         Local to NFS

·         NFS to NFS

·         Default partition to non-root partition.

 ·         Local to NFS

·         NFS to NFS

For NFS-based setups, the NFS directory must be created with validated permissions. For non-root partition movement, the required partition should be created before initiating migration. To perform the migration, navigate to the scripts directory and run the migration script with the following syntax:

# iiq_datastore_change -t nfs -n <x.x.x.x> -p /ifs/

Link and launch

InsightIQ 6.2 introduces the Link and Launch feature, which simplifies access to the OneFS WebUI directly from the InsightIQ dashboard and reports. The objective of this enhancement is to provide a quick-launch button that opens the OneFS WebUI within InsightIQ, reducing the time and effort required for navigation. This integration streamlines workflows by eliminating multiple navigation steps, enhances user productivity, and minimizes the time spent accessing cluster management tools. Overall, it improves the user experience through seamless integration between InsightIQ and a PowerScale OneFS cluster.

Configurable IIQ Listening Port

InsightIQ 6.2 introduces support for a configurable listening port, allowing PowerScale WebUI and PAPI to operate on an alternate port. This enhancement enables InsightIQ to monitor PowerScale using a user-defined port rather than the default. When adding a cluster, an additional field is provided to specify the port, which defaults to 8080. The same option is available when editing credentials, and the configured port is preserved during import and export operations. The Link and Launch feature also redirects to the user-defined port. This capability provides flexibility for environments that require monitoring PowerScale on a non-default port.

Download

Meanwhile, the new InsightIQ v6.2 code is available for download on the Dell Support site, allowing both the installation of and upgrade to this new release.

So, in summary, InsightIQ 6.2 offers the following attributes and functionality:

Function Attribute Description
Scope Monitoring scope Up to 20 clusters and 504 nodes
Ecosystem OS support RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.4, and SLES 15 SP4
Platform Resources Reduced CPUs, memory and disk requirement
Scale option requires just one node
Size Smaller package size: OVA package < 5GB
Install and upgrade Installation Installation time:  < 12 mins
Migration Direct migration from 4.x
Online migration from InsightIQ 6.2 Simple (OVA) to InsightIQ 6.2 Scale
Resilience Data collection Resilient data collection – no data loss
OS Support Simple ecosystem support InsightIQ Simple 6.2 can be deployed on the following platforms:

·         VMware virtual machine running ESXi version 8.0U3 or 9.0.1.

·         VMware Workstation 17 (free version) InsightIQ Simple 6.2 can monitor PowerScale clusters running OneFS versions 9.5 through 9.13, excluding 9.6.
Scale ecosystem support InsightIQ Scale 6.2 can be deployed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 8.10 or 9.4 (English language versions) and SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLES) 15 SP4. InsightIQ Scale 6.2 can monitor PowerScale clusters running OneFS versions 9.5 through 9.13, excluding 9.6.
Upgrade In-place upgrade from InsightIQ 5.1.x to 6.x The upgrade script supports in-place upgrades from InsightIQ 5.1.x to 6.x.
Direct database migration from InsightIQ 4.4.1 to InsightIQ 6.x Direct data migration from an InsightIQ 4.4.1 database to InsightIQ 6.2.0 is supported.
Reporting Maximum and minimum ranges on all reports All live Performance Reports display a light blue zone that indicates the range of values for a metric within the sample length. The light blue zone is shown regardless of whether any filter is applied. With this enhancement, users can observe trends in values on filtered graphs.
Graphing and report vizualzation Reports are designed to maximize the number of graphs that can appear on each page.

·         Excess white space is eliminated.

·         The report parameters section collapses when the report is run. The user can expand it manually.

·         Graph heights are decreased when possible.

·         Page scrolling occurs while the collapsed parameters section remains fixed at the top.
User interface What’s New dialog All InsightIQ users can view a brief introduction to new functionality in the latest release of InsightIQ. Access the dialog from the banner area of the InsightIQ web application. Click About > What’s New.
Compact cluster performance view on the Dashboard The IIQ dashboard provides:.

·         Summary information for six clusters appears in the initial dashboard view. A sectional scrollbar controls the view for additional clusters.

·         The capacity section has its own scrollbar.

·         The navigation side bar is collapsible into space-saving icons. Use the << icon at the bottom of the side bar to collapse it.

 

PowerScale InsightIQ 6.2

Hot on the heels of the OneFS 9.13 launch comes the unveiling of the innovative new PowerScale InsightIQ 6.2 release.

InsightIQ provides powerful performance and health monitoring and reporting functionality, helping to maximize PowerScale cluster efficiency. This includes advanced analytics to optimize applications, correlate cluster events, and the ability to accurately forecast future storage needs.

