Delegating Discovery Operations in Information Management Systems
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional information management systems face limitations in scalability, leading to inefficient data management and increased costs due to the need for non-optimized scaling solutions, as they struggle to handle large volumes of electronic data effectively while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and providing adequate services without overpaying for unnecessary services.
Innovation Solution
The system delegates information management processing operations such as discovery, classification, and service orchestration to external computing resources, allowing for more efficient data management by offloading processing power and enabling entities to pay only for the services needed, thereby enhancing scalability and compliance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional information management systems are used, then data management services can be provided, but scalability is limited by physical hardware constraints
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the information management system into multiple components: information management servers that coordinate services, storage nodes that hold data, and compute nodes that perform processing operations. This segmentation allows the system to scale independently in each dimension by adding more nodes without being constrained by the physical limits of a single server.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from a single-server vertical scaling model to a multi-node distributed architecture that scales horizontally across multiple dimensions (storage capacity, compute power, service capacity). This dimensional change enables the system to manage large volumes of data by distributing workloads across numerous nodes rather than being limited by one server's physical hardware.
2Power
If scaling up with faster hardware is implemented, then processing capacity increases, but cost becomes prohibitively high
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of scaling up a single server with expensive high-performance hardware, the patent creates multiple copies of standard servers (storage nodes and compute nodes) that can be distributed across the network. Each node performs standard processing operations, and the collective processing capacity of many nodes replaces the need for one or few ultra-powerful servers, significantly reducing hardware costs while maintaining or increasing overall processing capacity.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple information management servers are replicated, then scalability improves, but integration difficulties arise
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the coordination and service management functions into a dedicated information management server that centrally manages multiple storage nodes and compute nodes. This central coordination layer unifies the distributed nodes, handling service orchestration, metadata management, and coordination tasks, thereby eliminating integration difficulties that would arise from having multiple independent information management servers and simplifying the overall system architecture.
4Adaptability or versatility
If low-level functions are partitioned to other servers, then scalability improves, but significant computing resources are still required from the information management server
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts low-level processing operations (such as data retrieval, storage operations, and basic computation) from the information management server and assigns them to dedicated storage nodes and compute nodes. The information management server retains only high-level coordination and management functions, significantly reducing its computing resource requirements while maintaining system scalability through the distributed node architecture.
Data Source
AI summary
Environment and/or file discovery operations are delegated by an information management service in a network to external computing resources. The external computing resource performs discovery operations to discover objects in the network, which may include discovering every object in the network, or discovering only new, changed, and/or deleted objects in the network. Discovery information identifying the discovered objects is reported back to the information management service. The information management service uses the discovery information to perform information management, including classification of discovered objects into categories, mapping categories to service level objectives that include one or more services, and orchestrating execution of the one or more services. Optionally, the information management service can delegate classification, service level management, and/or orchestration of services to one or more additional external computing resources.