SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR REMOTE MONITORING IN A COMPUTER NETWORK

• US 20090164853A1
• Filed: 12/21/2007
• Published: 06/25/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: CommVault Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Reddy, Suresh Parpatakam, Meade, Jared, Gokhale, Parag, Prahlad, Anand, Kottomtharayil, Rajiv, Kavuri, Srinivas, Brower, Robert Keith JR.
• Granted Patent: US 8,312,323 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• 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 problem reporting in a computer network, the method comprising:

monitoring a plurality of elements that perform data migration operations;

detecting a problem that occurs during the data migration operations;

requesting information from the plurality of elements;

assembling the requested information into a report; and

providing the report to a monitor that does not possess access privileges to the elements.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data migration operations comprise at least one of storage resource management operations and hierarchical storage management operations.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the problem is detected by discovery of at least one error message issued by the plurality of elements.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising analyzing the at least one error message to determine the information to be requested.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising analyzing the requested information to determine if the report should be generated.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the report is provided by communication with a remote listener.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the report is prioritized according to a selected severity of the problem to provide the monitor an ordered queue of reports.

8. A method of remotely monitoring data migration operations within a computer network, the method comprising:

providing a plurality of elements comprising at least one of hardware, software, and firmware components, which perform data migration operations;

monitoring at least one of log files generated by the plurality of elements, communications links between the plurality of elements, and configurations of the plurality of elements during the data migration operations to detect errors in data migration operations;

automatically gathering and analyzing selected information from the monitored elements in response to the detection of an error in a particular data migration operation; and

communicating the selected information to a remote monitor.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the remote monitor does not possess access privileges to the plurality of elements.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the information provided in the report comprises a portion of the requested information based upon selection criteria provided by an administrator of the plurality of elements.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the report is provided by communication with a remote listener.

12. A system for remote monitoring of a data migration operation occurring within a computer network, comprising:

a plurality of computing elements that perform data migration operations; and

a monitor agent that communicates with the plurality of computing elements to detect problems occurring within the data migration operations,

wherein the monitor agent gathers information from the plurality of computing elements in response to a detected problem, and wherein at least a portion of the gathered information is provided to a remote monitor that does not possess access privileges to the plurality of computing elements.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein errors occurring in a data migration operation are communicated to the monitor agent to provide detection of a problem within the data migration operation.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the report is generated without human intervention.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the report is provided to the remote monitor by communication with a remote listener.

16. An automated problem reporting data migration system, the system comprising:

a client computer containing data;

a plurality of storage media for storing the data;

a storage manager that coordinates data migration operations between the client computer and at least one of the storage media;

a media agent that performs data migration operations in response to instructions from the storage manager;

a monitor agent that monitors the data migration operations and communicates errors occurring during the data migration operations; and

a remote listener which receives the errors communicated by the monitor agent and generates reports containing selected information regarding at least one of system hardware, software, and firmware,

wherein the reports are communicated to a remote monitor that does not possess access privileges to the data migration system.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the information monitored during the data migration operations comprises at least one of 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.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the storage manager monitors the capacity of the plurality of storage media and alerts the monitor agent when the level of available storage media is less than a selected level.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the 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.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the remote listener further comprises a data structure that contains instructions regarding courses of action for at least some of the errors occurring during the data migration operations.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the remote listener cross-references the errors with the data structure to determine if a report should be provided to the remote monitor.