International Business Machines Corporation

Christian Bolik

Dietmar Noll

James Patrick Smith

Neeta Garimella

Jayashree Ramanathan

Alexei Kojenov

Uwe Fiebrich-Kandler

Zhiguo Huang

Klaus Schroiff

Peter Gemsjaeger

Nils Haustein

David Maxwell Cannon

Colin Scott Dawson

Avishai Haim Hochberg

Aameek Singh

Venkateswararao Jujjuri

Einar Lueck

Michael Allen Kaczmarski

Gregory John Tevis

Dominic Mueller-Wicke

Christopher Zaremba

David Gregory Van Hise

Gabriel Alatorre

Jason Christopher Young

Ninad S Palsule

James John Seeger, Jr

Malahal R Naineni

Laura A Richardson

Stephen A Byrd

Erick Christian Kissel

Thomas Schreiber

Benjamin J Randall

Christoph Reichert

Markus Rohwedder

Michael Fiedler

Carsten Brixius

Daniel Michel

Sudhir V R Koka

Nile Haustein

The method for managing one or more standard configurations includes calculating a plurality of configuration fingerprints for a plurality of storage systems. The configuration fingerprint is a numerical value that represents information about a configuration for one or more components of a storage system. The method also includes building a result set that includes the plurality of configuration fingerprints for the plurality of storage systems. The method also includes identifying a plurality of standard configurations for the plurality of storage systems from the result set based on the plurality of configuration fingerprints. The method also includes determining that a first storage system from the plurality of storage systems meets a standard configuration from the plurality of standard configurations. The method also includes creating metadata within the first storage system that describes the standard configuration.

Management of configurations for existing storage infrastructure

Operating a shared nothing cluster system (SNCS) in order to perform a backup of a data element. The SNCS includes at least a first and a second storage node connected via a first network of the SNCS. The first and second storage nodes are configured to store a first set and a second set of blocks, respectively, in which the first and second set of blocks form a single data element. A backup server is connected to the first and second storage nodes, and the backup server includes a backup information table. The first and second storage nodes are configured to act as backup clients in a client-server configuration involving the backup server, upon receiving at the first and the second storage nodes a request to backup the data element. For each node of the first and second storage nodes, the node identifies one or more block sequences of consecutive blocks in a set of blocks of the data element stored in the node. The node sends the identified one or more block sequences to the backup server, and generates backup information.

Method of operating a shared nothing cluster system

A method, computer program product, and system for determining an optimal volume placement on a storage system. The method includes acquiring at least a desired response time range for each storage volume associated with an application. The degree of optimization of volume placement is evaluated utilizing numeric scores assigned by a fitness function, and a recommendation is provided for storage volumes that should be moved to different storage pools, such that desired response times are met.

Optimizing volume placement based upon desired response time and priority

A method, computer-readable storage medium and computer system for controlling a storage system, the storage system comprising a plurality of logical storage volumes, the method comprising: monitoring, for each of the logical storage volumes, one or more load parameters; receiving, for each of the logical storage volumes, one or more load parameter threshold values; comparing, for each of the logical storage volumes, the first load parameter values of said logical storage volume with the corresponding one or more load parameter threshold values; in case at least one of the first load parameter values of one of the logical storage volumes violates the load parameter threshold value it is compared with, automatically executing a corrective action.

Controlling a storage system

An identity of a user performing an operation with respect to an application is propagated, from a point at which the user authenticates, to one or more other applications in a multi-product environment. The application may be a management console associated with an information cluster. In an embodiment, an administrator logs on to a management console (using an identity) and invokes a management operation. The management console then performs a programmatic remote access login (e.g., using SSH/RXA) to one or more nodes using a system account, invokes an application, and passes in the identity. As the application performs one or more management operations, audit events are logged, and these events each contain the identity that has been passed in by the management console during the SSH/RXA login. The technique thus provides a method for identity-based auditing in an environment having a plurality of applications, where each application typically has a respective authentication process or mechanism and distinct identity registries.

