Managing SANs with scalable hosts

1. A system comprising:

a processor;

a connection device for connecting to other components via a storage area network (SAN); and

management application running on said processor that provides the following functionality:

displaying, within a host-centric logical view of the SAN, a host partition hierarchy and storage resource ownership for an attached scalable host system having a plurality of logical and physical partitions, at least some of the partitions having dedicated HBAs and SAN connectivity via a bundled fibre channel switch in the host system, wherein said host-centric view includes the host system, hosting operating systems (OSes), hosted OSes for each hosting OS, OS volumes for each hosted OS, and logical mapping of each OS volume to a SAN storage resource; and

providing a view of a connectivity of hosting and trusted components within the host-centric logical view, said components selected from among partitions, blades, and clusters.

2. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

a storage device; and

a discovery utility associated with said management application that provides the following features:

deploying SAN agents to discover each physical host partition with physical connection in the SAN, said deploying deploys full function agents to hosting OSes and lightweight minimal function agents to hosted OSes, wherein said agents are SAN-level agents that are not OS-specific;

optionally deploying storage resource management agents on hosted partitions; and

collecting the information required to enable the views of both the host clusters and the blade farms via T11/FC-GS-4 extended platform registration, wherein extended platform registration allows platforms, including the blades and the host systems to register with the fabric, and to also indicate the system identifier (ID) or cluster ID to which the platform belongs.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein:

one or more logical OSes share one or more HBAs (host bus adapters) connected to the SAN, and one or more trusted hosting partitions own the HBA(s) and host a plurality of hosted OS partitions, which are not trusted partitions and which have a virtual view of the HBA; and

said providing a view of the connectivity comprises providing a view of how hosting partitions, blades, and cluster members physically connect into the SAN, wherein the topology view is further extended to highlight all host partitions in a physical SAN topology view that belong to a particular scalable host.

4. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

an input device; and

an output device;

wherein said displaying functions of said management application comprises:

displaying a graphical user interface (GUI) on said output device; and

providing selectable options for a user to select a view desired for display,

wherein a top level view is selected from among display of one of partitions, blades, and clusters, wherein said selectable options includes a “find” function displayed within the GUI to enable the user to locate one of a host partition and an OS volume among stacks of OS partitions and OS volumes within the SAN.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein said displaying functions comprises:

enabling user selection from among a scalable host-centric view and a physical host partition topology view, wherein an owning host system is located when in the host-centric view;

automatically generating the view selected by the user utilizing data within configuration tables; and

enabling the user to toggle between a top level view and a second view when the user selects an OS volume while in the top level view, wherein said second view displays a mapping of the selected OS volume to Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) Logical Units (LUs) in the SAN.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein said display functions further comprises:

when a selection of a scalable host is received, automatically providing a next window within a split screen configuration of the GUI to simultaneously display both the host centric view and topology view in separate window panes;

concurrently displaying the host centric view and a topology view in adjacent windows within the GUI; and

enabling dynamic change of the topology view to highlight hosting partitions associated with a scalable host selected by a user within the host centric view.

7. A storage area network (SAN) comprising:

a plurality of managed components coupled to a fabric of the SAN; and

a SAN manager also coupled to the fabric and which includes a management application that provides the following features:

displaying, within a host-centric logical view of the SAN, a host partition hierarchy and storage resource ownership for an attached scalable host system having a plurality of logical and physical partitions, at least some of the partitions having dedicated HBAs and SAN connectivity via a bundled fibre channel switch in the host system, wherein said host-centric view includes the host system, hosting operating systems (OSes), hosted OSes for each hosting OS, OS volumes for each hosted OS, and logical mapping of each OS volume to a SAN storage resource; and

providing a view of a connectivity of hosting and trusted components within the host-centric logical view, said components selected from among partitions, blades, and clusters.

8. The SAN of claim 7 , said management application further comprising a discovery utility associated with said management application that provides the following:

deploying SAN agents to discover each physical host partition with physical connection in the SAN, said deploying deploys full function agents to hosting OSes and lightweight minimal function agents to hosted OSes, wherein said agents are SAN-level agents that are not OS-specific;

optionally deploying storage resource management agents on hosted partitions; and

collecting the information required to enable the views of both the host clusters and the blade farms via Ti11/FC-GS-4 extended platform registration, wherein extended platform registration allows platforms, including the blades and the host systems to register with the fabric, and to also indicate the system identifier (ID) or cluster ID to which the platform belongs.

