US 7,899,780 B1Granted

Methods and apparatus for structured partitioning of management information

AssigneeEMC Corporation

InventorsSamuil Shmuylovich, Anoop George Ninan, Boris Farizon

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Abstract

A SAN management agent performs hierarchical based partitioning. Partitions expressed as a hierarchy of related manageable entities allow partitioning based on the relations in the hierarchy. Related manageable entities often trigger updates to database elements common to both of the related manageable entities. The related manageable entities often take the form of a hierarchy (tree) indicative of these relations. Grouping the updates affecting related manageable entities together in the same partition allows the database elements affected by the related updates to occur from a single retrieval of the common database element. By partitioning updates of related manageable entities together, the common database elements are more likely to be paged or cached in memory at the time the update processing updates the common database element. Accordingly, tree-based partitioning identifies relations between manageable entities, and designates related manageable entities by traversing the relations.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A computer implemented method of organizing updates to management information in a storage area network comprising:

identifying update information including a set of updates to management information, the update information pertaining to manageable entities in a storage area network (SAN), each update in the set of updates corresponding to at least one manageable entity from a plurality of independent top level managed objects;
identifying groups of manageable entities corresponding to the set of updates;
grouping the set of updates, to storage objects from the plurality of independent top level managed objects, into partitions corresponding to the identified groups of manageable entities, each partition including updates affecting database elements corresponding to the manageable entities in a respective identified group, grouping including grouping updates in the set of updates into a partition of related updates, the related updates having changes in common with other updates in the partition such that the related updates result in writes to common database elements, wherein the partition includes entries of SAN manageable entities in the same hierarchy according to tree based partitioning and wherein grouping identifies relations between manageable entities and wherein updates resulting in a database modification corresponding to a particular manageable entity result in an update to a related manageable entity, as defined by the relations, the update affecting a common database element, the updates to the related manageable entity operable to be affected in the same database update;
transmitting each of the partitions independently of the other partitions according to a hierarchy of relations between the manageable entities;
and
updating a SAN managed object database (MODB) using at least one group of partitioned updates.

3 more elements

A computer program product having a computer readable storage medium operable to store computer program logic embodied in computer program code encoded thereon for an agent for organizing updates to management information in a storage area network comprising:

computer program code for an interface to a manageable entity operable to identify update information including a set of updates to management information, the update information pertaining to manageable entities in a storage area network, each update in the set of updates corresponding to at least one manageable entity;
computer program code for a hierarchical set of relations operable to identifying groups of manageable entities corresponding to the set of updates;
computer program code for a partitioner operable to group the set of updates into partitions corresponding to the identified groups of manageable entities, each partition including updates affecting database elements, grouping including grouping updates in the set of updates into a partition of related updates, the related updates having changes in common with other updates in the partition such that the related updates result in writes to common database elements;
corresponding to the manageable entities in a respective identified group wherein the partition includes entries of SAN manageable entities in the same hierarchy according to tree based partitioning and wherein grouping identifies relations between manageable entities and wherein updates resulting in a database modification corresponding to a particular manageable entity result in an update to a related manageable entity, as defined by the relations, the update affecting a common database element, the updates to the related manageable entity operable to be affected in the same database update;
computer program code for transmitting each of the partitions independently of the other partitions according to a hierarchy of relations between the manageable entities;
and
computer program code for updating a SAN managed object database (MODB) using at least one group of partitioned updates.

4 more elements

A method of processing updates to management information in a SAN comprising:

identifying a set of updates indicative of update information in a storage array, the storage array including a plurality of storage objects;
identifying a set of at least one storage object to which at least one of the updates pertain;
determining updates in the set of updates which pertain to storage objects in the identified set;
grouping the determined updates as a partition of updates operable for transmission and update, grouping including grouping updates in the set of updates into a partition of related updates, the related updates having changes in common with other updates in the partition such that the related updates result in writes to common database elements wherein the partition includes entries of SAN manageable entities in the same hierarchy according to tree based partitioning and wherein grouping identifies relations between manageable entities and wherein updates resulting in a database modification corresponding to a particular manageable entity result in an update to a related manageable entity, as defined by the relations, the update affecting a common database element, the updates to the related manageable entity operable to be affected in the same database update;
transmitting each of the partitions independently of the other partitions according to a hierarchy of relations between the manageable entities;
and
updating a SAN managed object database (MODB) using at least one group of partitioned updates.

4 more elements

A computer program product having a computer readable storage medium operable to store computer program logic embodied in computer program code encoded thereon that, when executed cause the computer to perform a method for partitioning data in a storage area network (SAN) comprising:

computer program code for identifying update information including a set of updates to management information, the update information pertaining to manageable entities in a storage area network, each update in the set of updates corresponding to at least one manageable entity;
computer program code for identifying groups of manageable entities corresponding to the set of updates;
computer program code for grouping the set of updates into partitions corresponding to the identified groups of manageable entities, each partition including updates affecting database elements corresponding to the manageable entities in a respective identified group, including grouping updates in the set of updates into a partition of related updates, the related updates having changes in common with other updates in the partition such that the related updates result in writes to common database elements wherein the partition includes entries of SAN manageable entities in the same hierarchy according to tree based partitioning and wherein grouping identifies relations between manageable entities and wherein updates resulting in a database modification corresponding to a particular manageable entity result in an update to a related manageable entity, as defined by the relations, the update affecting a common database element, the updates to the related manageable entity operable to be affected in the same database update;
computer program code for transmitting each of the partitions independently of the other partitions according to a hierarchy of relations between the manageable entities;
and
computer program code for updating related manageable entities in a SAN managed object database (MODB) using at least one group of partitioned updates, further including:
computer program code for performing updates corresponding to a first manageable entity, the update affecting a database element, the first manageable entity having relations to a second manageable entity and a third manageable entity;
computer program code for performing updates corresponding to the second manageable entity;
and
computer program code for performing updates to the third manageable entity without refetching the database element corresponding to the first manageable entity.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.