System, method, and computer program product for monitoring health of computer system assets

• US 9,507,686 B2
• Filed: 03/05/2014
• Issued: 11/29/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/20/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Original Assignee: NetApp, Inc.
• Inventors: Horn, Ophir, Sunkesula, Srivardhan, Gilboa, Ran
• Primary Examiner(s): Srivastava, Vivek
• Assistant Examiner(s): Abedin, Normin
• Application Number:
  US14/198,302
• Publication Number:
  US 20150180739A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,000 Days
• Field of Search: 709/224, 709/225, 709/226
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 11/2028 eliminating a faulty processor or activating a spare
• 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 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/323 Visualisation of programs or trace data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/328 Computer systems status display G06F11/327 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3452 Performance evaluation by statistical analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/147 for predicting network behaviour
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/065 related to network devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0894 : Packet rate
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 : involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 : Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display

Abstract

A method of displaying health information of a system asset in a computer system, the method including: accessing a data log associated with the system asset, wherein the data log includes a store of the health information of the system asset, identifying a plurality of state entries in the store of the health information, each of the state entries including a timestamp and a state of the system asset at the respective time stamp, generating a timeline based on the state entries, the timeline having a plurality of chronological portions defined by the timestamps, wherein each portion of the timeline is assigned a visual cue based on a state associated with its respective state entries, and visually rendering the timeline upon a computer display.

Claims

1. A method of displaying health information of a system asset from among a plurality of system assets of a networked storage system used for storing and retrieving data on behalf of clients, the method comprising:

accessing stored communication protocol information for communicating with the plurality of system assets of the networked storage system, where at least two different communication protocols are used to communicate with at least two different system assets of the networked storage system;

collecting performance related data of the plurality of systems assets, where the performance related data includes latency in processing read and write requests, number of input/output operations (IOPS) for writing and reading stored data, amount of data transferred and memory usage;

collecting configuration related data of the plurality of systems assets, where the configuration related data includes capacity of storage volumes of the networked storage systems, speed of network ports used within the networked storage system, an amount of memory allocated for systems asset and a CPU count;

storing the performance related data and the configuration related data associated with the system asset in a data log;

accessing the data log associated with the system asset, wherein the data log includes a store of the health information of the system asset for tracking configuration status based on collected configuration related data and performance status based on collected performance related data of the system asset;

identifying a plurality of state entries in the store of the health information, each of the state entries including a timestamp and a state of the system asset at the respective time stamp;

generating a summary segment indicating that configuration related data and performance related data for the system asset has been collected and an indicator of a recent status of configuration and performance of the system asset;

generating a first timeline based on the state entries for providing a visual representation of performance of the system asset;

generating a second timeline based on the state entries for providing a visual representation of configuration status for the system asset over time indicating when applicable, that the system asset had no configuration errors, had configuration errors and configuration related data collection was suspended;

wherein the first and the second timeline having a plurality of chronological portions defined by the timestamps, and wherein each portion of the first and the second timeline is assigned a visual cue based on a state associated with its respective state entries; and

visually rendering the first timeline and the second time line upon a computer display.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the visual cue is selected from a group consisting of a color and a fill pattern.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the state is selected from a group consisting of no error, collection suspended, and error present.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

assigning an active screen control to a first portion of the first and second timeline corresponding to a range of state entries with consecutive timestamps having a same state.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

detecting activation of the active screen control; and

displaying additional information about the state entries.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the additional information includes a least a portion of the data log having information associated with the state entries corresponding to the consecutive timestamps.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising changing the visual cue of the first region based on the detected activation.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying the plurality of state entries comprises:

text parsing the data log.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the system asset includes at least one of:

a storage drive;

a storage controller;

a virtual volume; and

a network interface controller.

