Storage policy monitoring for a storage network

• US 20060080371A1
• Filed: 09/30/2005
• Published: 04/13/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Systems, Inc.
• Inventors: Wong, Thomas K., Gupta, Gaurav, Chawla, Rajeev, Simpkins, Richard A., Tsirigotis, Panagiotis, Seitz, Matthew, Iyengar, Anand, Srikantan, Geetha, Wong, Chi Ming, Chan, Yu Cheong, Liu, Zuqei
• Granted Patent: US 8,195,627 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1827 Management specifically adapted to NAS management of storage area networks [SAN] G06F3/067
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

The present invention provides selective migration in a storage network in accordance with a policy. The policy can include rules that establish which objects are migrated from a source file server to a destination file server based on file attributes (e.g., file type, file size, last access time, frequency of access). For example, large multimedia files that consume I/O bandwidth on expensive or critical file servers, without adding much value to enterprise productivity, can be migrated to a commodity or less critical file server.

Claims

1. A method for selectively migrating objects in a storage network, comprising:

receiving a policy that includes rules for storing objects in the storage network;

traversing objects stored in a tree-structure on a source file server in the storage network;

populating a policy database with records representative of the tree-structure;

updating the policy database to reflect transactions associated with the objects;

executing the rules against records in the policy database to determine which objects are to be migrated; and

migrating the objects from a location on the source file server to a location on a destination file server.

2. A method for accessing an object in a storage network, comprising:

receiving a NAS (Network Attached Storage) file handle including a location of the object on a source file server;

sending as representative of the object, a switch file handle that is independent of the location of the object;

selectively migrating the object from the location on the source file server to a location on a destination file server in accordance with a policy that includes rules for storing objects in the storage network;

receiving an access request associated with the switch file handle; and

sending the access request to the location on the destination file server.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the object comprises a directory having objects representative of sub-directories and files.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the object comprises a file.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the migrating the object comprises migrating data associated with the object.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the NAS file handle comprises one from the group consisting of a NFS (Network File System) file handle and a CIFS (Common Internet File System) file handle.

7. A computer program product, comprising:

a computer-readable medium having computer program instructions and data embodied thereon for a method for selectively migrating objects in a storage network, the method comprising;

receiving a policy that includes rules for storing objects in the storage network;

traversing objects stored in a tree-structure on a source file server in the storage network;

populating a policy database with records representative of the tree-structure;

updating the policy database to reflect transactions associated with the objects;

executing the rules against records in the policy database to determine which objects are to be migrated; and

migrating the objects from a location on the source file server to a location on a destination file server.

8. A NAS (Network Attached Storage) switch to selectively migrate objects in a storage network, comprising:

a policy module to receive a policy that includes rules for storing objects in the storage network;

a records repository to traverse objects stored in a tree-structure on a source file server in the storage network and generate records representative of the tree-structured file system;

a monitoring module to update the records repository to reflect transactions associated with the objects, wherein the policy module executes the rules against records in the policy database to determine which objects are to be migrated; and

a migration engine to migrate the determined objects from a location on the source file server to a location on a destination file server.