So what new goodness does this InsightIQ 6.2 release add to the PowerScale metrics and monitoring mix?

Additional functionality includes:

Feature IIQ 6.2 Functionality
Expanded Ecosystem ·         Ecosystem support extended to include ESXi v9.0.1 and PowerScale OneFS 9.13.
Trusted Domain Support ·         Enables seamless authentication and unified access across domains, while ensuring automatic trust management.
Customizable partitions and networking ·         Enables the user to select datastore path of their choice.

·         Resolves network conflicts.
Datastore Migration ·         Admin can change the datastore path after installation.
Link & Launch ·         Simplifies WebUI access directly from IIQ Dashboard and Reports.
Configurable Network Port ·         Enables monitoring PowerScale with user defined TCP port.

The PowerScale InsightIQ 6.2 release introduces several significant enhancements aimed at improving flexibility, security, and usability. One of the key features is Trusted Domain, which enables seamless authentication and unified access across multiple domains while ensuring automatic trust management for secure and efficient operations. Another important enhancement is Customizable Partition and Network Settings, allowing administrators to select a preferred data store path and configure network settings to resolve potential conflicts, thereby providing greater control over system configuration.

The release also includes Data Store Migration, which gives administrators the ability to change the data store path after installation. This feature offers improved flexibility and operational advantages, which will be demonstrated in the upcoming walkthrough and demo sessions. Additionally, the Link and Launch capability simplifies navigation by enabling direct access to the web UI from the InsightIQ dashboard and reports, reducing the complexity of switching between InsightIQ and PowerScale applications. Finally, the introduction of a Configurable IQ Listening TCP Port allows users to customize the listening port for InsightIQ, enabling tailored monitoring of PowerScale environments.

InsightIQ 6.2 continues to offer the same two deployment models as its predecessors:

Deployment Model Description
InsightIQ Scale Resides on bare-metal Linux hardware or virtual machine.
InsightIQ Simple Deploys on a VMware hypervisor (OVA).

The InsightIQ Scale version resides on bare-metal Linux hardware or virtual machine, whereas InsightIQ Simple deploys via OVA on a VMware hypervisor.

InsightIQ v6.x Scale enjoys a substantial breadth-of-monitoring scope, with the ability to encompass 504 nodes across up to 20 clusters.

Additionally, InsightIQ v6.x Scale can be deployed on a single Linux host. This is in stark contrast to InsightIQ 5’s requirements for a three Linux node minimum installation platform.

The specific deployment options and hardware requirements for installing and running InsightIQ 6.x are as follows:

Attribute InsightIQ 6.2 Simple InsightIQ 6.2 Scale
Scalability Up to 10 clusters or 252 nodes Up to 20 clusters or 504 nodes
Deployment On VMware, using OVA template RHEL, SLES, or Ubuntu with deployment script
Hardware requirements VMware v15 or higher:

·         CPU: 8 vCPU

·         Memory: 16GB

·         Storage: 1.5TB (thin provisioned);

Or 500GB on NFS server datastore

 Up to 10 clusters and 504 nodes:

·         CPU: 8 vCPU or Cores

·         Memory: 16GB

·         Storage: 500GB

Up to 20 clusters and 504 nodes:

·         CPU: 12 vCPU or Cores

·         Memory: 32GB

·         Storage: 1TB
Networking requirements 1 static IP on the PowerScale cluster’s subnet 1 static IP on the PowerScale cluster’s subnet

The InsightIQ ecosystem itself is also expanded in version 6.2 to also include VMware ESXi v9.0.1 in addition to VMware v8 OU3, Ubuntu 24.04 Online deployment and OpenStack RHOSP 21 with RHEL 9.6, SLES 15 SP4, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 9.6 and 8.10. This allows customers who have standardized on VMware to now run an InsightIQ 6.2 Scale deployment image on an ESXi 9.0.1 hypervisor to monitor the latest OneFS versions.

Qualified on InsightIQ 6.1 InsightIQ 6.2
OS (IIQ Scale Deployment) RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.6, and SLES 15 SP4 RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.6, and SLES 15 SP4
PowerScale OneFS 9.5 to 9.12 OneFS 9.5 to 9.13
VMware ESXi ESXi v8.0U3 ESXi v8.0U3, and ESXi v9.0.1
VMware Workstation Workstation 17 Free Version Workstation 17 Free Version
Ubuntu Ubuntu 24.04 Online deployment Ubuntu 24.04 Online deployment
OpenStack RHOSP 21 with RHEL 9.6 RHOSP 21 with RHEL 9.6

Similarly, in addition to deployment on VMware ESXi 8 and 9, the InsightIQ Simple version can also be installed for free on VMware Workstation 17, providing the ability to stand up InsightIQ in a non-production or lab environment for trial or demo purposes, without incurring a VMware licensing charge.

