Providing continuous context for operational information of a storage system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9762460-B2
Application number	US-201514667263-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 24, 2015
Priority date	Mar 24, 2015
Publication date	Sep 12, 2017
Grant date	Sep 12, 2017

Abstract

A system management tool provides a comprehensive summary of operational information of a storage system. For example, the system management tool presents a digital dashboard (“dashboard”) in a graphical user interface. The system management tool also presents, via the dashboard, views that correspond to different dimensions of the storage system. In response to expansion of a selected view, the system management tool can automatically collapse the other views into a non-expanded views or move the other views to visible areas remaining after expansion of the selected view. Thus, all of the views remain continuously visible via the dashboard despite the modification to the appearance of the selected view.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
collecting, at a memory of a computing device having a processor, operational information about a storage system coupled to the computing device;
presenting, in a graphical user interface (GUI) rendered on a display coupled to the computing device, a digital dashboard presenting the collected operational information by category according to a plurality of views, wherein each of the plurality of views includes a different category of the collected operational information;
displaying, on the digital dashboard, a first view of the plurality of views as an expanded view and a second view of the plurality of views as a non-expanded view, wherein the expanded view includes a different level of detail from the non-expanded view, wherein a collection rate of the collected operational information for the expanded view differs from the collection rate of the collected operational information for the non-expanded view; and
in response to detecting a trigger to expand the non-expanded view, managing presentation of the collected operational information rendered on the display by collapsing the expanded view and rearranging a remaining plurality of views so as to maintain display of all categories of the collected operational information on the dashboard.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
in response to detecting the trigger to expand the non-expanded view, resizing a horizontal dimension of the expanded view of the plurality of views, the expanded view depicted as a timeline graph of the collected operational information; and
reducing a time period of the timeline graph so as to display less of the collected operational information as depicted in the expanded view.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
in response to determining that a value of the collected operational information for a first category exceeds a threshold, displaying in a third view of the plurality of views associated with the first category, an indicator at an initial intensity; and
causing the indicator to fade in intensity over a period of time, after the indicator at the initial intensity is displayed, during which the collected operational information for the first category is below the threshold.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
modifying a refresh rate for the display of the collected operational information for a third view of the plurality of views in proportion to a degree that a value of the collected operational information of the third view approaches a threshold.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
in response to a mouse over trigger event for a first category of the collected operational information of the non-expanded window, displaying an additional view as an overlay, wherein the overlay includes a timeline graph of the collected operational information for the first category.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
performing analytics on a portion of the collected operational information;
predicting a potential failure of a component of the storage system based on the performance of the analytics; and
presenting, in a third view of the plurality of views associated with the component, an indicator of the potential failure.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein collecting further comprises:
caching the collected operational information in the memory, retrieving the displayed operational information from the cache; and
evicting the cached operational information from the memory in accordance with a sliding window of time.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
updating each view of the plurality of views by a respective one of a plurality of independently executing threads on the processor, wherein each respective thread is capable of maintaining a different refresh rate for the collected operational information according to the category of the view.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein managing presentation of the collected operational information further comprises:
in response to the detecting the trigger to expand the non-expanded view, evaluating the trigger against an expansion rule set to determine whether the non-expanded view should be changed in size in response to the trigger.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
synchronizing presentation of the collected operational information for each view of the plurality of views depicting a timeline graph.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
in response to determining that a value of the collected operational information for a first category exceeds a first threshold, displaying in a third view of the plurality of views associated with the first category, a first indicator; and
in response to determining that the value of the collected operational information for the first category exceeds a second threshold, replacing display of the first indicator with a second indicator different from the first indicator.

12. An apparatus comprising:
a processor coupled to a memory;
a storage system coupled to the processor;
a display coupled to the processor; and
a machine-readable medium having program code stored thereon, the program code configured to:
collect operational information about the storage system;
present, in a graphical user interface (GUI) rendered on the display, a digital dashboard presenting the collected operational information by category according to a plurality of views, wherein each of the plurality of views includes a different category of the collected operational information;
display, on the digital dashboard, a first view of the plurality of views as an expanded view and a second view of the plurality of views as a non-expanded view, wherein the expanded view includes a different level of detail from the non-expanded view, wherein a collection rate of the collected operational information for the expanded view differs from the collection rate of the collected operational information of the non-expanded view; and
in response to a detecting a trigger to expand the non-expanded view, manage presentation of the collected operational information rendered on the display by collapsing the expanded view and rearranging a remaining plurality of views so as to maintain display of all categories of the collected operational information on the dashboard.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the machine-readable medium further has stored therein program code configured to in response to the trigger to expand the non-expanded view:
resize a horizontal dimension of the expanded view of the plurality of views, the expanded view depicted as a timeline graph; and
reduce a time period of the timeline graph so as to display less of the collected operational information.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein the machine-readable medium further has stored therein program code executable by the processor configured to, in response to the trigger to expand the non-expanded view, update each of the plurality of views with the collected operational information.

15. The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein the machine-readable medium further has stored therein program code configured to move at least one of the plurality of views that is expanded to a portion of the GUI rendered on the display appearing outside of the digital dashboard.

16. The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein the machine-readable medium further has stored therein program code configured to, in response to the trigger to expand the non-expanded view, maintain a relative layout on the dashboard of the plurality of the views.

17. The apparatus of

Assignees

• Netapp Inc

Inventors

• Pawlowski Brian J
• Truong Daniel Nghia
• Hackworth Brian M
• Shi Jing
• Majumdar Mrinmoy

Classifications

• H04L67/1097

  for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS] · CPC title

• H04L43/045 Primary

  for graphical visualisation of monitoring data · CPC title

• G06F3/04842

  Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements (G06F3/0482 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04L67/22

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G06F3/04847

  Interaction techniques to control parameter settings, e.g. interaction with sliders or dials · CPC title