Alan J Stuart

US Patent:

7263583, Aug 28, 2007

Filed:

Oct 5, 2004

Appl. No.:

10/959859

Inventors:

Robert A. Hood - Boca Raton FL, US
Alan L. Stuart - Scarsdale NY, US

Assignee:

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

International Classification:

G06F 12/14

US Classification:

711114, 705400

Abstract:

In one aspect the invention provides a signal bearing medium tangibly embodying a program of machine-readable instructions that are executable by a digital processing apparatus to perform operations to determine a maintenance fee for a data storage system. The operations include monitoring at least one data storage device during operation of the data storage system to determine a duty cycle and determining a current value of the maintenance fee based at least in part on the determined duty cycle. In a further disk drive-based embodiment the operations may include, or be instead, determining a disk drive redundancy configuration of disk drives of a data storage system. The operations then compare the determined duty cycle to a threshold value and assert a redundancy configuration change signal based on the result of the comparison. For a RAID configuration embodiment having a RAID level, the asserting operation asserts a RAID level change signal based on the result of the comparison.

US Patent:

20070288401, Dec 13, 2007

Filed:

Apr 16, 2007

Appl. No.:

11/735546

Inventors:

Robert Hood - Boca Raton FL, US
Alan Stuart - Scarsdale NY, US

International Classification:

G06F 17/00
G06F 12/00

US Classification:

705400000, 711114000

Abstract:

In one aspect the invention provides a signal bearing medium tangibly embodying a program of machine-readable instructions that are executable by a digital processing apparatus to perform operations to determine a maintenance fee for a data storage system. The operations include monitoring at least one data storage device during operation of the data storage system to determine a duty cycle and determining a current value of the maintenance fee based at least in part on the determined duty cycle. In a further disk drive-based embodiment the operations may include, or be instead, determining a disk drive redundancy configuration of disk drives of a data storage system. The operations then compare the determined duty cycle to a threshold value and assert a redundancy configuration change signal based on the result of the comparison. For a RAID configuration embodiment having a RAID level, the asserting operation asserts a RAID level change signal based on the result of the comparison.