Time-Differential User Interface for Datacenter Management

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2017192850-A1
Application number	US-201614986634-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jan 1, 2016
Priority date	Jan 1, 2016
Publication date	Jul 6, 2017
Grant date	—

Abstract

A user interface (UI) uses overlays to tag representations of datacenter components with indications of changes that have occurred over a selected time interval. Log files, problem and service reports, and knowledge base items are gathered at various times to generate datacenter snapshots. A pair of snapshots can be compared to detect configuration changes, reported problems and their dispositions, and knowledge-base items introduced during the selected time interval. Trouble-shooting problems can be facilitated by using the interface to find changes that may have led to problems or that may cause problems in the future.

First claim

1 . A process comprising:
gathering data for generating snapshots; generating snapshots; comparing snapshots to identify changes occurring between times associated with the snapshots; and applying tags to respective representations of datacenter components to indicate changes that have occurred and the components to which the changes applied.

2 . The process of claim 1 wherein the identified changes are used to generate data overlays for respective parameters, each of the tags applied by rendering a respective overlay.

3 . The process of claim 2 wherein the parameters include configuration changes.

4 . The process of claim 2 wherein the parameters include configuration problem reports or service reports.

5 . The process of claim 2 wherein the parameters include knowledge-base items relating to datacenters other than the target datacenter.

6 . The process of claim 2 further comprising responding to interaction with a hierarchical-level control to change the hierarchical level of a representation of the datacenter.

7 . The process of claim 2 further comprising responding to an interaction with a control to select which overlays are active so that their tags can be displayed with a representation of datacenter components.

8 . The process of claim 2 further comprising interacting with a snapshot control for selecting which snapshots are to be used to generate the overlays.

9 . A system comprising non-transitory media encoded with code that, when executed by hardware, causes the hardware to implement a process including:
gathering data for generating snapshots; generating snapshots; comparing snapshots to identify changes occurring between times associated with the snapshots; and applying tags to respective representations of datacenter components to indicate changes that have occurred and the components to which the changes applied.

10 . The system of claim 9 wherein the identified changes are used to generate data overlays for respective parameters, each of the tags applied by rendering a respective overlay.

11 . The system of claim 10 wherein the parameters include configuration changes.

12 . The system of claim 10 wherein the parameters include configuration problem reports or service reports.

13 . The system of claim 10 wherein the parameters include knowledge base items relating to datacenters other than the target datacenter.

14 . The system of claim 10 further comprising responding to interaction with a hierarchical-level control to change the hierarchical level of a representation of the datacenter.

15 . The system of claim 10 further comprising responding to an interaction with a control to select which overlays are active so that their tags can be displayed with a representation of datacenter components.

16 . The system of claim 10 further comprising interacting with a snapshot control for selecting which snapshots are to be used to generate the overlays.

17 . A system comprising non-transitory media encoded with code that, when executed using hardware, causes to be implemented a process including:
generating a first snapshot of a datacenter descriptive of a state of the datacenter at a first time; generating a second snapshot of the datacenter descriptive of a state of the datacenter at a second time; identifying differences between the first and second snapshots; displaying component representations of components of the datacenter; and tagging at least one of the component representations with a tag representing at least some of the identified differences between the first and second snapshots.

18 . The system of claim 17 wherein the identified differences are assigned to plural difference categories, the process further including changing which categories of identified differences are displayed based on user interactions with difference-category user-interface elements.

19 . The system of claim 18 wherein the difference-category user-interface elements include a difference-category that, when activated, cause instances of a respective category of identified difference to be added to the display.

20 . The system of claim 19 wherein the process further includes, in response to a hovering over an instance of a difference-category user interface element, displaying a textual description of the difference represented by the user-interface element.

21 . The system of claim 17 wherein the process further includes, in response to an interaction with the display, changing at least one of the snapshots and associated times used to identify differences.

22 . The system of claim 18 wherein the difference categories include: a fault/failure category having instances corresponding to failures or faults in a component of the computer system, a problem-report category having instances in which problems have been reported referring to a component of the computer system; a service-report category having instances in which a solution to a problem is reported referring to a component of the computer system; and a configuration-change category having instances in which the configuration of a component has been changed.

23 . The system of claim 18 wherein the computer system is hierarchical and in which a user can navigate the user interface to display different levels of the hierarchy, such that, for at least one case, the tags reappear at different displayed levels.

24 . The system of claim 23 wherein the tags change in form as the user changes hierarchical levels.

Assignees

• Dachere Vaijayanti R
• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Dachere Vaijayanti R

Classifications

• G06F11/1451 Primary

  by selection of backup contents · CPC title

• G06F11/0709

  in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems · CPC title

• G06F11/3051

  Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs (verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247) · CPC title

• G06F2201/84

  Using snapshots, i.e. a logical point-in-time copy of the data · CPC title

• G06F11/328 Primary

  Computer systems status display (G06F11/327 takes precedence) · CPC title