STORAGE INPUT/OUTPUT UTILIZATION ASSOCIATED WITH A SOFTWARE APPLICATION

• US 20100082300A1
• Filed: 09/30/2008
• Published: 04/01/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Oslake, John M., Hollingsworth, Matt
• Granted Patent: US 8,527,238 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/186
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0653 Monitoring storage devices or systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD

Abstract

A method includes determining a total storage input/output capacity of a set of storage elements available for use by a software application located on an operating system volume of a computer system. The total storage input/output capacity is determined by evaluating storage input/output capacity of the storage elements at a physical device level and at a file level. The method includes measuring a number of input/output storage operations performed on behalf of the software application. The method also includes determining a storage input/output utilization of the software application based on the measured number of input/output storage operations as compared to the total storage input/output capacity of the set of storage elements.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining a total storage input/output capacity of a set of storage elements available for use by a software application located on an operating system volume of a computer system, wherein the total storage input/output capacity is determined by evaluating storage input/output capacity of the storage elements at a physical device level and at a file level;

measuring a number of input/output storage operations performed on behalf of the software application; and

determining a storage input/output utilization of the software application based on the measured number of input/output storage operations as compared to the total storage input/output capacity of the set of storage elements.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining a resource governed utilization of the storage input/output capacity based on historical usage of the storage input/output capacity as compared to a governed storage input/output capacity available and a non-governed storage input/output capacity available.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining the total storage input/output utilization as a ratio of the measured number of input/output storage operations and the total storage input/output capacity; and

displaying the storage input/output utilization of the software application.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of storage elements comprises a plurality of physical storage devices, the method further comprising identifying one of the storage elements of the set of storage elements as a potential bottleneck in an input/output path.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein an operating system level input/output request traverses one or more alternative paths to reach a target, wherein the target includes one or more of the physical storage devices.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising recording a workload of the software application and replaying the recorded workload at a computing system with an increased rate or an increased concurrency.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of storage elements includes a storage array comprising a plurality of physical storage devices and a plurality of logical unit numbers, wherein at least one of the plurality of physical storage devices is shared by at least two of the logical unit numbers.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising detecting, based on the storage input/output utilization, a usage of the software application that approaches a storage input/output resource limit before the usage exceeds the storage input/output resource limit.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein evaluating storage input/output capacity comprises:

determining characteristics of each storage element at the physical storage device level, each storage element including physical storage devices or portions of shared physical storage devices;

collecting metrics of each storage element at an operating system file level; and

determining the total storage input/output capacity based on the characteristics and based on the metrics.

10. A method, comprising:

relating an operating system file to a plurality of physical storage devices;

sending a query to application programming interfaces associated with the plurality of physical storage devices to determine one or more device properties, configuration data, and one or more usage statistics;

receiving responses from the application programming interfaces;

calculating a total available storage input/output capacity of the operating system file to access the plurality of physical storage devices based on the responses;

determining storage input/output usage of the operating system file; and

determining storage input/output utilization of the operating system file based on the storage input/output usage of the operating system file and based on the total available storage input/output capacity of the operating system file.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

modeling components of a computing system that include the plurality of physical storage devices;

modeling relationships between the components; and

determining the total available storage input/output capacity based on a given workload and based on a storage input/output capacity of those components of the computing system identified as available for use by the operating system file.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein calculating the total available storage input/output capacity of the operating system file includes:

computing an input/output capacity of each of multiple storage device elements in an input/output path of the operating system file; and

identifying the storage device element of the multiple storage device elements that has a minimum storage input/output capacity; and

wherein the identified storage device element that has the minimum storage input/output capacity represents the total available storage input/output capacity of the operating system file.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising measuring an input/output utilization and an input/output rate of each of the multiple storage device elements in the input/output path of the operating system file, and wherein the input/output capacity of each of the multiple storage device elements in the input/output path of the operating system file is computed based on the measured input/output utilization and the measured input/output rate.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein determining the storage input/output utilization of the operating system file further comprises determining a percentage of the total available storage input/output capacity used by the operating system file.

15. The method of claim 10, further comprising determining the storage input/output usage of the operating system file periodically and updating the storage input/output utilization of the operating system file periodically.

16. A system comprising:

a system model interface to retrieve system model data identifying components of a modeled system and including information describing relationships between the components, wherein each of the components is associated with performing an input/output storage operation of a software application;

an application programming interface (API) module responsive to the system model interface and operable to call application programming interfaces for each of the components and to receive storage input/output capacity data for each of the components;

capacity evaluation logic to collect the received storage input/output capacity for each of the components to determine a total available storage input/output capacity for the software application;

a file usage measurement interface to retrieve file storage input/output usage data associated with the software application;

utilization logic to calculate a storage input/output utilization associated with the software application based on the retrieved file storage input/output usage data and the total available storage input/output capacity for the software application; and

a display interface to present the storage input/output utilization.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the application programming interfaces comprise at least one of a vendor application programming interface (API), a Storage Management Initiative (SMI) provider API, a common information management object manager (CIMOM) API, a common information management extensible markup language (CIM-XML) API, a web services for management (WS-Man) API, a system services application API, and a performance metric API.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein a recorded workload is applied to a target component of the modeled system at an increased rate or an increased concurrency until a measured rate of increase of input/output latency becomes non-linear.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the received storage input/output capacity for each of the components is collected via concurrent paths or via alternative paths.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the software application is a database application.