Additionally, the InsightIQ OVA template is now under 5GB in size, and with an installation time of generally less than 12 minutes.

In the next article in this series, we’ll dig into the details of the additional functionality that debuts in this new InsightIQ 6.2 release.

PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite

The Dell PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite represents a forward-thinking, integrated approach to addressing the growing challenges in cybersecurity and disaster recovery.

It aligns with Gartner’s definition of Cyberstorage, a category of solutions specifically designed to secure data storage systems against modern threats. These threats include ransomware, data encryption attacks, and theft, and the emphasis of Cyberstorage is on active prevention, early detection, and the ability to block attacks before they cause damage. Recovery capabilities are also tailored to the unique demands of data storage environments, making the protection of data itself a central layer of defense.

Unlike traditional solutions that often prioritize post-incident recovery – leaving organizations exposed during the critical early stages of an attack – Dell’s PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite embraces the Cyberstorage paradigm by offering a comprehensive set of capabilities that proactively defend data and ensure operational resilience. These include:

Capability Details
Active Defense at the Data Layer The suite integrates AI-driven tools to detect and respond to threats in real-time, analyzing user behavior and unauthorized data access attempts. Bidirectional threat intelligence integrates seamlessly into SIEM, SOAR, and XDR platforms for coordinated protection at every layer.
Automated Threat Prevention Includes features like automated snapshots, operational air-gapped vaults, and immediate user lockouts to stop attacks before damage spreads. Attack simulation tools also ensure that the defenses are always optimized for emerging threats.
NIST Framework Alignment Adheres to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework, providing a structured approach to identifying, protecting, detecting, responding to, and recovering from threats. This comprehensive protection eliminates vulnerabilities overlooked by traditional backup and security tools, enabling organizations to stay ahead of today’s evolving cyber risks while ensuring business continuity.
Rapid Recovery and Resilience With secure backups and precision recovery, organizations can rapidly restore specific files or entire datasets without losing unaffected data. Recovery is accelerated by integrated workflows that minimize downtime.

By embedding detection, protection, and response directly into the data layer, the Dell PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite adopts a proactive and preventive approach to safeguarding enterprise environments:

Approach Details
Identification & Detection Detecting potential incursions in real time using AI-driven behavioral analytics.
Protection Protecting data at its source with advanced security measures and automated threat monitoring.
Response Responding decisively with automated remediation to minimize damage and accelerate recovery, ensuring seamless continuity.
Recovery Providing recovery tools and forensic data and recovery tools to quickly restore clean data in the event of a breach, minimizing business disruption.

It begins with identification and detection, where data is protected at its source through advanced security measures and continuous automated threat monitoring. Protection is achieved by identifying potential incursions in real time using AI-driven behavioral analytics, allowing organizations to act before threats escalate. When a threat is detected, the suite responds with automated remediation processes that minimize damage and accelerate recovery, ensuring uninterrupted operations.

This integrated approach enables Dell to address the full lifecycle of security and recovery within the PowerScale platform, delivering exceptional resilience across IT environments.

Released globally on August 28, 2025, the Dell PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite is available in three customizable bundles tailored to meet diverse operational and regulatory needs.

Bundle Details
Cybersecurity Bundle Leverages AI-driven threat detection, Zero Trust architecture, and automated risk mitigation to fortify security.
Airgap Vault Bundle Extends the capabilities of the Cybersecurity Bundle by adding isolated, secure backups for robust ransomware protection. This bundle requires the Cybersecurity Bundle and the Disaster Recovery Bundle..
Disaster Recovery Bundle Prioritizes rapid recovery with near-zero Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), and seamless failover capabilities.

The Cybersecurity Bundle leverages AI-driven threat detection, Zero Trust architecture, and automated risk mitigation to strengthen data protection. The Airgap Vault Bundle builds on this by adding isolated, secure backups for enhanced ransomware defense, and requires both the Cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery bundles for full deployment. The Disaster Recovery Bundle focuses on rapid recovery, offering rapid Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), along with seamless failover capabilities to ensure business continuity.

Customers can choose specific bundles based on their requirements, with the only prerequisite being that the Airgap Vault bundle must be deployed alongside both the Cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery bundles to ensure full functionality and integration.

Built upon the venerable PowerScale platform, the suite is engineered to protect unstructured data and maintain operational availability in today’s increasingly complex threat landscape. As such, it offers a comprehensive set of tools, techniques, and architectural flexibility to deliver multilayered security and responsive recovery.

