Patent ID: 9082091
Filing Date: 2015-07-14
Classification: G06F,G06Q,H04L

Abstract:
1. A system for managing assets in a co-location facilities environment, the system comprising: a central relational database containing information associated with assets and with agreements regarding access to the assets, wherein the assets are associated with two or more geographically distinct data center co-location facilities of a service provider, where each data center co-location facility houses computing systems included in the assets, where the computing systems includes racks of servers and storage devices housed in hot and cool zones and is used to transport data traffic between the racks of servers as well as transport traffic to a world exterior to the data center, and wherein the agreements include multiple separate agreements between a customer and the service provider, the service provider enabling users from the customer to access the assets in the two or more geographically distinct data center co- location facilities based on the multiple separate agreements, wherein a permissions model is configured to enable at least one user from the customer to be designated as having authority to grant permissions to access the assets, the permissions granted to other users of the same customer, wherein an asset hierarchical model is configured to enable grouping of the assets in one or more asset groups, and a user group model is configured to enable grouping of the users of the customer in one or more user groups and according to the geographically distinct co-location facilities, the user groups and the asset groups managed independently of one another, wherein the permissions model and the asset hierarchical model are configured to cooperate using the granted permissions to access the assets to enable a first user of the customer to login using a first login identification (ID) to access a first asset in a first geographically distinct data center co-location facility, wherein access to the first asset is based on association of the first user with a first agreement in the central relational database between the customer and the service provider, including a server, in a first asset group, and wherein the first user is enabled to login using the first login ID to access a different asset in a second geographically distinct data center co-location facility, wherein access to the different asset is based on association of the first user with a second, separate agreement in the central relational database between the customer and the service provider, the different asset being in a different asset group, a permission data store that is configured to keep track of the permissions granted to the users, to verify whether the users are associated with one or more of the multiple separate agreements in the central relational database, and to map a login ID of a user with its permissions, assets, and agreement information, so that at least one of the permissions model and the asset hierarchical model are configured reference the permission data store, and wherein components of the system are implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of both, and where components of the system that are implemented in software are stored in an executable format on one or more non- transitory machine-readable mediums.