Abstract:
A status information tracking system is used to detect anomalous conditions in a monitored system, generate error messages representative of the anomalous conditions, and determine whether the error messages should be transmitted to a remote monitoring station or queued for transmission at a later, more convenient, time. In this manner, non-critical repairs to equipment may be deferred until scheduled service periods thereby increasing service technician efficiency and lowering repair costs.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0001]     1. Field of the Invention  
         [0002]     This invention is related in general to the field of information handling systems. In particular, the invention consists of a status information reporting method used to defer the transmission of status information until a convenient time for receiving and responding to the status information.  
         [0003]     2. Description of the Prior Art  
         [0004]     Information handling systems, such as computer servers and computer data libraries, dynamically generate status information that may be transmitted to other locations or a central monitoring station. This status information may include an indication of the condition of the information handling system. When an anomalous condition occurs, the transmitted status information may also include an error message.  
         [0005]     The transmitted status information may be monitored by a user or even a computer processing device programmed to detect and respond to anomalous conditions. These monitoring programs traditionally include a procedure for correcting the underlying condition that generated the error messages. For example, an error message received from a computer data library may lead the monitoring program to alert a customer engineer that service on the equipment is required. Depending on the amount of information provided by the error message and the modus operandi of the company providing repair services, the customer engineer may have no choice but to address the reported problem as soon as possible. Often, this will result in service personnel being dispatched to remote service locations at inconvenient times, such as the middle of the night. These inconveniently timed dispatches usually result in a highly inefficient use of customer engineers&#39; time and a corresponding increase in costs.  
         [0006]     Based on the amount of information provided by the information handling system, it is common for a customer engineer to arrive at a repair location only to find that the equipment has a minor problem and is, in fact, operating within acceptable parameters. These types of service calls are best addressed during more convenient periods of time such as scheduled maintenance windows. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a method of queueing error messages until a convenient period of time.  
         [0007]     In U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,898, Toshihisa Fujii et al. disclose an event management system and a storage media for identifying and logging event information. The event management system and the storage media include an application for reporting an event message in response to an occurrence of a particular event and an event logging routine for identifying the source of the error message during a period of time in which the particular event occurred. Using a system similar to that disclosed by Toshihisa, error messages may be queued at the monitoring station until a scheduled maintenance window. However, Toshihisa does not address queueing error messages at the source of error generation. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a system that queues status information, especially error messages, until a period of time during which a response to the status information is more convenient. Additionally, it would be advantageous to have a system that generates status information from more than one time zone but delivers the information during a time period standardized by the monitoring station.  
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0008]     The invention disclosed herein is a status information tracking system that queues status information until a convenient period of time. This queued status information may include error messages representative of anomalous system conditions such as those that may occur in information handling systems. The queued status information may be transmitted to a remote monitoring location where a user or programmed processing device initiates remedial action in response to error messages. This remedial activity may include dispatching service technicians to repair system equipment.  
         [0009]     One aspect of this invention is that windows of time for receiving status information must be specified for various levels of importance or urgency. Generated status information is then given a value corresponding to the importance or urgency of the information and a matching service is used to determine which information should be transmitted during each reception window.  
         [0010]     Various other purposes and advantages of the invention will become clear from its description in the specification that follows and from the novel features particularly pointed out in the appended claims. Therefore, to the accomplishment of the objectives described above, this invention comprises the features hereinafter illustrated in the drawings, fully described in the detailed description of the preferred embodiments and particularly pointed out in the claims. However, such drawings and description disclose just a few of the various ways in which the invention may be practiced.  
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0011]      FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a status information tracking system in accordance with the invention including a status information generating unit, a queueing device, a matching service device, a data transmission device, and a monitoring station.  
         [0012]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of the monitoring station of  FIG. 1  including a receiving unit, reception windows, and an optional response unit.  
         [0013]      FIG. 3  is a block diagram of one embodiment of the status information tracking system of  FIG. 1 .  
         [0014]      FIG. 4  is a flow-chart illustrating the process of defining reception windows, generating status information, queueing status information, matching queued information to predefined reception windows, and transmitting matched status information to a monitoring station.  