This enables organizations to design robust solutions that align with their specific security priorities—from advanced threat detection to seamless disaster recovery.

Among its key benefits, the suite includes automated threat response capabilities that swiftly mitigate risks such as malicious data encryption and exfiltration.

Feature Details
Automated threat response The suite features automated responses to cybersecurity threats, such as data encryption, and the prevention of data exfiltration, helping mitigate risks swiftly and effectively.
Secure Operational Airgap Vault Data is protected within an isolated operational airgap vault, and will only be transferred to the operational airgap vault if the production storage environment is not under attack, ensuring critical assets remain secure and inaccessible to unauthorized actors.
Ecosystems Integration Seamlessly integrates with leading endpoint protection and incident response software, automating and simplifying operations during a cyberattack to ensure a coordinated and efficient response.
DoD-Certified Hardware Integration Designed to enhance PowerScale’s DoD APL certified hardware, meeting rigorous cybersecurity standards, and providing customers with a trusted platform on which to build their defenses. The suite’s advanced capabilities, robust protection, and proven hardware deliver a comprehensive cyber and DR solution tailored to meet today’s complex security challenges.

It also features a secure operational airgap vault, which ensures that data is only transferred when the production environment is verified to be safe, keeping critical assets isolated and protected from unauthorized access. Integration with leading endpoint protection and incident response platforms allows for coordinated and efficient responses during cyberattacks, streamlining operations and reducing complexity.

The suite is also designed to complement PowerScale’s DoD APL-certified hardware, meeting stringent cybersecurity standards and providing a trusted foundation for enterprise defense strategies. Its advanced capabilities, combined with proven hardware, deliver a comprehensive cybersecurity and disaster recovery solution tailored to modern security challenges.

The Dell PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite is engineered to support petabyte-scale environments containing billions of files distributed across multiple PowerScale clusters. There is no hard-coded limit on the volume of data it can manage. However, actual throughput and failover times are influenced by factors such as SyncIQ bandwidth, the degree of policy parallelism, and the overall readiness of the environment. To help forecast recovery timelines, the suite includes an Estimated Failover Time engine that uses real metrics to generate policy-specific projections.

Superna software, which underpins the suite, interacts with PowerScale systems via REST APIs. These APIs provide access to inventory data, facilitate the orchestration of snapshot creation and deletion, and enable user lockout and restoration of access to shared resources. Specifically, the suite utilizes the file system API and the system configuration API to perform these operations. Meanwhile, configuration and management can be performed via the comprehensive, intuitive WebUI:

The performance impact of running the Data Security Edition—which includes the Cybersecurity Bundle with Ransomware Defender and Easy Auditor—is primarily tied to the frequency and volume of API calls made to PowerScale. These calls can be managed and tuned by administrators and support teams during deployment and system configuration. One known scenario that may affect cluster performance occurs when user permissions are broadly configured to allow all users access to all shares. In such cases, default settings combined with enabled snapshots can lead to excessive API endpoint activity, as the system attempts to create and delete snapshots across all shares. To mitigate this, Dell recommends disabling default snapshots during deployment and instead configuring snapshots only for critical data paths. Outside of this specific configuration, Dell has not identified any significant performance impacts under normal operating conditions.

The Dell-branded software is built on the same codebase as the standard Superna 2.x release, with branding determined by licensing. This branding helps  ensure consistency, simplify user interactions, and reinforce the alignment between the suite and Dell Technologies’ broader product portfolio.

With regard to release cadence, there is typically a 60-day lead time between Superna releasing a new version and Dell launching its branded equivalent, allowing for additional QA, regression, and longevity testing.

With the Cybersecurity suite, Dell Technologies will directly manage implementation services and provide first-call support. This approach ensures a seamless and customer-focused experience, with faster response times and streamlined service delivery. It also guarantees that customers receive consistent and integrated support throughout their deployment and operational lifecycle.

It is important to note that Dell-branded and Superna-branded software cannot be mixed within the same PowerScale cluster. Currently, the Dell PowerScale Cybersecurity Suite is intended exclusively for new deployments and is not compatible with existing Superna-branded environments. Migration from Superna to Dell-branded software is not supported at this time, unless an entire Superna Eyeglass solution is being renewed. However, Dell is actively working to expand migration options in future releases.

PowerScale InsightIQ 6.1

It’s been a sizzling summer for Dell PowerScale to date! Hot on the heels of the OneFS 9.12 launch comes the unveiling of the innovative new PowerScale InsightIQ 6.1 release.

InsightIQ provides powerful performance and health monitoring and reporting functionality, helping to maximize PowerScale cluster efficiency. This includes advanced analytics to optimize applications, correlate cluster events, and the ability to accurately forecast future storage needs.

