Systems and methods for remote monitoring in a computer network

• US 8,650,445 B2
• Filed: 09/13/2012
• Issued: 02/11/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Gokhale, Parag, Kottomtharayil, Rajiv, Kavuri, Srinivas, Prahlad, Anand, Reddy, Suresh Parpatakam, Brower, Robert Keith Jr., Meade, Jared
• Primary Examiner(s): SCHELL, JOSEPH O
• Application Number:
  US13/615,231
• Publication Number:
  US 20130013967A1
• Time in Patent Office: 516 Days
• Field of Search: 714/31, 714/15, 714/26, 714/48, 714/57, 523/15, 523/26, 523/31, 523/48, 523/57
• US Class Current: 714/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0748 in a remote unit communicating with a single-box computer node experiencing an error/fault remote testing G06F11/2294
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0751 Error or fault detection not based on redundancy power supply failures G06F1/30; network fault management H04L41/06
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0769 Readable error formats, e.g. cross-platform generic formats, human understandable formats
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0781 Error filtering or prioritizing based on a policy defined by the user or on a policy defined by a hardware/software module, e.g. according to a severity level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1402 Saving, restoring, recovering or retrying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/214 Database migration support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/604 Tools and structures for managing or administering access control systems

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing automated problem reporting in elements used in conjunction with computer networks are disclosed. The system comprises a plurality of elements that perform data migration operations and a reporting manager or monitor agent which monitors the elements and data migration operations. Upon detection of hardware or software problems, the reporting manager or monitor agent automatically communicates with elements affected by the problem to gather selected hardware, software, and configuration information, analyzes the information to determine causes of the problem, and issues a problem report containing at least a portion of the selected information. The problem report is communicated to a remote monitor that does not possess access privileges to the elements, allowing automated, remote monitoring of the elements without compromising security of the computer network or elements.

Claims

1. A method of error reporting in a computer network, the method comprising:

monitoring a plurality of computing devices, one or more of which is configured to perform a data migration operation that migrates data from at a first computing device to a second computing device;

detecting, with one or more computer processors, an error associated with a failed performance of the data migration operation;

receiving, by a remote monitor agent that does not possess access privileges to the migrated data on the computing devices, diagnostic information from one or more of the plurality of computing devices, wherein the diagnostic information comprises an identifier that identifies the data migration operation and log files associated with the failed data migration operation;

consulting an index to determine error response instructions based at least in part on the diagnostic information and information contained in the index; and

providing the error response instructions to a storage manager.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising assembling the diagnostic information into a report and providing the report to the remote monitor agent.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising prioritizing the error report, wherein the report is provided to the monitor agent as part of an ordered queue of error reports.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the data migration operation comprises a storage resource management operation.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the data migration operation comprises a hierarchical storage management operation.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the error includes receiving at least one error message from the plurality of computing devices.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising requesting the diagnostic information, wherein the diagnostic information requested is determined based at least in part on information in the index.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the monitor agent is a remote listener module.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein monitoring the plurality of computing devices comprises monitoring at least one of the following types of information:

file type distribution, file size distribution, distribution of access time, distribution of modification time, distribution by owner, capacity of storage media, asset reporting by host, disk, or partition, and availability of resources, disks, hosts, and applications.

10. An automated data migration system, the system comprising:

a plurality of computing devices, one or more of which is configured to perform a data migration operation that migrates data from at a first computing device to a second computing device;

a remote monitor agent that does not possess access privileges to the migrated data on the computing devices, wherein the remote monitor agent is configured to receive diagnostic information from one or more of the plurality of computing devices, wherein the diagnostic information comprises an identifier that identifies the data migration operation and log files associated with a failed performance of the data migration operation;

an index stored on one or more of the plurality of computing devices, wherein the index comprises error response instructions associated with the diagnostic information; and

a storage manager configured to receive the error response instructions.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is configured to monitor a capacity level of at least one of the plurality of storage devices and alert the remote monitor agent when the capacity level is less than a threshold level.

12. The system of claim 10, further comprising a remote listener configured to generate an error report and provide the error report to the remote monitor agent.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the error report comprises at least one of log files generated by a data migration software application, hardware configuration, software configuration, firmware configuration, operating system log files, crash dumps, and registries.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the error response indicates whether the remote listener is to generate the error report.