Systems and methods for migrating components in a hierarchical storage network

Abstract

System and methods for selectively or automatically migrating resources between storage operation cells are provided. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a management component within the storage operation system may monitor system operation and migrate components from storage operation cell to another to facilitate failover recovery, promote load balancing within the system and improve overall system performance as further described herein. Another aspect of the invention may involve performing certain predictive analyses on system operation to reveal trends and tendencies within the system. Such information may be used as the basis for potentially migrating components from one storage operation cell to another to improve system performance and reduce or eliminate resource exhaustion or congestion conditions.

Description

RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 639,808, filed Dec. 15, 2006, and claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §120 from Provisional Application No. 60 / 752,196, filed Dec. 19, 2005 which is incorporated herein by reference. [0002] This application is related to the following patents and pending applications, each of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety: [0003] application Ser. No. 09 / 354,058, titled HIERARCHICAL BACKUP AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, filed Jul. 15, 1999, attorney docket number 4982 / 5; [0004] U.S. Pat. No. 6,418,478, titled PIPELINED HIGH SPEED DATA TRANSFER MECHANISM, issued Jul. 9, 2002, attorney docket number 4982 / 6; [0005] application Ser. No. 10 / 818,749, SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMICALLY PERFORMING STORAGE OPERATIONS IN A COMPUTER NETWORK, filed Apr. 5, 2004, attorney docket number 4982 / 35; [0006] application Ser. No. 10 / 877,831, HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING STORAGE OP...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0036] Aspects of the present invention are directed towards systems and methods for selectively or automatically migrating storage system resources between various storage operation cells. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a management component within the storage operation system may monitor system operation and migrate components from storage operation cell to another to facilitate failover recovery, promote load balancing within the system and improve overall system performance as further described herein. Another aspect of the invention may involve performing certain predictive analyses on system operation to identify trends and / or tendencies within the system. Such information may be used as the basis for potentially migrating components from one storage operation cell to another to improve system performance and reduce or eliminate resource exhaustion or congestion conditions.

Problems solved by technology

Storage management systems have evolved over time into complex entities with many components including hardware and software modules designed to perform a variety of different storage operations on electronic data.

Depending on storage requirements, secondary copy operations or other storage operations may be performed at various times which may result in an undesirably high number of storage operations being performed at a particular time using the same or similar resources.

Meanwhile, other secondary copy resources may be underutilized.

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