So what new goodness does this InsightIQ 6.1 release add to the PowerScale metrics and monitoring mix?

Additional functionality includes:

Feature New IIQ 6.1 Functionality
Ecosystem support ·         InsightIQ is qualified on Ubuntu
Flexible Alerting ·         Defining custom alerts on the most used set of granular metrics.

·         Nine new KPIs for a total of 16 KPIs.

·         Increased granularity of alerting and many more
Online Migration from Simple to Scale ·         Customers with InsightIQ 6.0.1 Simple (OVA) can now migrate data and functionalities to InsightIQ 6.1.0 Scale.
Self-service Admin Password Reset ·         Administrators can reset their own password through a simple, secure flow with reduced IT dependency

InsightIQ 6.1 continues to offer the same two deployment models as its predecessors:

Deployment Model Description
InsightIQ Scale Resides on bare-metal Linux hardware or virtual machine.
InsightIQ Simple Deploys on a VMware hypervisor (OVA).

The InsightIQ Scale version resides on bare-metal Linux hardware or virtual machine, whereas InsightIQ Simple deploys via OVA on a VMware hypervisor.

InsightIQ v6.x Scale enjoys a substantial breadth-of-monitoring scope, with the ability to encompass 504 nodes across up to 20 clusters.

Additionally, InsightIQ v6.x Scale can be deployed on a single Linux host. This is in stark contrast to InsightIQ 5’s requirements for a three Linux node minimum installation platform.

Deployment:

The deployment options and hardware requirements for installing and running InsightIQ 6.x are as follows:

Attribute InsightIQ 6.1 Simple InsightIQ 6.1 Scale
Scalability Up to 10 clusters or 252 nodes Up to 20 clusters or 504 nodes
Deployment On VMware, using OVA template RHEL, SLES, or Ubuntu with deployment script
Hardware requirements VMware v15 or higher:

·         CPU: 8 vCPU

·         Memory: 16GB

·         Storage: 1.5TB (thin provisioned);

Or 500GB on NFS server datastore

 Up to 10 clusters and 252 nodes:

·         CPU: 8 vCPU or Cores

·         Memory: 16GB

·         Storage: 500GB

Up to 20 clusters and 504 nodes:

·         CPU: 12 vCPU or Cores

·         Memory: 32GB

·         Storage: 1TB
Networking requirements 1 static IP on the PowerScale cluster’s subnet 1 static IP on the PowerScale cluster’s subnet

Ecosystem support:

The InsightIQ ecosystem itself is also expanded in version 6.1 to also include Ubuntu 24.04 Online deployment and OpenStack RHOSP 21 with RHEL 9.6, in addition to SLES 15 SP4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 9.6 and 8.10. This allows customers who have standardized on Ubuntu Linux to now run an InsightIQ 6.1 Scale deployment on a v24.04 host to monitor the latest OneFS versions.

Qualified on InsightIQ 6.0 InsightIQ 6.1
OS (IIQ Scale Deployment) RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.4, and SLES 15 SP4 RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.6, and SLES 15 SP4
PowerScale OneFS 9.4 to 9.11 OneFS 9.5 to 9.12
VMware ESXi ESXi v7.0U3 and ESXi v8.0U3 ESXi v8.0U3
VMware Workstation Workstation 17 Free Version Workstation 17 Free Version
Ubuntu – Ubuntu 24.04 Online deployment
OpenStack RHOSP 17 with RHEL 9.4 RHOSP 21 with RHEL 9.6

Similarly, in addition to deployment on VMware ESXi 8, the InsightIQ Simple version can also be installed for free on VMware Workstation 17, providing the ability to stand up InsightIQ in a non-production or lab environment for trial or demo purposes, without incurring a VMware licensing charge.

Additionally, the InsightIQ OVA template is now reduced in size to under 5GB, and with an installation time of less than 12 minutes.

Online Upgrade

The IIQ upgrade in 6.1 is a six step process:

First, the installer checks the current Insight IQ version, verifies there’s sufficient free disk space, and confirms that setup is ready. Next, IIQ is halted and dependencies met, followed by the installation of the 6.1 infrastructure and a migration of legacy InsightIQ configuration and historical report data to the new platform. The cleanup phase removes the old configuration files, etc, followed by the final phase which upgrades alerts and removes the lock, leaving InsightIQ 6.1 ready to roll.

