Storediq, Inc.

International Business Machines Corporation

Jeff G Bone

Laura Arbilla

A Paul Jimenez

Brett A Funderburg

Keith T Zoellner

Peter A Lee

Bradley Might

Jeremy Kaplan

Morry Belkin

Brett A Funderberg

Disclosed are systems, methods and apparatuses for managing objects (files and directories) in network file systems according to policies. Each policy may have one or more rules, each of which ties a condition to an action. Each condition can be expressed in terms of metadata harvested across file systems and stored in a metadata repository. The actions are user-programmable. Users can apply and/or enforce a policy by manipulating the metadata stored in the metadata repository. For example, suppose a policy prohibits storing MP3 files in corporate storage, a user can specify a rule that ties the condition 'no MP3 files in volumes A-Z' to an action 'delete MP3 files from volumes A-Z.' A file management application may apply a filter to the metadata repository to produce metadata records having values that meet the specified condition and take the corresponding action on managed objects associated with those metadata records.

System, method and apparatus for enterprise policy management

Embodiments of the present invention can comprise systems and methods for managing filesystems and can provide a programmable filesystem with active rules and policies, an n-tier network filesystem, stack mounting, a union filesystem with write-through semantics, a filesystem middleware with selective delegation, a filesystem with a statistical warehouse and/or other management functionality.

Managing file systems and file-based data storage

A harvester is disclosed for harvesting metadata of managed objects (files and directories) across file systems which are generally not interoperable in an enterprise environment. Harvested metadata may include 1) file system attributes such as size, owner, recency; 2) content-specific attributes such as the presence or absence of various keywords (or combinations of keywords) within documents as well as concepts comprised of natural language entities; 3) synthetic attributes such as mathematical checksums or hashes of file contents; and 4) high-level semantic attributes that serve to classify and categorize files and documents. The classification itself can trigger an action in compliance with a policy rule. Harvested metadata are stored in a metadata repository to facilitate the automated or semi-automated application of policies.

Harvesting file system metsdata

Method and apparatus for managing file systems and file-based data storage

Method and apparatus for managing file systems and file-based data

Systems and methods for identifying objects in a managed storage environment with a user and involving the user with policy implementations or decisions associated with these objects are disclosed. These systems and methods may allow a single user identity for the managed storage environment to be assigned to a user and associated with a set of user identities, each of the set of user identities corresponding to the user's identity with respect to a particular domain. Previous or subsequent to establishing a user's enterprise wide identity, data and metadata may be obtained about objects residing in one or more of the domains in the enterprise as described in detail above. Objects within these domains can then be associated with a user using the set of user identities and a report generated for the user based upon these objects, including the policies associated with these objects.

System and method for involving users in object management

Disclosed are systems, methods and apparatuses for managing objects in an enterprise environment according to policies. According to the invention, each policy rule ties a condition that conceptually lives in a repository to an appropriate action(s). Since each condition can be expressed in terms of metadata, policies can be applied and enforced over managed objects (files and directories) by allowing users to program appropriate corresponding action(s) via manipulating metadata stored in a metadata repository, e.g., a policy could prohibit storing MP3 files in corporate storage. In one embodiment, a user can specify a policy rule that ties the condition 'no MP3 files in volumes A-Z' to an action 'delete MP3 files from volumes A-Z' via a Web-based user interface. A harvester is disclosed for harvesting metadata across file systems.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Jeff G Bone