Methods and apparatus for remote gateway monitoring and diagnostics

• US 9,021,314 B1
• Filed: 01/24/2014
• Issued: 04/28/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sorenson, James Christopher III, Lin, Yun, Alapati, Nishanth, Maison, Ardis G.
• Primary Examiner(s): LOHN, JOSHUA A
• Application Number:
  US14/164,017
• Time in Patent Office: 459 Days
• Field of Search: 714/47.1, 714/47.2, 709/224
• US Class Current: 714/47.2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1402 Saving, restoring, recovering or retrying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2071 using a plurality of controllers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2082 Data synchronisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3034 where the computing system component is a storage system, e.g. DASD based or network based digital input from or digital output to record carriers G06F3/06; digital recording or reproducing G11B20/18; 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], H04L67/1097
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3089 Monitoring arrangements determined by the means or processing involved in sensing the monitored data, e.g. interfaces, connectors, sensors, probes, agents software debugging using additional hardware using a specific debug interface G06F11/3656; performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring G06F11/3466
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3485 for I/O devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/855 Details of asynchronous mirroring using a journal to transfer not-yet-mirrored changes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/08 for authentication of entities cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication H04L9/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/125 involving control of end-device applications over a network

Abstract

Methods, apparatus, and computer-accessible storage media for remotely monitoring and diagnosing storage gateways. Status information may be collected locally on the gateways and uploaded to a service provider via gateway-initiated connections. The uploaded information may be stored to status data store(s). Status proxy(s) on the provider network may analyze the information in the status data store(s) for one or more gateways to detect error conditions on individual gateways or patterns or error conditions on multiple gateways. Upon detecting an error condition on a gateway, the proxy may alert another process, for example an administrator process on the local network that includes the respective gateway. The other process may then message the gateway to address the condition. Information for particular gateways may be provided to clients on request. Information collected from multiple gateways may be viewed and analyzed by the service provider to detect patterns related to gateway design.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

performing, by one or more computing devices;

storing to a status data store of a service provider network, status information from a storage gateway process executing on a client network, wherein the storage gateway process provides an interface between one or more client processes on the client network and a storage service provided by the service provider network for accessing client data maintained on a remote data store by the storage service;

analyzing at least a portion of the status information in the status data store to determine whether a pattern, condition, or problem has occurred for the storage gateway process; and

initiating, upon determining that the pattern, condition, or problem has occurred, one or more actions, the one or more actions comprising sending a message to the client that the pattern, condition, or problem has been detected, wherein the message is sent to the client via a communications channel other than a communications channel through the storage gateway process.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the status information comprises one or more operations metrics of the storage gateway process, and wherein the one or more operational metrics comprise storage utilization metrics and gateway error conditions.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising iteratively performing said storing and said analyzing.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the status information is received from the storage gateway process via a secure connection initiated by the storage gateway process.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

receiving respective status information from each of two or more storage gateway processes executing on one or more client networks and storing the respective status information to at least one status data store on the service provider network; and

analyzing the stored status information received from each of the two or more storage gateway processes to determine whether a threshold condition has occurred for at least one storage gateway process or to determine operational characteristics of the two or more storage gateway processes.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising storing the status information to two or more status data stores on the service provider network.

7. The method as recited in claim 1,

wherein the status information indicates values for one or more operational metrics of the storage gateway process;

and

wherein the method further comprises storing at least one operational metric of the storage gateway process in the status information to one of two or more status data stores and storing at least one different operational metric of the storage gateway process in the status information to a different one of the two or more status data stores.

8. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising forwarding at least a portion of the status information to a service that maintains the status data store.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more actions comprise:

receiving, at the service provider network, one or more configuration or operation requests for the storage gateway process from the client network administrator process; and

forwarding, by the service provider network, the one or more configuration or operation requests to the storage gateway process via a secure connection initiated by the storage gateway process.

10. A device, comprising:

at least one processor; and

a memory comprising program instructions, wherein the program instructions are executable by the at least one processor to implement a storage gateway process configured to provide an interface to one or more client processes on a local network for accessing client data maintained on a remote data store by a service provider network;

wherein the program instructions are further executable by the at least one processor to implement a monitoring agent configured to;

periodically or aperiodically collect one or more operational metrics of the storage gateway process, wherein the operational metrics include storage utilization metrics for a write log to which the storage gateway process appends write data, and wherein the write data in the write log is periodically or aperiodically uploaded to the remote data store; and

periodically or aperiodically upload at least a portion of the collected one or more operational metrics as gateway status information to the service provider network;

wherein the storage gateway process is further configured to;

receive, from one or more devices, instructions to perform one or more actions to address one of a pattern, condition, or problem of the storage gateway process, wherein the pattern, condition, or problem is detected by an analysis of the uploaded gateway status information; and

perform the indicated one or more actions.

11. The device as recited in claim 10, wherein the one or more operational metrics of the storage gateway process include storage utilization metrics and gateway error conditions.

12. The device as recited in claim 11, wherein the gateway error conditions include error conditions on a secure connection to the service provider network established by the storage gateway process for accessing the client data on the remote data store.

13. A non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium storing program instructions that when executed by a computer perform a method comprising:

accessing at least one status data store comprising status information received from a plurality of gateway processes, wherein each of the plurality of gateway processes provides an interface between one or more client processes on one or more client networks and one or more services provided by a service provider network;

analyzing, collectively, the status information in the at least one status data store for multiple gateway processes to determine whether a pattern, condition, or problem has occurred for two or more of the plurality of gateway processes; and

initiating, upon determining that the pattern, condition, or problem has occurred for two or more of the plurality of gateway processes, one or more actions to address the pattern, condition, or problem, the one or more actions comprising sending a message to the client that the pattern, condition, or problem has been detected, wherein the message is sent to the client via a communications channel other than a communications channel through the storage gateway process.

14. The non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium as recited in claim 13, wherein, to determine whether the pattern, condition or problem has occurred for two or more of the plurality of gateway processes, the program instructions further perform comparing respective values of the status information for multiple gateway processes to at least one threshold value for the status information.

15. The non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium as recited in claim 13, wherein the status information is received at the one or more status data stores from the multiple gateway processes via secure connections to the service provider network initiated by the gateway processes.

16. The non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium as recited in claim 13, wherein, the received status information from the one or more status data stores was provided to the one or more data stores from the multiple gateway processes and at least a portion of the received status information is received from at least one service that maintains at least one of the one or more status data stores.

17. The non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium as recited in claim 13, wherein said initiating, upon determining that the pattern, condition, or problem has occurred for two or more of the plurality of gateway processes, one or more actions to address the pattern, condition, or problem comprises messaging a client network administrator process on the client network that the pattern, condition, or problem has been detected.

18. The non-transitory computer-accessible storage medium as recited in claim 13, wherein analyzing, collectively, the status information in the at least one status data store for multiple gateway processes to determine whether the pattern, condition, or problem has occurred comprises analyzing whether gateway processes at different client sites are experiencing a common problem.