Phase Details
Pre-check •       docker command

•        IIQ version check 6.0.1

•       Free disk space

•       IIQ services status

•       OS compatibility
Pre-upgrade •       EULA accepted

•       Extract the IIQ images

•       Stop IIQ

•       Create necessary directories
Upgrade •       Upgrade addons services

•       Upgrade IIQ services except alerts

•       Upgrade EULA

•       Status Check
Post-upgrade •       Update admin email

•       Update IIQ metadata
Cleanup •       Replace scripts

•       Remove old docker images

•       Remove upgrade and backup folders
Upgrade Alerts and Unlock •       Trigger alert upgrade

•       Clean lock file

The prerequisites for upgrading to InsightIQ 6.1 are either a Simple or Scale deployment with 6.0.1 installed, and with a minimum of 40GB free disk space.

The actual upgrade is performed by the ‘upgrade-iiq.sh’ script:

Specific steps in the upgrade process are as follows:

  • Download and uncompress the bundle
# tar xvf iiq-install-6.1.0.tar.gz
  • Enter InsightIQ folder and un-tar upgrade scripts
# cd InsightIQ
# tar xvf upgrade.tar.gz
  • Enter upgrade scripts folder
# cd upgrade/
  • Start upgrade. Note that the usage is same for both the Simple and Scale InsightIQ deployments.
# ./upgrade-iiq.sh -m <admin_email>

Upon successful upgrade completion, InsightIQ will be accessible via the primary node’s IP address.

Online Simple-to-Scale Migration

The Online Simple-to-Scale Migration feature enables seamless migration of data and functionalities from InsightIQ version 6.0.1 to version 6.1. This process is specifically designed to support migrations from InsightIQ 6.0.1 Simple (OVA) deployments to InsightIQ 6.1 Scale deployments.

Migration is supported only from InsightIQ version 6.0.1. To proceed, the following prerequisites must be met:

  • An InsightIQ 6.0.1 Simple deployment running IIQ 6.0.1.
  • An InsightIQ Scale deployment running IIQ 6.1.0 installed and the EULA accepted.

The ‘iiq_data_migration’ script can be run as follows to initiate a migration:

# cd /usr/share/storagemonitoring/online_migration
# bash iiq_data_migration.sh

Additionally, detailed logs are available at the following locations for monitoring and verifying the migration process:

Logfile Location
Metadata Migration Log /usr/share/storagemonitoring/logs/online_migration/insightiq_online_migration.log
Cluster Data Migration Log /usr/share/storagemonitoring/logs/clustermanagement/insightiq_cluster_migration.log

 Self-service Admin Password Reset

InsightIQ 6.1 introduces a streamlined self-service password reset feature for administrators. This secure process allows admins to reset their own passwords without IT intervention.

Key features include one-time password (OTP) verification, ensuring only authorized users can reset passwords. Timeout enforcement means OTPs expire after 5 minutes for added security, and accounts are locked after five failed attempts to prevent brute-force attacks.

Note that SMTP must be configured in order to receive OTPs via email.

Flexible Alerting

InsightIQ 6.1 enhances alerting capabilities with 16 total KPIs/metrics, including 9 new ones. Key improvements include:

  • Greater granularity (beyond cluster-level alerts)
  • Support for sub-filters and breakouts
  • Multiple operators and unit-based thresholding
  • Aggregator and extended duration support

Several metrics have been transformed and/or added in version 6.1. For example:

IIQ 6.1 Metric IIQ.6.0 Metric
Active Clients ·         Active Clients NFS

·         Active Clients SMB1

·         Active Clients SMB2
Average Disk Hardware Latency
Average Disk Operation Size
Average Pending Disk Operation Count ·         Pending Disk Operation Count
Capacity ·         Drive Capacity

·         Cluster Capacity

·         Node Capacity

·         Nodepool Capacity
Connected Clients ·         Connected Clients NFS

·         Connected Clients SMB
CPU Usage ·         CPU Usage
Disk Activity
Disk Operations Rate ·         Pending Disk Operation Count
Disk Throughput Rate
External Network Errors Rate
External Network Packets Rate
External Network Throughput Rate ·         Network Throughput Equivalency
File System Throughput Rate
Protocol Operations Average Latency ·         Protocol Latency NFS

·         Protocol Latency SMB

Also, clusters can now be directly associated with alert rules:

The generated alerts page sees the addition of a new ‘Metric’ field:

For example, an alert can now be generated at the nodepool level for the metric ‘External Network Throughput Rate’:

IIQ 6.1 also includes an updated email format, as follows:

Alert Migration

The alerting system has transitioned from predefined alerting to flexible alerting. During this migration, all alert policies, associated rules, resources, notification rules, and generated alerts are automatically migrated—no additional steps are required.

