MANAGEMENT AND UTILIZATION OF DATA VOLUMES IN A CONVERGED SYSTEM

• US 20180198861A1
• Filed: 01/11/2017
• Published: 07/12/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Aronovich, Lior, Che, Shijie, Keon, Jordan J., Xue, Ting
• Granted Patent: US 10,938,901 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2246 Trees, e.g. B+trees
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2272 Management thereof
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0896 Bandwidth or capacity management, i.e. automatically increasing or decreasing capacities flow or congestion control using dynamic resource allocation, e.g. in-call renegotiation, H04L47/76
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• 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 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

A computer-implemented method according to one embodiment includes identifying a request to create a consumer within a converged system, defining the consumer within a hierarchy of consumers, where the consumer represents a function in an organization, setting a storage capacity attribute for the consumer, and conditionally defining a data volume for the consumer, based at least in part on the storage capacity attribute.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

identifying a request to create a consumer within a converged system;

defining the consumer within a hierarchy of consumers, where the consumer represents a function in an organization;

setting a storage capacity attribute for the consumer; and

conditionally defining a data volume for the consumer, based at least in part on the storage capacity attribute.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising referencing the data volume by an application assigned to the consumer.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising referencing, by an application assigned to the consumer, another data volume that is assigned to an ancestor consumer of a consumer within the hierarchy of consumers.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising associating with the data volume a list of user accounts and user groups with associated access permissions for the data volume.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the hierarchy of consumers is formed as a tree structure.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising aggregating storage statistics for a plurality of data volumes and consumers by performing one or more of:

configuring a storage system to maintain storage statistics on file or object granularity,

aggregating storage statistics on the file or object granularity to a data volume granularity using an association of files or objects to data volumes, and

aggregating storage statistics of the data volume granularity to a consumer granularity using an association of data volumes to the consumers.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising aggregating storage statistics for a plurality of data volumes and consumers by performing one or more of:

configuring a storage system to maintain storage statistics on a storage device granularity,

defining a storage device to be dedicated to a single data volume,

aggregating storage statistics of the storage device granularity to a data volume granularity using an association of storage devices to data volumes, and

aggregating storage statistics of the data volume granularity to a consumer granularity using an association of data volumes to consumers.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising setting a size of the data volume.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the size of the data volume has an unlimited value or a limited value when the storage capacity attribute for the consumer has an unlimited value.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the size of the data volume has a limited value when the storage capacity attribute for the consumer has a limited value, where the size of the data volume is at most a value of the storage capacity attribute for the consumer.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising determining a current free capacity for the consumer when the storage capacity attribute for the consumer is set to a limited value, wherein the current free capacity is determined by subtracting from the limited value a storage capacity of a plurality of child consumers of a consumer within the hierarchy of consumers as well as sizes of a plurality of data volumes defined for the consumer.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, further comprising maintaining the current free capacity for the consumer as a non-negative number.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising associating with the consumer a list of user accounts and user groups with associated access permissions for data volumes, where the access permissions allow authenticated access to the data volumes.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein descendant consumers of a consumer within the hierarchy of consumers inherit a list of user accounts and user groups with the associated access permissions associated with the consumer or inherited from ancestor consumers of the consumer.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising calculating and reporting storage statistics for the data volume.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, wherein the storage statistics are translated from different types into a uniform scale, and are presented using one or more sliding time windows of various resolutions.

17. A computer program product for managing storage attributes in association with a consumer, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, wherein the computer readable storage medium is not a transitory signal per se, the program instructions executable by a processor to cause the processor to perform a method comprising:

identifying, utilizing the processor, a request to create a consumer within a converged system;

defining, utilizing the processor, the consumer within a hierarchy of consumers, where the consumer represents a function in an organization;

setting, utilizing the processor, a storage capacity attribute for the consumer; and

conditionally defining, utilizing the processor, a data volume for the consumer, based at least in part on the storage capacity attribute.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, further comprising referencing the data volume by an application assigned to the consumer, utilizing the processor.

19. The computer program product of claim 17, further comprising referencing, by an application assigned to the consumer, another data volume that is assigned to an ancestor consumer of a consumer within the hierarchy of consumers, utilizing the processor.

20. A system, comprising:

a processor; and

logic integrated with the processor, executable by the processor, or integrated with and executable by the processor, the logic being configured to;

identify a request to create a consumer within a converged system;

define the consumer within a hierarchy of consumers, where the consumer represents a function in an organization;

set a storage capacity attribute for the consumer; and

conditionally define a data volume for the consumer, based at least in part on the storage capacity attribute.