SYSTEM FOR CREATING AND TRACKING UNIQUE IDENTIFICATIONS OF ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS

• US 20080082767A1
• Filed: 09/29/2006
• Published: 04/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/29/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Network Appliance Incorporated (NetApp, Inc.)
• Inventors: Nulkar, Chaitanya, Wong, Dave
• Granted Patent: US 7,707,369 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/156
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0607 by facilitating the process of upgrading existing storage systems, e.g. for improving compatibility between host and storage device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0632 by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

A system for creating and tracking intelligent unique identifications for memory devices is disclosed. Each memory device includes stored configuration information having a plurality of fields. A storage operating system selectively creates an intelligent unique identification for each memory device in the storage system using the fields in the stored configuration information. The intelligent unique identification may then be stored for tracking and later retrieval.

Claims

1. A method for providing a unique identification of at least one memory device, the memory device storing a plurality of data fields, at least two of said data fields including information regarding the memory device comprising:

selectively querying said at least two of said data fields, wherein the at least two of said data fields are stored in a predetermined data type format;

generating the unique identification by placing the selectively queried data fields in a predetermined format; and

storing the generated unique identification.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the selectively queried data fields includes at least one of a manufacturer identification code field, a manufacturing location field, a manufacturing date field, and a serial number field.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of data fields are stored in a serial presence detect (SPD) table.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the selectively querying is performed by an operating system during bootup.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the operating system retrieves and displays the generated unique identification in response to a system command.

6. The method of claim 4 further comprising detecting a failure of said at least one memory device by the operating system.

7. The method of claim 4 further comprising a management entity in communication with the operating system, wherein the operating system provides the unique identification of the at least one memory device subsequent to a detected system event to the management entity.

8. The method of claim 4 further comprising a management entity in communication with the operating system, wherein the management entity queries the operating system and requests the unique identification of a failure or change in the at least one memory device.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein an operating system converts the selectively queried data fields into the predetermined data type format.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the predetermined format is an alphanumeric serial number format.

11. A memory device having stored information, the memory device including:

at least a portion of said stored information comprising data related to said memory device in a configuration table having a plurality of data fields stored in a predetermined data type format; and

a unique identifier identifying the memory device in a predetermined format, said unique identifier comprising information selectively queried from said plurality of data fields stored in the predetermined data type format.

12. The memory device of claim 11 wherein the plurality of data fields includes at least one of a manufacturer identification code field, a manufacturing location field, a manufacturing date field, and a serial number field.

13. The memory device of claim 11 wherein the unique identifier is stored on a machine readable tag on an outer portion of the memory device.

14. The memory device of claim 13 wherein the machine readable tag is any one of a bar code or a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag.

15. The memory device of claim 11 wherein the unique identifier is displayed in a human readable format on an outer portion of the memory device.

16. The memory device of claim 11 wherein the configuration table is a serial presence detect (SPD) table.

17. The memory device of claim 11 wherein said plurality of data fields are Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) defined data fields.

18. A storage system providing backup of data, the storage system comprising:

a storage medium for storing data;

a management entity including an associated database for managing at least one memory device;

the at least one memory device including a configuration table having a plurality of data fields having information related to the at least one memory device; and

whereby the management entity selectively queries said plurality of data fields, generates a unique identification of the at least one memory device in a predetermined format, and stores the unique identification in the database.

19. The storage system of claim 18 wherein the selectively queried data fields includes at least one of a manufacturer identification code field, a manufacturing location field, a manufacturing date field, and a serial number field.

20. The storage system of claim 18 wherein the configuration table is a serial presence detect (SPD) table.

21. The storage system of claim 18 wherein the storage medium is any one of a tape library, a disk library, an optical media library, or a virtual storage library.

22. A computer-readable storage medium containing a set of instructions for a general purpose computer, the set of instructions comprising:

a code segment for selectively querying data fields in a configuration table of a memory device during bootup of the general purpose computer and generating a unique identification of the memory device from the selectively queried data fields; and

a code segment for providing the unique identification to a management entity subsequent to a predetermined system event.