     
    
     DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS  
       [0015]     This invention is based on the idea of using a status information tracking system (SITS) to specify reception windows according to importance or urgency, generate and store status information, match the stored information to a corresponding reception window, and transmit the matched information to a monitoring station for possible remedial action. Referring to the figures, wherein like parts are designated with the same reference numerals and symbols,  FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating a SITS system  10  including a status information generating unit  12  , a queueing device  14 , a matching service device  16 , a data transmission device  18 , and a monitoring station  20 .  
         [0016]     The invention disclosed herein may be implemented as a method, apparatus or article of manufacture using standard programming or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof. The term “article of manufacture” as used herein refers to code or logic implemented in hardware or computer readable media such as optical storage devices, and volatile or non-volatile memory devices. Such hardware may include, but is not limited to, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), programmable logic arrays (PLAs), microprocessors, or other similar processing devices.  
         [0017]     Optical storage devices may include compact-disk read-only memory devices (CD-ROMs) or other types of optical disks. Volatile and non-volatile memory devices include programmable read-only memory (PROM), erasable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically-erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), random-access memory (RAM), static random-access memory (SRAM), dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), magnetic disk drives, tape cartridges, and other types of data storage devices.  
         [0018]     Algorithmic instructions that are placed into computer readable media are retrieved and implemented by the processing device. These algorithmic instructions may be accessed through any transmission media that can accommodate the transmission and reception of digital data such as local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANS), wireless networks, or the Internet. Those skilled in the art will recognize that modifications may be made to the configurations set forth below without departing from the scope of the present invention, and that the article of manufacture may comprise any medium capable of storing digital information.  
         [0019]     The status information generating unit  12  may be either a hardware device or a computer processing device programmed to access the condition of a monitored system  22  such as an information handling system. The computer processing device may be an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a complex programmable-logic device (CPLD), a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a micro-processor, or other similar device adapted to run software algorithms. The queueing device  14  may also be either a hardware device or a computer processing device programmed to store information. Likewise, the matching service may be performed in either a hardware or computer processing device. The data transmission device  18  is one which communicates with the monitoring station  20  through direct electrical connections, through the use of radio waves, through optical connections, or other communication device known and used in the industry. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Networks (WANs), fiber-optic cable networks, wireless networks, and the Internet.  
         [0020]     Referring to  FIG. 2 , a block diagram illustrates the elements of the monitoring station  20 . A receiving unit  24  receives information from the data transmission device  18 . A reception window creation device  26  is utilized to generate predetermined periods of time corresponding to specific levels of importance or urgency. This reception window creation device  26  may also be programmed within a computer processing device. The invention may optionally include a response unit  28  for directing remedial action in response to received status information containing one or more error messages.  
         [0021]     An exemplary implementation of the invention begins with a status information generating unit  12  receiving information from a monitored device. This information could be any datum indicating an operating condition of the monitored device. In this example, the status information is an error message indicating that a problem has occurred in the monitored system  22 . The error message is passed to the queueing device where it is compared against a table of information provided by the matching service  16 . This table includes a listing of error messages that may require service to the monitored device  22 . The listing of error messages may be divided into sets based on how critical the underlying problem is to the operation of the monitored system. Each set of error messages may be associated with a set of reception windows during which the monitoring station  20  may be informed of the problem. In this example, the reception windows correspond to periods of time during which maintenance personnel may be available to repair the monitored system. The listing of error and set of repair windows is defined by a user, usually at the monitoring station  20 .  
         [0022]     The matching service  16  is responsible for determining if the error message is included in the listing of error messages and whether the current time is within one of the reception windows associated with this particular type of error message. If it is, the error message is transmitted to the monitoring station  20 . If the error message is listed but an appropriate reception window is not open, the queueing device  14  stores the information until the current time is within a reception window. If the error message is not in the listing of error messages, then it is discarded. Alternatively, a notification may be sent to the monitoring station or a log may be generated at the monitoring station indicating an unlisted error condition has occurred. A user can review these notifications or logs to determine whether additional error messages should be added to the listing of error messages.  
