Patent ID: 7558850
Filing Date: 2009-07-07
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method for managing a network providing Input/Output (I/O) paths between a plurality of host systems and storage volumes in storage systems, comprising: providing an application service connection definition for each of the I/O paths from a host to a storage volume; providing at least one service level guarantee definition indicating performance criteria to satisfy service requirements included in at least one service level agreement with at least one customer for network resources; associating each service level guarantee definition with at least one application service connection definition; gathering, by a virtualization controller mapping physical storage resources to virtual volumes in a virtualization layer, Input/Output (I/O) performance data for I/O requests transmitted through the I/O paths; transmitting, by the virtualization controller, the gathered performance data to a service level agreement server; determining, by the service level agreement server, performance data maintained for the application service connection for which the gathered performance data was received; updating, by the service level agreement server, the determined performance data with the performance data received from the virtualization controller; monitoring, by the service level agreement server, whether the performance data for application service connections indicating the I/O requests transmitted through the I/O paths satisfy the performance criteria indicated in the service level guarantee definition associated with the application service connection definitions for the I/O path; and transmitting, by the service level agreement server, commands to the virtualization controller to throttle I/O transmission over at least one connection in response to determining that the performance data for at least one application service connection for the connection does not satisfy the performance criteria.