Data center agent for data center infrastructure monitoring data access and translation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10819556-B1
Application number	US-201816161445-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Oct 16, 2018
Priority date	Oct 16, 2017
Publication date	Oct 27, 2020
Grant date	Oct 27, 2020

Abstract

In some examples, a method includes obtaining, by a data center infrastructure monitoring (DCIM) agent executing on a computing device deployed by a data center provider within a first data center of a plurality of geographically-distributed data centers, an infrastructure asset data object comprising infrastructure asset data for a physical infrastructure asset of a second data center of the plurality of geographically-distributed data centers; translating, by the DCIM agent using an asset mapping table, the infrastructure asset data object to formatted infrastructure asset data, wherein the asset mapping table maps one or more properties of infrastructure asset data objects to management protocol objects or control protocol objects for one of a management protocol or control protocol; and sending, by the DCIM agent to customer equipment co-located within the first data center, the formatted infrastructure asset data in a communication that conforms to one of the management protocol or control protocol.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
receiving, by a data center infrastructure monitoring (DCIM) agent executing on a computing device deployed by a data center provider within a first data center of a plurality of geographically-distributed data centers, in a communication comprising an API message from a DCIM platform or a message from a topic of a cloud-based publication platform, an infrastructure asset data object comprising infrastructure asset data for a physical infrastructure asset of a second data center of the plurality of geographically-distributed data centers, wherein the physical infrastructure asset of the second data center comprises one of a temperature sensor, a heating ventilation and air conditioning unit, a computer room air conditioning unit, an uninterruptible power supply, a generator, a power distribution unit, an air handling unit, a chiller unit, or a power unit;
translating, by the DCIM agent using an asset mapping table, the infrastructure asset data object to formatted infrastructure asset data, wherein the asset mapping table maps one or more properties of infrastructure asset data objects to management protocol objects or control protocol objects for one of a management protocol or a control protocol; and
sending, by the DCIM agent to customer equipment co-located within the first data center, the formatted infrastructure asset data in a communication that conforms to the one of the management protocol or the control protocol.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the topic of the cloud-based publication platform comprises a topic for the physical infrastructure asset, wherein the receiving comprises receiving the communication including the infrastructure asset data object responsive to the DCIM agent subscribing to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset, and wherein the topic for the physical infrastructure asset is managed by the cloud-based publication platform.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the subscribing comprises:
sending, by the DCIM agent, a registration request that indicates a method of a subscription application programming interface and specifies one or more event subjects of events for the infrastructure asset of the second data center;
receiving, by the DCIM agent, a subscription identifier usable for creating a subscription to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset; and
sending, by the DCIM agent, a request to subscribe to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset using the subscription identifier.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the receiving comprises:
sending, by the DCIM agent to an application programming interface (API) gateway for the DCIM platform, a request for the infrastructure asset data for the physical infrastructure asset and conforming to a DCIM API; and
receiving, by the DCIM agent from the API gateway, in response to the request, the communication including the infrastructure asset data object, wherein the communication conforms to the DCIM API.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the sending comprises:
sending, by the DCIM agent to the customer equipment co-located within the first data center, the formatted infrastructure asset data using Simple Network Management Protocol.

6. The method of claim 1 ,
wherein the DCIM agent comprises a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent comprising a management information base (MIB),
wherein the asset mapping table comprises mappings for properties of the infrastructure asset data object to numbers of different levels of SNMP Object Identifiers (Ms), and
wherein the translating comprises mapping the properties of the infrastructure asset data object to numbers of different levels of the SNMP OIDs to generate an OID for the infrastructure asset data, the method further comprising:
storing, by the DCIM agent, a value for the infrastructure asset data to the OID in the MIB.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the DCIM agent comprises a management protocol server and an asset data database, the method further comprising:
storing, by the DCIM agent, the formatted infrastructure asset data to the asset data database.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the DCIM agent comprises at least one router microservice, a plurality of subscriber actor microservices to manage subscriptions to publication-subscription topics of a cloud-based publication platform, and a plurality of data processing actor microservices to translate infrastructure asset data objects to formatted infrastructure asset data for storage to an asset data database.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the infrastructure asset data object comprises one of an Alarm object, Alert object, Tag Point Data object, Power Data object, Environment Data object, and Resiliency Data object.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first data center and the second data center are the same data center.

11. A computing system, the computing system comprising processing circuitry and memory, the processing circuitry configured to:
receive, by a data center infrastructure monitoring (DCIM) agent executed by the processing circuitry, in a communication comprising an API message from a DCIM platform or a message from a topic of a cloud-based publication platform, an infrastructure asset data object comprising infrastructure asset data for a physical infrastructure asset of a second data center of a plurality of geographically-distributed data centers, wherein the DCIM agent is deployed by a data center provider within a first data center of the plurality of geographically-distributed data centers, wherein the physical infrastructure asset of the second data center comprises one of a temperature sensor, a heating ventilation and air conditioning unit, a computer room air conditioning unit, an uninterruptible power supply, a generator, a power distribution unit, an air handling unit, a chiller unit, or a power unit;
translate, by the DCIM agent using an asset mapping table, the infrastructure asset data object to formatted infrastructure asset data, wherein the asset mapping table maps one or more properties of infrastructure asset data objects to management protocol objects or control protocol objects for one of a management protocol or a control protocol; and
send, by the DCIM agent to customer equipment co-located within the first data center, the formatted infrastructure asset data in a communication that conforms to the one of the management protocol or the control protocol.

12. The computing system of claim 11 , wherein the topic of the cloud-based publication platform comprises a topic for the physical infrastructure asset, wherein to receive the infrastructure asset data object the processing circuitry is configured to receive the communication including the infrastructure asset data object responsive to the DCIM agent subscribing to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset, and wherein the topic for the physical infrastructure asset is managed by the cloud-based publication platform.

13. The computing system of claim 11 , wherein to subscribe to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset the processing circuitry is configured to:
send, by the DCIM agent, a registration request that indicates a method of a subscription application programming interface and specifies one or more event subjects of events for the infrastructure asset of the second data center;
receive, by the DCIM agent, a subscription identifier usable for creating a subscription to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset; and
send, by the DCIM agent, a request to subscribe to the topic for the physical infrastructure asset using the subscription identifier.

Assignees

• Equinix Inc

Inventors

• Rangasamy Venkatachalam
• Kamath Ashwin
• Purohit Purvish
• Dhariya Shital
• Pathak Jay Shankar
• Doraiswamy Vijaay
• Lillie Brian J

Classifications

• H04L41/04

  Network management architectures or arrangements · CPC title

• H04L41/0226 Primary

  Mapping or translating multiple network management protocols · CPC title

• H04L41/046 Primary

  comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor · CPC title

• H04L41/0233

  Object-oriented techniques, for representation of network management data, e.g. common object request broker architecture [CORBA] · CPC title

• G06F16/958

  Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking · CPC title