System and method for policy based storage provisioning and management
AssigneeNetwork Appliance, Inc.
InventorsKumar Gajjar, Jim Collins, Richard Meyer, Chandra Prasad, Dipam Patel
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Abstract
A storage provisioning policy is created by specifying storage heuristics for storage attributes using storage heuristic metadata. Storage attributes characterize a storage device and storage heuristic metadata describe how to specify a storage heuristic. Using the storage heuristic metadata, storage heuristics are defined to express a rule or constraint as a function of a storage attribute. In addition, the storage provisioning policy may also specify mapping rules for exporting the storage to a consumer of the storage, such as the server or server cluster.
Claims18
An apparatus comprising:
- switching logic to provide switching of communications between a plurality of host computers and a plurality of data storage devices on a network, to enable the host computers to access the data storage devices via the network;
- and
- provisioning logic to provision storage in the plurality of data storage devices, by
- comparing discovered storage attribute data associated with one or more of the plurality of storage devices to a storage heuristic for a storage attribute in one or more storage provisioning policies, and
- if the discovered storage attribute data satisfy the storage heuristic, provisioning a storage device of the plurality of storage devices.
A storage server to service requests from the plurality of host computers for access to data stored in the data storage devices, the storage server comprising:
- a first set of ports through which to communicate with the plurality of host computers;
- a second set of ports through which to communicate with the plurality of data storage devices;
- switching logic to provide switching of communications between a plurality of host computers and a plurality of data storage devices on a storage area network (SAN), to enable the host computers to access the data storage devices via the SAN;
- and
- provisioning logic to provision storage in the plurality of data storage devices, by
- comparing discovered storage attribute data associated with one or more of the plurality of storage devices to a storage heuristic for a storage attribute in one or more storage provisioning policies, and
- if the discovered storage attribute data satisfy the storage heuristic, provisioning a storage device of the plurality of storage devices.
A system comprising:
- means for providing switching of communications between a plurality of host computers and a plurality of data storage devices on a network, to enable the host computers to access the data storage devices via the network;
- and
- means for provisioning storage in the plurality of data storage devices, by
- comparing discovered storage attribute data associated with one or more of the plurality of storage devices to a storage heuristic for a storage attribute in one or more storage provisioning policies, and
- if the discovered storage attribute data satisfy the storage heuristic, provisioning a storage device of the plurality of storage devices.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.