Graphical Interface for Server Partition Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing complex server environments with multiple technologies and partitions is challenging due to the need for coordinating disparate management tools and ensuring high availability across clusters and partitions, especially in scenarios where failures require seamless resource shifting and redundancy.
Innovation Solution
A graphical interface tool that provides an interactive management system for configuring and visualizing server environments, allowing administrators to define hierarchical arrangements of servers and partitions, and enabling relative highlighting to emphasize peer-to-peer relationships, facilitating the management of high-availability clusters and resource domains.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If multiple disparate management tools are used for different server technologies, then each technology can be managed with dedicated tools, but the overall system coordination becomes complex and difficult to visualize
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple disparate management tools into a single unified graphical interface that can manage hardware partitions, virtual partitions, clusters, and resource domains simultaneously. This unified interface displays all server entities and their relationships in one visual representation, eliminating the need for administrators to switch between multiple separate tools while maintaining the ability to perform technology-specific management tasks.
Solution Approach 2:
The graphical interface is designed as a universal management tool that can handle multiple server technologies and partition types through a single interface. It provides multi-functional capabilities to create, configure, and monitor various server entities (hardware partitions, virtual partitions, clusters, resource domains) and visualize their hierarchical relationships, making it applicable to diverse server management scenarios without requiring separate specialized tools.
2Reliability
If servers are arranged in clusters with multiple partitions for high availability, then failover capability is improved, but the complexity of configuring and monitoring these relationships increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a visual dimensional representation of server relationships by displaying hierarchical structures (servers containing partitions, partitions contained in clusters) and peer-to-peer relationships (failover pairs, resource domains) in a graphical interface. This visual dimension allows administrators to comprehend complex multi-layered relationships that would be difficult to grasp from text-based configurations, making the setup and monitoring of high-availability clusters more intuitive.
Solution Approach 2:
The graphical interface acts as an intermediary tool between the administrator and the complex cluster configuration. It provides visual indicators, connection lines, and hierarchical displays that mediate the complexity of configuring failover relationships and resource domains, translating complex technical relationships into visually comprehensible representations that simplify the configuration process.
3Productivity
If hardware partitions are divided into virtual partitions and resource partitions for finer resource allocation, then resource utilization efficiency is improved, but the difficulty of managing and visualizing the hierarchy increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies segmentation by visually dividing and organizing server entities into hierarchical segments: servers are segmented into hardware partitions, which are further segmented into virtual partitions, and finally into resource partitions. The graphical interface displays these segmented relationships with clear visual indicators, allowing administrators to see how resources are divided and allocated at each level while maintaining an overview of the entire hierarchy.
Solution Approach 2:
The graphical interface implements a nested doll representation where servers contain hardware partitions, which contain virtual partitions, which contain resource partitions. This nested visual structure allows administrators to drill down through multiple levels of partitioning while maintaining context of the overall hierarchy, making it easy to visualize and manage the complex nested relationships without losing overview of the complete system structure.
Data Source
AI summary
A system includes a server environment and a management station. The server environment includes hardware servers. At least some of the servers can be characterized by a hierarchy of partitions. The management station provides an administrative interface. The administrative interface provides a display that displays alternate views of a graphical representation of the server environment. Each of the views has graphical partition elements corresponding to at least some of the partitions nested with graphic server elements corresponding to at least some of the hardware servers. At least some of the graphical partition elements include links that, when activated, cause the graphical representation to switch to another of its views in which is highlighted a graphical partition element that was not highlighted in the previous view.