GUI architecture for namespace and storage management

• US 7,698,351 B1
• Filed: 04/28/2006
• Issued: 04/13/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Inventors: Klinkner, Steven R., Perry, Jay, Hing, Jeffrey
• Primary Examiner(s): Cottingham; John R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Uddin; Mohammed R
• Application Number:
  US11/413,883
• Time in Patent Office: 1,446 Days
• Field of Search: 707/10
• US Class Current: 707/827
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems

Abstract

A graphical user interface (GUI) architecture is configured to enable efficient management of resources in a storage system environment. The GUI architecture is embodied within a namespace and storage management (NSM) application as a GUI toolkit configured to produce reusable GUI components, such as a navigation frame, a wizard and a dialog box. In particular, the reusable wizard allows users to make intelligent choices toward successful completions of desired actions by, e.g., only requesting information needed to accomplish those actions.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a namespace and storage management server having an integrated management framework executing program instructions for facilitating configuration of and management of pathnames in a logical namespace, and creating a layer of abstraction that presents to a client the logical namespace that is accessible via a particular storage access protocol, and extracting logical views and pathnames from the namespaces exported by heterogeneous services, and configuring the pathnames so that they are accessible in the logical namespace via the storage access protocols;

a namespace and storage management console having a computer screen; and

a namespace and storage management application executing on the management console, the namespace and storage management application configured to initiate performance of commands directed to managed objects including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace, and configured to spawn a graphical user interface thread for use by a GUI toolkit, the GUI toolkit configured to produce reusable GUI components, the GUI components including a navigation frame having a plurality of navigation panels simultaneously displayed on the computer screen, the navigation panels including a hierarchy panel, an operations panel, a view panel and a display panel to allow a user to manage various said pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace, said GUI toolkit supporting reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the management console is embodied as a computer having an operating system platform.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the namespace and storage management application is configured to spawn said graphical user interface thread for use by said GUI toolkit with a GUI library that cooperate to provide user interface constructs used to generate layouts for the reusable GUI components.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the layouts are reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the GUI library and GUI thread further cooperate to create wizard templates that enable optimized operation flows for actions desired by one or more users.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the wizard templates are configured to allow the user to make intelligent choices toward successful completions of desired actions by only requesting information needed to accomplish those actions.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the GUI components further include a dialog and a wizard.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the navigation frame has a layout that includes a forward/backward utility having forward and back buttons that enable a user to switch forward and back, respectively, between navigation panels of the frame.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the hierarchy panel displays a navigation hierarchy of managed objects.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the operations panel displays user executable operations that are dynamically configured for managed objects selected from the hierarchy.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the view panel displays a view configuration that provides various options by which to view (or sort) the selected managed objects.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the view configuration includes various configuration formats, such as a list of icons or a detailed report.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the display panel displays the selected managed objects in a view configuration format chosen from the view configuration of the view panel.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the managed objects comprise namespace objects and data management objects.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the namespace objects comprise one of link points and shares, and wherein the data management objects comprise one of servers, files and disks.

16. The system of claim 9 wherein said hierarchy panel displays a list of at least one of namespaces, namespace policies and namespace reports.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein said hierarchy panel includes a namespace tool icon which when selected displays a list of namespace roots and associated links.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein said namespace roots represent DFS servers and said associated links represent physical storage or targets such as CIFS shares.

19. The system of claim 9 wherein said hierarchy panel displays a migration icon which when selected displays one or more tasks and policies for monitoring by a user.

20. The system of claim 1 wherein said GUI toolkit further comprises one or more wizard pages configured to collect information including at least one of a name of a machine or server, a type of machine or server, a share name of a share to be created, a directory where a share resides, and host agent information.

21. The system of claim 20 wherein said GUI toolkit is further configured to provide a reusable host object to resolve a type of machine query elicited by said wizard pages, and being further configured such that when machine type is resolved a GUI thread calls decision logic of a GUI library to optimize flow.

22. The system as defined in claim 1 further comprising a remote agent module installed on a server in a storage system environment, said remote agent module configured to manage a particular namespace and to interact with said namespace and storage management server via application program interfaces exposed by the remote agent.

23. A method comprising:

providing a namespace and storage management server;

inputting one or more commands at a namespace and storage management console, each command configured to manage one or more selected objects on one or more servers in a storage system environment;

executing a namespace and storage management application on the management console to initiate performance of the commands directed to the managed objects including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace;

spawning a graphical user interface (GUI) thread used by a GUI toolkit of the management application to produce a navigation frame having a plurality of navigation panels, the navigation panels including a hierarchy panel, an operations panel, a view panel and a display panel thereby allowing a user to manage various pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace, said GUI toolkit supporting reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications;

extracting logical views from namespaces exported by the heterogeneous services;

configuring the pathnames such that said pathnames are accessible in the logical namespace via the storage access protocol; and

displaying one or more navigation panels on the computer screen to allow the user to manage various pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespaces.

24. The method of claim 23 further comprising displaying the selected managed objects on the display panel and in a view configuration format chosen from the view configuration of the view panel.

