Graphical user interface architecture for namespace and storage management

• US 8,065,346 B1
• Filed: 02/26/2010
• Issued: 11/22/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Inventors: Perry, Jay, Hing, Jeffrey, Klinkner, Steven R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lovel; Kimberly
• Assistant Examiner(s): UDDIN, MOHAMMED R
• Application Number:
  US12/713,370
• Time in Patent Office: 634 Days
• Field of Search: 707/821, 707/805, 707/999.102
• US Class Current: 707/805
• 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 configured to execute program instructions for facilitating configuration of and management of pathnames in a logical namespace, and extracting logical views and pathnames from the namespaces exported by heterogeneous services, and configuring the pathnames so that they are accessible to a client in the logical namespace via a storage access protocols;

a namespace and storage management console having a computer screen;

a namespace and storage management application executing on a computer associated with 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 is configured to spawn a graphical user interface thread for use by a GUI toolkit, the GUI toolkit configured to produce reusable GUI components that allow a user to manage various said pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace, said GUI toolkit having an associated GUI library and said GUI thread creating one or more wizard templates that enable an optimized operation flow for respective actions selected by a user, and 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 as defined in claim 1 wherein said 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 cooperates in providing user interface constructs used to generate layouts for reusable GUI components.

3. The system as defined in claim 2 wherein said layouts are reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications.

4. The system as defined in claim 1 further comprising a navigation frame having a layout that includes a forward/backward utility including forward and back buttons that enable a user to switch forward and back, respectively, between navigation panes of the frame.

5. The system as defined in claim 1 further comprising at least one of a hierarchy panel that displays a navigation hierarchy of managed objects and an operations panel that displays user executable options that are dynamically configured for managed objects for managed objects selected from the hierarchy.

6. The system as defined in claim 5 further comprising a view panel that displays a view configuration that provides various options for one or more of viewing and sorting selected managed objects and said view configuration includes various configuration formats including a list of icons or a detailed report.

7. The system as defined in claim 5 wherein managed objects comprise namespace objects and data management objects.

8. The system as defined in claim 7 wherein said namespace objects comprise one of servers, files and disks.

9. The system as defined in claim 5 wherein said hierarchy panel displays one or more of the following:

a list of at least one of namespaces, namespace policies and namespace reports;

a namespace tool icon which, when selected, displays a lists of namespace roots and associated links, and wherein said namespace roots represent DFS servers and said associated links represent physical storage or targets such as CIFS shares; and

displays one or more tasks and policies for monitoring by a user.

10. A computer readable medium being of non-transitory tangible media containing executable program instructions executed by a processor, comprising:

a namespace and storage management application,

executing on a computer associated with a management console, the namespace and storage management application initiating 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 that allow a user to interface with the application on a computer console to manage various said pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace, and to input commands as to selected objects on one or more associated servers, said GUI toolkit supporting reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications, said templates having optimized operational flow arrangements.

11. The computer readable medium being of non-transitory tangible media as defined in claim 10 further comprising computer executable instructions including one or more program instructions for displaying selected managed objects on a display panel and in a view configuration format chosen from a view configuration portion of a view panel.

12. The computer readable medium being of non-transitory tangible media as defined in claim 10 wherein said computer executable instructions include said GUI toolkit being further configured to provide one or more wizard pages that 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.

13. The computer readable medium being of non-transitory tangible media as defined in claim 12 wherein said computer executable instructions include instructions for said GUI toolkit to be 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.

14. The computer readable medium being of non-transitory tangible media as defined in claim 10 wherein said computer executable instructions include a remote agent module configured to manage a particular namespace and storage management server via application program interfaces exposed by the remote agent.

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

initiating performance of commands directed to managed objects including facilitating configuration and management of pathnames in a logical namespace using a graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit;

spawning a GUI thread for use by said GUI toolkit, the GUI toolkit configured to produce reusable GUI components that allow a user to interface with the application on a computer console to manage various said pathnames exported by heterogeneous namespace services and protocol implementations within the logical namespace;

supporting at said GUI toolkit, reusable templates that facilitate reuse of the GUI components within one of the management application and other applications including an associated GUI library and said GUI thread cooperating to create wizard templates that enable optimized operation flows for actions desired by the user;

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 a type of a machine being either 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 omitting processing operations through a host agent;

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

using said dialog boxes by a user for making selections.

16. The method as defined in claim 15 wherein the type of machine being resolved, a (GUI) toolkit calls decision logic from an associated GUI library.

17. The method as defined in claim 15 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.

18. The method as defined in claim 17 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.

19. The method as defined in claim 15 wherein the managed objects comprise namespace objects and data management objects, and said namespace objects comprise one of link points and shares, and said data management objects comprise one of servers, files and disks.