         [0023]     One embodiment of the invention is illustrated in the block drawing of  FIG. 3 . The purpose of this embodiment is to allow non-acute errors to call home at convenient times, either during normal business hours, or during a pre-determined time interval. The monitored system is an IBM 3590® drive  22   a.  An error detection unit  12   a  monitors the 3590 drive and generates an error message  30  if an anomalous condition is observed. A software algorithm referred to as Format_sim  14   a  is responsible for either queueing the error message or passing it to a monitoring station  20  ( FIG. 1 ). The main program  14   b  of Format_sim  14   a  checks for a status return code of “DEFER” from the subroutine CH_filter  14   c.  The CH_filter subroutine is a simple call to rsCheckDefer  16   a  that returns either True or False indicating a call home should or should not be deferred, respectively.  
         [0024]     The rsCheckDefer program  16   a  takes input from the CH_filter  14   c  and determines if this information matches any of the conditions that are defined for a deferred call home. If there is a match, then rsCheckDefer  16   a  returns True, otherwise False.  
         [0025]     The programs rsRegDefer  26   a  and rsRegService  26   b  are used to define the reception windows, i.e., the periods of time and conditions during which error messages  30  may be transmitted to the monitoring station  20 . RsRegDefer is used to register or alter conditions that cause a deferred call home to occur and the associated service event defining when the current state of the deferred call home becomes active. RsRegService is used to register service events such as a specific day of the week and time or a series of days and times. In this embodiment of the invention, Format_sim  14   a  assumes the role of the queueing device  14  ( FIG. 1 ), rsCheckDefer acts as the matching service device  16  ( FIG. 1 ), and programs rsRegDefer  26   a  and rsRegService  26   b  combine to perform the function of the reception window creation device  26  ( FIG. 1 ). These elements are illustrated as software algorithms that are executed within computer processing devices. These software algorithms may collectively execute within a single processing device or may be dispersed to several disparate processors.  
         [0026]      FIG. 4  is a flow-chart illustrating a deferred transmission algorithm  32  including defining reception windows (step  34 ), generating status information (step  36 ), queueing status information (step  38 ), matching status information (step  40 ) to predefined reception windows, and transmitting matched status information (step  42 ).  
         [0027]     In step  34 , a user enters the current date and time and all potential service events into the rsRegService program  26   b.  In this example of the invention, a separate service event is input for three types of services: (1) one day a week starting at a specified time, (2) weekdays starting at a specified time, and (3) more than one consecutive day starting at a specified time. The user then enters defer conditions into rsRegDefer  26   a.  As each defer condition is defined, the user selects which service event corresponds to that defer condition.  
         [0028]     Step  36  is the generation of an error message by an error detection unit  12   a.  In step  36 , the main program  14   b  queries the CH_filter subroutine  14   c  which, in turn, queries the rsCheckDefer program  16   a  to determine if the error message  30  ( FIG. 3 ) should be queued or transmitted. If the error message is queued, then the rsCheckDefer program  16   a  determines in step  40  when conditions for transmitting the error message are present and notifies the queueing programs  14   a,    14   b,    14   c  that the error message may be transmitted. The error message is subsequently transmitted in step  42 . The error message is received at the monitoring station  20  in step  44  and the optional response unit  28  ( FIG. 2 ) dispatches remedial activity in optional step  46 .  
         [0029]     Those skilled in the art of making status information tracking systems may develop other embodiments of the present invention. For example, the reception window creation device  26  may be implemented in a processing device either on the transmission side of the SITS  10  or at the monitoring station  20 .  
         [0030]     The terms and expressions which have been employed in the foregoing specification are used herein as terms of description and not of limitation, and there is no intention in the use of such terms and expressions of excluding equivalents of the features shown and described or portions thereof, it being recognized that the scope of the invention is defined and limited only by the claims which follow. Other embodiments of the invention may be implemented by those skilled in the art of tracking status information.