25. The method of claim 23 further comprising using an asynchronous button call back technique for spawning one or more additional GUI threads to process subsequently initiated user input events.

26. An apparatus comprising:

means for inputting one or more commands at a namespace and storage management console, each command configured to manage one or more selected objects on one or more servers in a storage system environment;

means for executing a namespace and storage management application on the management console to initiate performance of the command directed to the managed object including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace;

means for spawning a graphical user interface (GUI) thread used by a GUI toolkit of the management application to produce a navigation frame viewable on an associated computer screen having a plurality of navigation panels, the navigation panels including a hierarchy panel, an operations panel, a view panel and a display panel thereby allowing a user to manage various pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace, said GUI toolkit supporting reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications;

means for extracting logical views from namespaces exported by the heterogeneous services;

means for configuring the pathnames such that said pathnames are accessible in the logical namespace via the storage access protocol; and

means for displaying one or more navigation panels on a computer screen to allow the user to manage various pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespaces.

27. The apparatus of claim 26 further comprising means for displaying the selected managed objects on the display panel and in a view configuration format chosen from the view configuration of the view panel.

28. A computer readable storage medium containing executable program instructions executed by a processor, comprising:

program instructions that provide a namespace and storage management server;

inputting one or more commands at a namespace and storage management console, each command configured to manage one or more selected objects on one or more servers in a storage system environment;

program instructions that execute a namespace and storage management application on the management console to initiate performance of the command directed to the managed object including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace;

program instructions that spawn a graphical user interface (GUI) thread used by a GUI toolkit of the management application to produce a navigation frame having a plurality of navigation panels, the navigation panels including a hierarchy panel, an operations panel, a view panel and a display panel thereby allowing a user to manage various pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace, said GUI toolkit supporting reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications;

program instructions that extract logical views from namespaces exported by the heterogeneous services;

program instructions that configure the pathnames such that said pathnames are accessible in the logical namespace via the storage access protocol; and

program instructions that display one or more navigation panels on the computer screen to allow the user to manage various pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespaces.

29. The computer readable storage medium of claim 28 further comprising one or more program instructions for displaying the selected managed objects on the display panel and in a view configuration format chosen from the view configuration of the view panel.

30. A system comprising:

a plurality of storage systems of a storage environment, the storage systems configured to host both namespace objects and storage objects;

a first server platform of a first namespace server, the first server platform having a first storage access protocol and a first namespace service configured to provide a unique level of indirection between the first server platform and a storage system of the storage environment;

a second server platform of a second namespace server, the second server platform having a second storage access protocol that is different from the first storage access protocol and second namespace service configured to provide a unique level of indirection between the second server platform and the storage system of the storage environment;

an integrated management framework of a namespace management server, the integrated management framework configured to provide an underlying infrastructure that supports both the first and second storage access protocols in a single namespace service;

a namespace and storage management console having a computer screen; and

a namespace and storage management application executing on the management console, the namespace and storage management application being configured to initiate performance of commands directed to managed objects including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace, and the namespace and storage management application being further configured to spawn a graphical user interface thread for use by a graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit configured to produce reusable GUI components, the GUI components including a navigation frame having a plurality of navigation panels simultaneously displayed on the computer screen, the navigation panels including a hierarchy panel, an operations panel, a view panel and a display panel to allow a user to manage various pathnames exported by the first and second namespace servers within the single namespace service.

31. A method of providing a graphical user interface for a namespace management system, comprising:

providing a namespace and storage management system having a console with a computer screen;

a namespace and storage management application executing on the management console, the namespace and storage management application being configured to initiate performance of commands directed to managed objects including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace, and the namespace and storage management application being further configured to spawn a graphical user interface thread for use by a graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit configured to produce reusable GUI components, the GUI components including a navigation frame having a plurality of navigation panels simultaneously displayed on the computer screen, the navigation panels including a hierarchy panel, an operations panel, a view panel and a display panel to allow a user to manage various pathnames exported by the first and second namespace servers within the single namespace service, said GUI toolkit supporting reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications;

generating one or more wizards adapted to collect a name of each machine or server in the system, a type of machine, a share name of a share to be created, and a directory where the share is stored;

resolving type of machine whether a filer or a host;

if the type of machine is a host, then processing operations through a host agent;

if the type of machine is a filer, then the step of processing operations through a host agent is skipped;

displaying on said computer screen, dialog boxes for said wizards on pages of one or more GUI components; and

using said dialog boxes, a user can make selections.

32. The method as defined in claim 31 wherein a reusable host object is provided for resolving the type of machine.

33. The method as defined in claim 32 further comprising:

when type of machine is resolved, a graphic user interface toolkit calls decision logic from an associated graphic user interface library.

34. The method as defined in claim 33 further comprising:

while processing an event in response to a user'"'"'s selection, substantially simultaneously processing a second event at said namespace management server; and

spawning additional graphical user interface threads for processing subsequently initiated user input events.

35. The method as defined in claim 34 further comprising

using a call back technique enabling one or more buttons for user selection while a base graphic user interface thread is stalled, obviating graphic user interface hang up experiences for the user.