Patent ID: 9639341
Date: 2017-05-02
CPC Classifications: G06F,G06Q

Claim:
1. A method for generating hardware upgrade recommendations for a managed network of devices, the method comprising: receiving, using one or more computing devices, network environment information, hardware configuration information and software configuration information, wherein the network environment information includes data about the network of managed devices received from one or more network management systems and wherein the data includes network architecture data including hardware devices in the network of managed devices and network connections between those hardware devices; collecting, at the one or more computing devices, hardware/software dependency information including relationships between hardware devices and software including one or more of applications and protocols; accessing, at the one or more computing devices, product information including software constraints on hardware; and generating, using the one or more computing devices, a hardware upgrade recommendation for the devices in the managed network, the recommendation being based on the network environment information, the hardware configuration information, the software configuration information, the hardware/software dependency information, and the product information, wherein generating the hardware recommendation includes one of determining that a plurality of existing devices can be collapsed into one new device having a larger capacity than the plurality of existing devices and determining that a device does not have any unused ports and providing a recommendation of an upgrade to a product that is compatible with the device without any unused ports and which can be inserted into a slot in the device to expand the capacity by providing unused ports.