Identity based auditing in a multi-product environment

A mechanism is provided for providing storage resources of a storage management system. A storage service request is received comprising an indication of a service class. A determination is made of all resource managers mapped to the indicated service class according to a first mapping. For each of the determined resource managers: a determination is made of selected ones of all the storage resources controllable by the determined resource manager; monitoring data of the selected storage resources is gathered; the gathered monitoring data is compared for calculating a score for each one of the selected storage resources; and at least one function of the determined resource manager operable to control the storage resource having an optimum score is called.

Providing storage resources upon receipt of a storage service request

A method, computer readable storage medium and computer system for controlling the allocation of data to one of a plurality of storage units of a storage system, the method comprising: accessing a source storage unit comprising the data; gathering file system level (FS-level) metadata from the source storage unit; analyzing the gathered FS-level metadata for determining if the data should be moved to one of the other storage units, said other storage unit acting as a destination storage unit; and in case the data should be moved, displaying an indication of the destination storage unit and/or automatically moving the data to the determined destination storage unit.

Controlling the placement of data in a storage system

One disclosed aspect of the present invention includes authentication and user account automation within a compute cluster for each cluster node that requires password or other credential administration. For example, a storage appliance computing system may rely on a plurality of subsystems (such as databases, storage management software, and application servers) that each have internal user accounts with associated passwords and credential keys that need to be changed at frequent intervals. Rather than requiring an administrator to manually manage all of these accounts, the presently described invention includes techniques and an authentication manager component to automatically manage, update, and refresh authentication information as required. Further, the authentication manager component may be used to perform and propagate automatic credential changes such as new sets of SSH keys or updated passwords as required within a computing system, and respond to new nodes or out-of-sync credentialing scenarios.

Automated management of system credentials

An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for analyzing a file system. A record module records file parameters comprising a file size, a file age, a time of last access, a file type, a recovery time objective, and an initial access time service level objective for each file in the file system. A file score module calculates a file score for each file using the file parameters. A system score module calculates the file system score as the sum of the normalized file scores. A process module processes the file system if the file system score exceeds a specified threshold.

Apparatus, system, and method for analyzing a file system

A method for automatically identifying available storage components within a storage system, which are appropriate for storing consumer data in compliance with specified service level objectives (SLOs), including discovering available storage components; identifying and assigning service levels provided by each available storage component, wherein identifying and assigning service levels provided by each available storage component, includes classifying the available storage components based on their type of technology, and determining the SLO relevant capabilities of the available storage components; and storing resultant mapping of service levels to available storage components in a metadata repository.

Automatically identifying available storage components

Provided are techniques for determining whether content of an object has changed. Under control of a backup system, opaque object attributes and a data identifier are received, wherein the data identifier is generated based on one or more relevant object attributes of the opaque object attributes that indicate whether at least one of the content of the object and one or more of the relevant object attributes has changed. The received data identifier is compared with a previously stored data identifier. In response to determining that the received data identifier and the previously stored data identifier do not match, it is determined that the content of the object has changed.

Controlling incremental backups using opaque object attributes

Disclosed is a mechanism for handling failover of a data management application for a shared disk file system in a distributed computing environment having a cluster of loosely coupled nodes which provide services. According to the mechanism, certain nodes of the cluster are defined as failover candidate nodes. Configuration information for all the failover candidate nodes is stored preferably in a central storage. Message information including but not limited to failure information of at least one failover candidate node is distributed amongst the failover candidate nodes. By analyzing the distributed message information and the stored configuration information it is determined whether to take over the service of a failure node by a failover candidate node or not. After a take-over of a service by a failover candidate node the configuration information is updated in the central storage.

Cascading failover of a data management application for shared disk file systems in loosely coupled node clusters

Growing community of inventors

Oldenburg, Germany

Christian Bolik