International Business Machines Corporation

Vinh-Thuan Nguyen-Phuc

Daniel Graham Douglas

Duane Mark Baldwin

Gregory John Tevis

David Lynn Merbach

Michael L Lamb

William Roy Yonker

Allen Robert Heitman

Raymond M Swank

Gregory John Knight

Douglas Paul Dunham

David W Groves

Paul Lawrence Bradshaw

Nancy Lott Hobbs

Vincent Jomartin Hoang

Lisa Anne Huston

Alireza Razzaghi Daryan

Roman David Druker

Barbara J Camacho

An Ngoc Lam

Thomas E Guinane, Sr

Ron H Clark

Amir Nakhforoush

Novel storage area networks (SANs) and methods of operation thereof utilize a plurality of hosts coupled via an interconnect with one or more storage units. A manager device, process or other functionality in communication with a plurality of agent processes, devices or other functionality, each of which is associated with a host. The agents identify attributes of (i) their associated hosts, (ii) interconnect to which that host is coupled, and/or (iii) storage units to which that host is coupled via the interconnect. The manager responds to these attributes identified by the agents to manage the SAN. The manager can be implemented on a first digital data processor and the hosts on further digital data processors. These digital data processors can be coupled via a first network, e.g., an IP or other network, to support communications between the manager and the agents. A second network, e.g., SCSI and/or fiber channel based fabric, separate from the first network, can be utilized as the interconnect between the hosts and the storage devices.

Storage area network methods and apparatus with centralized management

Aspects for automatic code version update detection and distribution for an application program running on a computer system in a computer network are described. In a method aspect, the method includes providing two agent processes, a slave agent and a master agent, on an agent system in the computer network. A request is received in the slave agent from a manager system in the computer network, the request including an appropriate code version of the running application for response. A determination of whether the slave agent can fulfill the request at the appropriate code version is made, and an automatic updating of the agent system occurs when the request cannot be fulfilled at the appropriate code version. In a further method aspect, two agent processes, a slave agent and a master agent, are provided on an agent system, with identification of whether the agent system is operating at an appropriate code version occurring during discovery and registration of the agent system in a manager system, and automatic updating of the agent system when the agent system is not operating at the appropriate code version.

Method and system for automatic detection and distribution of code version updates

A method for automatic discovery and registration of available agents on a distributed network using universally accepted protocols is disclosed. In particular, the present invention takes advantage of the situation that TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) and HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) are open protocols that have been widely accepted for a variety of applications including the immensely popular and universal Internet as well as intranets. Many devices and/or services from various vendors now conform to TCP/IP and provide an HTTP (web) server with their devices and/or services. The present invention provides a method that generates a list of addresses from a set of given criteria identifying the possible addresses for the available agents, detects for the availability of agents at those addresses, and receives and compiles the returned information (if any) from the agents at the respective addresses.

Method for discovering and registering agents in a distributed network

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Vinh-Thuan Nguyen-Phuc