Key differences include:

IIQ 6.1 Flexible Alerting IIQ 6.0 Predefined Alerting
·         Each alert rule is associated with only one cluster (1:1 mapping). ·         Alert rules and resources are tightly coupled with alert policies.
·         A policy can still have multiple rules, but resources are now linked directly to rules, not policies.

·         This results in N × M combinations of alert rules and clusters (N = resources, M = rules).

 ·         A single policy can be linked to multiple rules and resources.

For example, imagine the following scenario:

  • Pre-upgrade (Predefined Alerting):

An IIQ 6.0 1 instance has a policy (Policy1), which is associated with two rules (CPU Rule & Capacity Rule) and 4 clusters (Cluster1-4).

  • Post-Upgrade (Flexible Alerting):

Since only one resource can be associated with one alert rule, a separate alert rule will be created for each cluster. So, after upgrading to IIQ 6.1, Policy1 will now have four individual cluster CPU Alert rules and four individual cluster Capacity Alert rules:

If an IIQ 6.1 upgrade happens to fail due to alert migration, a backup of the predefined alerting database is automatically created. To retry the migration, run:

# bash /usr/share/storagemonotoring/scripts/retrigger_alerts_upgrade.sh

Plus, for additional context and troubleshooting, the alert migration logs can be found at:

 /usr/share/storagemonitoring/logs/alerts/alerts_migration.log

Durable Data Collection

Data collection and processing in IIQ 6.x provides both performance and fault tolerance, with the following decoupled architecture:

Component Role
Data Processor Responsible for processing and storing the data in TimescaleDB for display by Reporting service.
Temporary Datastore Stores historical statistics fetched from PowerScale cluster, in-between collection and processing.
Message Broker Facilitates inter-service communication. With the separation of data collection and data processing, this allows both services to signal to each other when their respective roles come up.
Timescale DB New database storage for the time-series data. Designed for optimized handling of historical statistics.

InsightIQ TimescaleDB database stores long-term historical data via the following retention strategy:

Telemetry data is summarized and stored in the following cascading levels, each with a different data retention period:

Level Sample Length Data Retention Period
Raw table Varies by metric type. Raw data sample lengths range from 30s to 5m. 24 hours
5m summary 5 minutes 7 days
15m summary 15 minutes 4 weeks
3h summary 3 hours Infinite

Note that the actual raw sample length may vary by graph/data type – from 30 seconds for CPU % Usage data up to 5 minutes for cluster capacity metrics.

Meanwhile, the new InsightIQ v6.1 code is available for download on the Dell Support site, allowing both the installation of and upgrade to this new release.

PowerScale InsightIQ 6.0

It’s been an active April for PowerScale already. Close on the tail of the OneFS 9.11 launch comes the unveiling of the new, innovative PowerScale InsightIQ 6.0 release.

InsightIQ provides powerful performance monitoring and reporting functionality, helping to maximize PowerScale cluster performance and efficiency. This includes advanced analytics to optimize applications, correlate cluster events, and the ability to accurately forecast future storage needs.

So what new treats does this InsightIQ 6.0 release bring to the table?

Added functionality includes:

  • Greater scale
  • Expanded ecosystem support
  • Enhanced reporting efficiency
  • Streamlined upgrade and migration

InsightIQ 6.0 continues to offer the same two deployment models as its 5.x predecessors:

Deployment Model Description
InsightIQ Scale Resides on bare-metal Linux hardware or virtual machine.
InsightIQ Simple Deploys on a VMware hypervisor.

The InsightIQ Scale version resides on bare-metal Linux hardware or virtual machine, whereas InsightIQ Simple deploys via OVA on a VMware hypervisor.

In v6.0, InsightIQ Scale enjoys a substantial boost in its breadth-of-monitoring scope and can now encompass up to 20 clusters or 504 nodes.

Additionally, with this new 6.0 version, InsightIQ Scale can now be deployed on a single Linux host. This is in stark contrast to InsightIQ 5’s requirements for a three Linux node minimum installation platform.

Deployment:

The deployment options and hardware requirements for installing and running InsightIQ 6.0 are as follows:

Attribute InsightIQ 6.0 Simple InsightIQ 6.0 Scale
Scalability Up to 10 clusters or 252 nodes Up to 20 clusters or 504 nodes
Deployment On VMware, using OVA template RHEL or SLES with deployment script
Hardware requirements VMware v15 or higher:

·         CPU: 8 vCPU

·         Memory: 16GB

·         Storage: 1.5TB (thin provisioned);

Or 500GB on NFS server datastore

 Up to 10 clusters and 252 nodes:

·         CPU: 8 vCPU or Cores

·         Memory: 16GB

·         Storage: 500GB

Up to 20 clusters and 504 nodes:

·         CPU: 12 vCPU or Cores

·         Memory: 32GB

·         Storage: 1TB
Networking requirements 1 static IP on the PowerScale cluster’s subnet 1 static IP on the PowerScale cluster’s subnet

 

Ecosystem support:

The InsightIQ ecosystem itself is also expanded in version 6.0 to also include SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4, in addition to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 8.10, 9.4, and RHOSP 17. This allows customers who have standardized on SUSE to now run an InsightIQ 6.0 Scale deployment on a V15 host to monitor the latest OneFS versions.

