Enterprise Storage Management SystemUse Cases:Case 1: Backing Up Vital Company Data ManuallyCase 2: Backing Up Vital Company Data AutomaticallyCase 3: Recovering DataCase 5: Monitoring the File System/Server StorageWith a high storage requirement for Lincoln Telephone Company, it is critical for the company to monitor the growth of the data. The rate of the space utilization by the applications determines the need for additional storage disks. A smooth transition mCase 6: Switching Backup DevicesCase 7: Formatting the DiskCase 9: Reporting the Backup FailuresCase 10: Identifying Bad Disks in The SystemCase 11: Creating an Analysis ReportCase 12: Archiving Dormant FilesEnterprise Storage Management System Dan Glasser, Madeline Hardojo, Anand Sundaram, Nate Wells, and Mohamed Fayad, PhD {dglasser, anands, mhardojo, nwells, fayad}@cse.unl.edu Abstract: Enterprise Storage Management System is an interactive and user-friendly program that will enable the Lincoln Telephone Company to efficiently manage their storage system. With this system, the Lincoln Telephone Company will be able to monitor the file system in the storage, optimally backup; both manually and automatically, recover their data while maintaining its correctness, and provide statistic information as a reference for the system administrator. The system also provides some maintenance functions such as identifying bad or full disks, assigning and redirecting available resources while keeping the integrity of the system, and compressing the inactive files. Background: In a world where information is the key to success, every company must take adequate measures to protect its data. In a typical corporate world, tons of information flows across the network that needs to be processed. This data that is being used for processing needs to be stored in a safe and secure medium that is also easily manageable. With the advent of new storage technology and falling price of the storage, IT managers buy more storage devices for their rapidly increasing corporate data. This process in turn makes managing the growing storage very complex. Lincoln Telephone Company wants to have a solution for the growth of storage in the company. The architecture of Lincoln Telephone Company is illustrated in Figure 1. The company has a number of servers to accommodate its applications and data. When a client requests some information from the system, the server will check whether the desired data is located in the server or not. If it is not, the server will locate the data from the various backup disks. They would like to have this process automated with a user-friendly system. Description of Program that is Wanted: The storage management system should address the following issues:  An efficient mechanism to backup and recover the data – this may include a distributed backup or centralized backup  Monitor the file system in order to automatically assign and extend additional available resources Replace a backup resource with an available resource if the backup reaches a threshold capacity.  Mechanism to format the available disk with the required File System in a multi platform network  Add/Delete resources to/from the storage network in a multi platform scenario  Report backup failures due to network failures. Reschedule the incomplete backup tasks as soon as the network is up.  Identify bad disks in the network and remove them. Backup/recover the disk before doing so.  Automatically identify the resources that are added or deleted to the network.  Create an Analysis report of the backups that will help users schedule the backups efficiently.  Identifying dormant files and automatically compress them to be archived in a backup disk Detailed Requirements: Lincoln Telephone Company, for protection against destruction of its data, either accidentally or intentionally, feels the vital need to back up its valuable data such as customer and billing information on a daily basis; sometimes even hourly basis. Lincoln Telephone Company’s backup servers are kept in geographically distributed buildings. The Enterprise Storage Management System should be able to manually and automatically backup the data and be able to recover the data if needed. A system operator should have the ability to set the backup schedule and frequency. Also, the system should be able to recognize if the data is corrupted and should be able to pull out the latest backup and recover the lost data. Clients Clients ClientsServer 1 Server 2 Server 3 Backups Backups Backups Fig. 1 - The ArchitectureAs we can see in Fig. 1, the servers of Lincoln Telephone Company are accommodating applications and data. The storage of data in the servers may be full. Therefore, the Storage Management System should be able to detect if the server is nearing capacity. If this condition is detected, the system should automatically allocate a place in the backup disk for the data and store it. This would provide the necessary free storage space in the server for the application or data. Also, the Lincoln Telephone Company has purchased many disks for backup when the price for storage dropped. All the backup disks, both non-empty and empty, are connected through a network. The company would like the system to be able to notice if the backup disk currently used to store the data from the server is almost full and to automatically redirect the data to the empty backup disk. When accessing a disk for backup, the user should be able to specify what file format to store the data in. If the user does not care what format the data is stored in, the Store Management System should choose the optimal and convenient format to store the data. In all cases, the system should be able to accommodate a wide range of storage formats. Additionally, the system should be able to provide data in a given format to a user in the possibly different format that they request. In a multi platform network, the requirements for the storage media are very high. The system should be able to easily detect any new resources that have been added to the network. The system should also be able to remove any resource from the network that is no longer needed or needs to be relocated. This will help the storage management system to manage the growing requirements of the storage disks by allocating the free available disk for backup purposes. Essentially, whenever