10. A computer program product having a non-transitory, computer readable medium tangibly recording computer program logic for providing monitoring of a plurality of system assets of a networked storage system used for storing and retrieving data on behalf of clients, the computer program product comprising:

code to access stored communication protocol information for communicating with the plurality of system assets of the networked storage system, where at least two different communication protocols are used to communicate with at least two different system assets of the networked storage system;

code to collect performance related data of the plurality of systems assets, where the performance related data includes latency in processing read and write requests, number of input/output operations (IOPS) for writing and reading stored data, amount of data transferred and memory usage;

code to collect configuration related data of the plurality of systems assets, where the configuration related data includes capacity of storage volumes of the networked storage systems, speed of network ports used within the networked storage system, an amount of memory allocated for systems asset and a CPU count;

code to store the performance related data and the configuration related data associated with the system asset in a data log;

code to access a plurality of entries in the data log, each of the entries including a timestamp and a status of a system asset at the respective time stamp indicating a configuration status based on collected configuration related data and a performance status based on collected performance related data of the system asset;

code to generate a summary segment indicating that configuration related data and performance related data for the system asset has been collected and an indicator of a recent status of configuration and performance of the system asset;

code to generate a first timeline for providing a visual representation of performance of the system asset, based on the accessed entries of the data log,

code to generate a second timeline based on the accessed entries for providing a visual representation of configuration status for the system asset over time indicating when applicable that the system asset had no configuration errors, had configuration errors and configuration data collection was suspended;

wherein the first timeline and the second timeline having a plurality of chronological portions, wherein each portion of the first and the second timeline represent a performance status and a configuration status of the system asset during a respective time period, further wherein each portion of the first and the second timeline is assigned a distinguishing cue based on a status of the system asset associated with its respective data log entries; and

code to render visually the first and the second timeline upon a computer display.

11. The computer product of claim 10, wherein the data log includes a store of health information of the system asset.

12. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the code to access entries comprises:

code to text parse the entries of the data log to extract timestamps and system asset health information.

13. The computer program product of claim 10, further comprising:

code to assign an active screen control to a first portion of the first and the second timeline corresponding to a range of data log entries with consecutive timestamps having a same status.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, further comprising:

code to detect activation of the active screen control; and

code to display a least a portion of the data log having information associated with entries corresponding to the consecutive timestamps.

15. The computer program product of claim 13, further comprising changing the visual cue of the first region based on the detected activation.

16. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein a status of the system asset is selected from a group consisting of no error, collection suspended, and error present.

17. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the distinguishing cue is selected from a group consisting of a color and a fill pattern.

18. A system, comprising:

a memory containing machine readable medium comprising machine executable code having stored thereon instructions; and

a processor module coupled to the memory, the processor module executes the machine executable code to;

access stored communication protocol information for communicating with the plurality of system assets of the networked storage system used for storing and retrieving data on behalf of clients, where at least two different communication protocols are used to communicate with at least two different system assets of the networked storage system;

collect performance related data of the plurality of systems assets, where the performance related data includes latency in processing read and write requests, number of input/output operations (IOPS) for writing and reading stored data, amount of data transferred and memory usage;

collect configuration related data of the plurality of systems assets, where the configuration related data includes capacity of storage volumes of the networked storage systems, speed of network ports used within the networked storage system, an amount of memory allocated for systems asset and a CPU count;

store the performance related data and the configuration related data associated with the system asset in a data log;

access the data log associated with the system asset, wherein the data log includes a store of the health information of the system asset for tracking configuration status based on collected configuration related data and performance status based on collected performance related data of the system asset;

identify a plurality of state entries in the store of the health information, each of the state entries including a timestamp and a state of the system asset at the respective time stamp;

generate a summary segment indicating that configuration related data and performance related data for the system asset has been collected and an indicator of a recent status of configuration and performance of the system asset;

generate a first timeline based on the state entries for providing a visual representation of performance of the system asset;

generate a second timeline based on the state entries for providing a visual representation of configuration status for the system asset over time indicating when applicable, that the system asset had no configuration errors, had configuration errors and configuration related data collection was suspended;

wherein the first and the second timeline having a plurality of chronological portions defined by the timestamps, and wherein each portion of the first and the second timeline is assigned a visual cue based on a state associated with its respective state entries; and

visually rendering the first timeline and the second time line upon a computer display.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the visual cue is selected from a group consisting of a color and a fill pattern.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the state is selected from a group consisting of no error, collection suspended, and error present.

21. The system of claim 18, further comprising:

assigning an active screen control to a first portion of the first and second timeline corresponding to a range of state entries with consecutive timestamps having a same state.

22. The system of claim 18, wherein the system asset includes at least one of:

a storage drive;

a storage controller;

a virtual volume; and

a network interface controller.

23. The system of claim 18, wherein at least two system assets of the plurality of systems assets include two storage systems from different vendors accessible using different communication protocols.