FLEXIBLE REPORTING ON STORAGE RESOURCES

• US 20110010664A1
• Filed: 07/09/2009
• Published: 01/13/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 07/09/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Vantara, LLC (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: DAS, Ashutosh, SAHU, Sanjeev, PELTS, Greg L.
• Granted Patent: US 8,954,892 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/810
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/32 with visual or acoustical indication of the functioning of the machine
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3485 for I/O devices

Abstract

A method for providing flexible reporting for applications which utilize storage in at least one storage system comprises presenting a plurality of business views which aggregate application storage characteristics for a plurality of applications according to a reporting structure which is defined by a user, each of the business views being a hierarchical folder structure of the applications and a plurality of folders, wherein at least one folder in the hierarchical folder structure contains at least one of an application or another folder; for each of the business views, presenting the applications and folders as a plurality of nodes which are selectable by the user; and in response to a selection of one of the nodes from the plurality of business views and a report type specified by the user, generating a report based on the report type of the selected node, the report aggregating any of the application storage characteristics for the selected node according to the report type.

Claims

1. In a computer system which includes at least one host computer and at least one storage system which are connected via a network, the at least one host having one or more applications running thereon, a method for providing flexible reporting for applications which utilize storage in the at least one storage system, the method comprising:

presenting a plurality of business views which aggregate application storage characteristics for a plurality of applications according to a reporting structure which is defined by a user, each of the business views being a hierarchical folder structure of the applications and a plurality of folders, wherein at least one folder in the hierarchical folder structure contains at least one of an application or another folder;

for each of the business views, presenting the applications and folders as a plurality of nodes which are selectable by the user; and

in response to a selection of one of the nodes from the plurality of business views and a report type specified by the user, generating a report based on the report type of the selected node, the report aggregating any of the application storage characteristics for the selected node according to the report type.

2. The method of claim 1,

wherein the application storage characteristics include at least one of application storage capacity utilization, application storage performance, application storage I/O bandwidth usage, application storage service level objective (SLO) fulfillment, or application SLO fulfillment trend.

3. The method of claim 1,

wherein the business views include folders that belong to at least one of categories of geographical locations of data center, departments of an organization, or application types.

4. The method of claim 1,

wherein each of the applications contains the storage used thereby.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

presenting a list of available report types to the user for the user to select the report type for the report to be generated.

6. The method of claim 5,

wherein the available report types are customizable by the user.

7. The method of claim 1,

wherein the available report types are designed to provide information for at least one of chargeback for storage usage, reallocation of storage, or storage planning.

8. A computer system including at least one host computer and at least one storage system which are connected via a network, the at least one host having one or more applications running thereon and utilizing storage in the at least one storage system, the computer system further including a flexible reporting module which:

presents a plurality of business views which aggregate application storage characteristics for a plurality of applications according to a reporting structure which is defined by a user, each of the business views being a hierarchical folder structure of the applications and a plurality of folders, wherein at least one folder in the hierarchical folder structure contains at least one of an application or another folder;

for each of the business views, presents the applications and folders as a plurality of nodes which are selectable by the user; and

in response to a selection of one of the nodes from the plurality of business views and a report type specified by the user, generates a report based on the report type of the selected node, the report aggregating any of the application storage characteristics for the selected node according to the report type.

9. The computer system of claim 8,

wherein the application storage characteristics include at least one of application storage capacity utilization, application storage performance, application storage I/O bandwidth usage, application storage service level objective (SLO) fulfillment, or application SLO fulfillment trend.

10. The computer system of claim 8,

wherein the business views include folders that belong to at least one of categories of geographical locations of data center, departments of an organization, or application types.

11. The computer system of claim 8,

wherein each of the applications contains the storage used thereby.

12. The computer system of claim 8, wherein the flexible reporting module:

presents a list of available report types to the user for the user to select the report type for the report to be generated.

13. The computer system of claim 12,

wherein the available report types are customizable by the user.

14. The computer system of claim 8,

wherein the available report types are designed to provide information for at least one of chargeback for storage usage, reallocation of storage, or storage planning.

15. A computer-readable storage medium storing a plurality of instructions for controlling a data processor to provide flexible reporting for applications running on a host computer and utilizing storage, the plurality of instructions comprising:

instructions that cause the data processor to present a plurality of business views which aggregate application storage characteristics for a plurality of applications according to a reporting structure which is defined by a user, each of the business views being a hierarchical folder structure of the applications and a plurality of folders, wherein at least one folder in the hierarchical folder structure contains at least one of an application or another folder;

instructions that, for each of the business views, present the applications and folders as a plurality of nodes which are selectable by the user; and

instructions that, in response to a selection of one of the nodes from the plurality of business views and a report type specified by the user, generate a report based on the report type of the selected node, the report aggregating any of the application storage characteristics for the selected node according to the report type.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 15,

wherein the application storage characteristics include at least one of application storage capacity utilization, application storage performance, application storage I/O bandwidth usage, application storage service level objective (SLO) fulfillment, or application SLO fulfillment trend.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 15,

wherein the business views include folders that belong to at least one of categories of geographical locations of data center, departments of an organization, or application types.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the plurality of instructions further comprise:

instructions that cause the data processor to present a list of available report types to the user for the user to select the report type for the report to be generated.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 18,

wherein the available report types are customizable by the user.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 15,

wherein the available report types are designed to provide information for at least one of chargeback for storage usage, reallocation of storage, or storage planning.