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Computer System Input/Output Management

a computer system and input/output technology, applied in the field of computer system input/output management, can solve problems such as network trouble spots, errors and performance data collection, etc., and achieve the effect of improving the performan

Inactive Publication Date: 2014-03-27
AVAGO TECH WIRELESS IP SINGAPORE PTE
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention is about using remote agents and a central server application to gather specific negative event data from servers to determine the operational health of a SAN. The agents are placed in servers with adapters that interact with the servers to collect data. The gathered data is then pulled together to create a picture of the SAN that an individual server would not normally be able to see. Unlike other SAN diagnostics tools, the invention causes little or no performance degradation because it only collects a small amount of interesting negative event data.

Problems solved by technology

In addition to collecting initiator data, the agents can also collect errors and performance data (e.g., throughput problems, etc.) seen at the HBAs from the OS of the servers.
Although the information being collected at any one particular HBA by itself may not by itself be enlightening to overall network performance, the collection of information being gathered by a number of HBAs can reveal the trouble spots in the network.

Method used

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Examples

Experimental program
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first embodiment

[0053]the present invention to be described in greater detail relates to the determination of I / O command completion times and average I / O command completion times (latency) per logical driver in a SAN to enable optimization of storage allocations and improve I / O command completion times. It should further be understood that although embodiments of the present invention are described herein in terms of SCSI upper layer transport protocols and FC lower layer transport protocols for purposes of illustration only, embodiments of the present invention are applicable to other upper and lower layer transport protocols. Note also that embodiments of the present invention are not limited to fabric-attached storage, but apply to any SAN topology discoverable by the present invention, be it hub-based, arbitrated-loop based, or fabric based.

[0054]FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary kernel 200 within a host computer for computing I / O command completion times and average I / O command completion times...

second embodiment

[0077]the present invention to be discussed in greater detail relates to the use of remote agents embedded in initiators and a network diagnostics manager application for collecting specific interesting negative initiator event data (diagnostics data) to enable a picture of the operational health of the SAN to be determined. To better identify problem areas in the network, agents are placed in servers acting as initiators in the SAN. The agents interact with relatively inexpensive HBAs, NICs or adapters (referred to herein as I / O controllers) to collect initiator event data rather than relying on expensive test box hardware. Although termed “initiator event data,” the collected event data doesn't necessarily relate to the initiator but may relate to other parts of the network such as the switches and targets (disk drives). A benefit of collecting initiator event data is that no direct access (and associated access rights) to the network or storage components is needed to collect thi...

third embodiment

[0106]the present invention to be described in further detail relates to the computation of an oversubscription value based on the demand for a device divided by the handling capacity of the device to help determine whether the device is oversubscribed and changes need to be made.

[0107]When SCSI devices are deployed, they are programmed with a command queue depth. This queue depth dictates how many commands can be queued up to the particular device at a given time. If there is demand for more commands and the queue is full, the other commands cannot enter the queue and need to wait for slots to open up. In large data centers, there are thousands of servers accessing thousands of devices. If there is too much demand for a particular device, its queue fills up, and applications must wait to be serviced. If the queue is too overloaded it could, for example, take ten seconds to open an e-mail. As a result, understanding how the queue is utilized is important to understanding looming per...

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PUM

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Abstract

The collection of performance data at multiple servers in a SAN and forwarding that data to a centralized server for analysis is disclosed. Remote agents and a central server application collect specific interesting negative event data to enable a picture of the operational health of the SAN to be determined. The agents are placed in servers having HBAs acting as initiators. The agents interact with the HBAs through a driver stack to collect event data. Because of the initiator function they perform, HBAs have visibility to parts of the network that other entities do not have access to, and thus are ideal locations for gathering event data. A SAN diagnostics manager then pulls the collected data from each agent so that a “picture” of the SAN can be developed. In addition to collecting initiator data, the agents also collect errors and performance data from the OS of the servers.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This is a Continuation In Part (CIP) of U.S. application Ser. No. 11 / 360,557, filed on Feb. 22, 2006, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety for all purposes.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to the collection of event and performance data at one or more servers in communications infrastructures such as a Storage Area Network (SAN) and forwarding that data to a network diagnostics manager where the data can be analyzed and adjustments made to the SAN to improve its performance, referred to herein as input / output (I / O) management.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]In modern data centers, business data is often stored within networked storage systems. These storage systems, typically disk arrays, are usually connected to a fast, reliable and low latency SAN. Servers needing access to this data may also be connected to the SAN using a Host Bus Adapter (HBA), ...

Claims

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Application Information

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Patent Type & Authority Applications(United States)
IPC IPC(8): H04L12/26
CPCH04L67/40G06F2201/86H04L43/0823H04L67/1097G06F11/3495H04L41/0631G06F2201/88H04L43/065H04L69/28H04L41/0604G06F11/3476H04L67/133
Inventor BARRETT, DAVID MICHAELCROWELL, ERICKSEBASTIAN, BINO JOSEPHWASZAK, JOHN PETER
Owner AVAGO TECH WIRELESS IP SINGAPORE PTE
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