Qualified on InsightIQ 5.2 InsightIQ 6.0
OS (IIQ Scale Deployment) RHEL 8.10 and RHEL 9.4 RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.4, RHOSP 17, and SLES 15 SP4
PowerScale OneFS 9.3 to 9.10 OneFS 9.4 to 9.11
VMware ESXi ESXi v7.0U3 and ESXi v8.0U3 ESXi v7.0U3 and ESXi v8.0U3
VMware Workstation Workstation 17 Free Workstation 17 Free Version

Similarly, in addition to deployment on VMware ESXi 7 & 8, the InsightIQ Simple version can also be installed for free on VMware Workstation 17, providing the ability to stand up InsightIQ in a non-production or lab environment for trial or demo purpose, without incurring a VMware charge. Plus, the InsightIQ 6.0 OVA template has now been reduced in size to under 5GB, and with an installation time of less than 12 minutes.

Online Upgrade

The prerequisites for upgrading to InsightIQ 6.0 are either a Simple or Scale deployment with InsightIQ v5.1.x or v5.2.x installed and running. Additionally, the free disk space must exceed 50% of the allocated capacity.

The upgrade in 6.0 is a five step process:

First, the installer checks the current Insight IQ version, verifies there’s sufficient free disk space, and confirms that setup is ready. Next, IIQ is halted and dependencies met, followed by the installation of the new 6.0 infrastructure and a migration of the legacy InsightIQ 5.x configuration and historical report data to the new platform. Finally, the cleanup phase removes the old configuration files, etc, and InsightIQ 6.0 is ready to go.

Phase Description
Pre-check Check IIQ version; verify free disk space; confirm setup is ready
Pre-upgrade Stop IIQ and install dependencies
Install and Migrate Install IIQ 6.0 infrastructure and migrate IIQ Data
Post-upgrade Migrate historical report data
Cleanup Remove old configuration files

During the upgrade of an InsightIQ Scale deployment to v6.0, the 3-node setup will be converted to 1-node configuration. After a successful upgrade, InsightIQ will be accessible via the primary node’s IP address.

Offline Migration

The offline migration functionality in this new release facilitates the transfer of data and configuration context from InsightIQ version 4.4.1 to version 6.0. This includes support for both InsightIQ Simple and InsightIQ Scale deployments.

Additionally, the process has been streamlined in InsightIQ 6.0 so that only a single ‘iiq_data_migrations.sh’ script needs to be run to complete the migration. For example:

This is in contrast to prior IIQ releases, where separate import and export utilities were required for the migration process. Detailed migration logs are also provided in InsightIQ 6.0, located at /usr/share/storagemonitoring/logs/offline_migration/insightiq_offline_migration.log.

Durable Data Collection

Decoupled data collection and processing in IIQ 6.0 delivers gains in both performance and fault tolerance. Under the hood, InsightIQ 6.0 sees an updated architecture with the introduction of the following new components:

Component Role
Data Processor Responsible for processing and storing the data in TimescaleDB for display by Reporting service.
Temporary Datastore Stores historical statistics fetched from PowerScale cluster, in-between collection and processing.
Message Broker Facilitates inter-service communication. With the separation of data collection and data processing, this allows both services to signal to each other when their respective roles come up.
Timescale DB New database storage for the time-series data. Designed for optimized handling of historical statistics.

Telemetry Down-sampling

InsightIQ 6.0’s new TimescaleDB database now permits the storage of long-term historical data via an enhanced retention strategy:

Unlike prior InsightIQ releases, which used two data formats, with v6.0 telemetry, summary data is now stored in the following cascading levels, each with a different data retention period:

Level Sample Length Data Retention Period
Raw table Varies by metric type. Raw data sample lengths range from 30s to 5m. 24 hours
5m summary 5 minutes 7 days
15m summary 15 minutes 4 weeks
3h summary 3 hours Infinite

Note that the actual raw sample length may vary by graph/data type – from 30 seconds for CPU % Usage data up to 5 minutes for cluster capacity metrics.

Meanwhile, the new InsightIQ v6.0 code is available for download on the Dell Support site, allowing both the installation of and upgrade to this new release.