Patent ID: 8381213

Claim:
A method for dynamic management of system resources in a data storage system comprising: producing a hint as a metadata from an application at a hint producer; wherein the hint comprises information relating to an application; wherein the hint producer produces hints with information at a first contextual level of contextual levels; wherein each of the contextual levels denotes a different level of abstraction of the resources of the data storage system; transforming the hint produced by the hint producer into a transformed hint at a hint transformer, wherein the transformed hint comprises transformed information at a second contextual level; wherein the transformed information of the second contextual level is mapped from the information of the hint produced by the hint producer at the first contextual level; wherein the hint transformer transforms the hint that a particular event is going to occur to a request to move data to or keep data specified in the hint in a particular storage tier; wherein the information of the transformed hint is at a level of abstraction understood and capable of being used by the hint consumer; wherein the hint consumer consumes hints at the second contextual level; consuming the transformed hint at the hint consumer; determining, at the hint consumer in a storage device, how to respond to the transformed hint and whether or not to act on the information in the transformed hint; wherein the hint consumer is enabled to respond to the transformed hint in a variety of ways based on one or more policies; wherein the hint consumer is enabled to consider multiple transformed hints; wherein the hint consumer is enabled to determine if the transformed hint is for an active target window; and wherein the hint consumer is further enabled to determine if the multiple transformed hints are in conflict with each other to resolve transformed hint conflicts.