RULE DRIVEN AUTOMATION OF FILE PLACEMENT, REPLICATION, AND MIGRATION

• US 20070022129A1
• Filed: 07/25/2006
• Published: 01/25/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Parascale Incorporated (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Parascale Incorporated (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: Nalam, Naveen, Oskouy, Rasoul, Zafman, David, Bahar, Cameron, Hopfield, Joseph
• Application Number:
  US11/459,906
• Publication Number:
  US 20070022129A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/184 implemented as replicated file system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/508 Monitor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5016 the resource being the memory
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/50 Address allocation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1008 based on parameters of servers, e.g. available memory or workload monitoring of computer activity G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1017 based on a round robin mechanism
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1029 using data related to the state of servers by a load balancer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• 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]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability

Abstract

Techniques and mechanism are provided for deciding which storage device (or devices) a file should be stored on. These determinations can be used to guide either the placement of new files or the replication or migration of existing files to new storage volumes. These determinations may be made on the basis of simple rules, involving a small number of readily ascertainable file attributes.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of selecting a storage volume for a file, the method comprising:

associating, by a system manager, storage classes with one or more storage volumes;

composing, by a system manager, a set of rules that map file characteristics into a storage class;

applying, using a computer system, the set of rules to a plurality of files to obtain one or more storage classes associated with each file in the plurality of files; and

matching, using the computer system, the obtained one or more storage classes to the one or more storage volumes to determine an appropriate storage volume for each file in the plurality of files.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising storing the file in the appropriate storage volume based on the storage class.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one rule in the set of rules comprises a Boolean expression.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the Boolean expression comprises a regular expression for pattern matching against character strings.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the Boolean expression comprises an arithmetic expressions involving for matching numeric quantities.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein the Boolean expression comprises a Boolean expression for matching against arbitrary properties.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein at least one rule in the set of rules map the file to the storage class.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the least one rule in the set of rules maps to replication factors for the file.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

using the at least one rule by a network file server to determine if the file should be replicated;

determining which volumes replicas of the file should be stored; and

generating a task to perform replication of the file on the determined volumes.

10. The method of claim 7 further comprising using the at least one rule by a network file server to determine which of available volumes to use for the file to create the file.

11. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

using the at least one rule by a network file server to determine if the file should be migrated from a first storage volume to a second storage volume, and

generating a task using the network file server to perform migration of the file from the fist storage volume to the second storage volume.