CLOUD SERVICE UTILIZATION

• US 20180041577A1
• Filed: 08/02/2016
• Published: 02/08/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 08/02/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kadowaki, Isao, Nishikawa, Yuriko, Ohtani, Munetaka, Saitoh, Masaki, Unno, Asuka
• Granted Patent: US 10,178,173 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0604 Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0647 Migration mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0649 Lifecycle management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• 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 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data

Abstract

Cloud services may be utilized by implementing an I/O hook that can intercept a data access from an application, migrating data accessed by the application to a cloud server that provides a cloud service, receiving, from the I/O hook, a data access intercepted from the application, and redirecting the intercepted data access to the cloud server.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

implementing an I/O hook that can intercept a data access from an application;

migrating data accessed by the application to a cloud server that provides a cloud service;

receiving, from the I/O hook, a data access intercepted from the application; and

redirecting the intercepted data access to the cloud server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the migrating includes transmitting the data accessed by the application from a local storage to the cloud server.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

selecting the cloud service among a plurality of cloud services based on data access statistics generated by the I/O hook.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein

the selecting includes collecting information relating to the plurality of cloud services, and is further based on the information.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the collecting includes collecting at least part of the information from a third party server that obtains the part of the information from at least one of the cloud services among the plurality of cloud services.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the collecting includes collecting at least part of the information by measuring performance of at least one of the plurality of cloud services.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the selecting is further based on at least one of a price, a free storage size, a maximum storage size, a performance, an availability, or a security of each cloud storage service.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the migrating includes sending an I/O daemon to the cloud server, the I/O daemon including instructions that, when executed by the cloud server, cause the cloud server to provide data access on the cloud server.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising migrating each file that has not been migrated to the cloud server in response to receiving a data access to the file.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

registering at least one file that has not been migrated to the cloud server in response to receiving a data access to the at least one file, and

transferring the at least one registered file to the cloud server asynchronously.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the transferring includes determining a schedule to transfer the at least one registered file based on data access statistics of the application from the I/O hook.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the migrating includes:

determining whether a number of write-only files in a directory exceeds a threshold, and

transferring the directory to the cloud server in response to the determination that the number of write-only files in the directory exceeds the threshold.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

monitoring a frequency of data access of the application to a file which has not been migrated to the cloud server, and

moving the file from a local storage to a back-up storage in response to the frequency falling below a threshold.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising migrating the file from the back-up storage to the cloud server in response to receiving a data access to the file in the back-up storage.

15-20. -20. (canceled)