Service Provider Management System for Scalable Storage Allocation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Corporate enterprises face challenges in scaling infrastructure to meet increasing demands for bandwidth, compute power, and storage while maintaining competitiveness, as the rise of service providers and changing market dynamics lead to increased costs and the need for efficient management of data storage resources.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a Service Provider Management System (SPMS) that enables service providers to allocate and manage data storage resources across multiple customers, providing a turnkey package for storage and storage-related services, allowing for scalable and tiered storage service delivery and management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If companies scale infrastructure to meet increasing demands for bandwidth, compute power and storage, then service capability is improved, but cost increases tremendously
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal service provider management system that enables a single infrastructure to serve multiple customers with different storage needs. The system provides multi-functional capabilities including resource allocation, service management, and customer provisioning through a unified platform, allowing one infrastructure to deliver diverse storage services to multiple clients simultaneously, thereby improving service capability while controlling costs through resource sharing
2Productivity
If companies out-source services to xSPs, then internal resource efficiency is improved, but loss of control over infrastructure management occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary service provider management system that acts as a mediator between customers and the underlying storage infrastructure. This intermediary layer provides centralized control and coordination capabilities, enabling efficient resource allocation and service management while maintaining adaptability and control over the infrastructure. The system serves as a bridge that reconciles the need for outsourcing efficiency with the requirement for infrastructure control
3Productivity
If tiered service providers are implemented, then service delivery efficiency is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a segmented tiered service architecture that divides the service provider ecosystem into distinct hierarchical levels. Each tier performs specific functions with well-defined interfaces and responsibilities, creating a modular structure. This segmentation improves service delivery efficiency by allowing specialized processing at each level while managing complexity through clear boundaries and standardized interactions between tiers
Data Source
AI summary
A service provider management system (SPMS) that connects to storage resources in a datacenter controlled by a service provider and a database that stores information about the datacenter and customers that receive the storage resources as a service. The SPMS enables the service provider to allocate storage resources to a customer and to assign ownership to billable devices, such as disks, volumes, ports, and so forth, as well as to generate billing information based on hardware configuration and customer usage. The SPSM is supported on a server architecture, which includes a Web server that exports a first interface to the service provider to enable the service provider to manage the data storage resources to which the SPMS is connected, and a second interface to the customer to enable the customer to manage the allocated data storage resources directly.