9. The SAN of claim 7 , wherein:

one or more logical OSes share one or more UBAs (host bus adapters) connected to the SAN, and one or more trusted hosting partitions own the HBA(s) and host a plurality of hosted OS partitions, which are not trusted partitions and which have a virtual view of the UBA; and

said providing a view of the connectivity comprises providing a view of how hosting partitions, blades, and cluster members physically connect into the SAN, wherein the topology view is further extended to highlight all host partitions in a physical SAN topology view that belong to a particular scalable host.

10. The SAN of claim 7 , said SAN manager further comprising:

an input device; and

an output device;

wherein said displaying functions of said management application comprises:

displaying a graphical user interface (GUI) on said output device; and

providing selectable options for a user to select a view desired for display,

wherein a top level view is selected from among display of one of partitions, blades, and clusters, wherein said selectable options includes a “find” function displayed within the GUI to enable the user to locate one of a host partition and an OS volume among stacks of OS partitions and OS volumes within the SAN.

11. The SAN of claim 7 , wherein said management application further comprises:

enabling user selection from among a scalable host-centric view and a physical host partition topology view, wherein an owning host system is located when in the host-centric view;

automatically generating the view selected by the user utilizing data within configuration tables; and

enabling the user to toggle between the top level view and a second view when the user selects an OS volume while in the top level view, wherein said second view displays a mapping of the selected OS volume to Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) Logical Units (LUs) in the SAN.

12. The SAN of claim 11 , wherein said management application further comprises:

when a selection of a scalable host is received, automatically providing a next window within a split screen configuration of the GUI to simultaneously display both the host centric view and topology view in separate window panes;

concurrently displaying the host centric view and a topology view in adjacent windows within the GUI; and

enabling dynamic change of the topology view to highlight hosting partitions associated with a scalable host selected by a user within the host centric view.

13. A computer program product comprising:

a recordable type medium; and

program instructions on said recordable type medium including code for:

displaying, within a host-centric logical view of the SAN, a host partition hierarchy and storage resource ownership for an attached scalable host system having a plurality of logical and physical partitions, at least some of the partitions having dedicated HBAs and SAN connectivity via a bundled fibre channel switch in the host system, wherein said host-centric view includes the host system, hosting operating systems (OSes), hosted OSes for each hosting OS, OS volumes for each hosted OS, and logical mapping of each OS volume to a SAN storage resource;

providing a view of a connectivity of hosting and trusted components within the host-centric logical view, said components selected from among partitions, blades, and clusters;

wherein one or more logical OSes share one or more HBAs (host bus adapters) connected to the SAN, and one or more trusted hosting partitions own the HBA(s) and host a plurality of hosted OS partitions, which are not trusted partitions and which have a virtual view of the HBA; and

said providing a view of the connectivity comprises providing a view of how hosting partitions, blades, and cluster members physically connect into the SAN, wherein the topology view is further extended to highlight all host partitions in a physical SAN topology view that belong to a particular scalable host.

14. The computer program product of claim 13 , further comprising program code for:

deploying SAN agents to discover each physical host partition with physical connection in the SAN, said deploying deploys full function agents to hosting OSes and lightweight minimal function agents to hosted OSes, wherein said agents are SAN-level agents that are not OS-specific;

optionally deploying storage resource management agents on hosted partitions; and

collecting the information required to enable the views of both the host clusters and the blade farms via T11/FC-GS-4extended platform registration, wherein extended platform registration allows platforms, including the blades and the host systems to register with the fabric, and to also indicate the system identifier (ID) or cluster ID to which the platform belongs.

15. The computer program product of claim 13 , further comprising program code for:

displaying a graphical user interface (GUI) with selectable options for a user to select a view desired for display, wherein a top level view is selected from among display of one of partitions, blades, and clusters, wherein said selectable options includes a “find” function displayed within the GUI to enable the user to locate one of a host partition and an OS volume among stacks of OS partitions and OS volumes within the SAN; and

displaying a respective view within the GUI based on a user selection.

16. The computer program product of claim 13 , further comprising program code for:

enabling user selection from among a scalable host-centric view and a physical host partition topology view, wherein an owning host system is located when in the host-centric view;

automatically generating the view selected by the user utilizing data within configuration tables; and

enabling the user to toggle between the top level view and a second view when the user selects an OS volume while in the top level view, wherein said second view displays a mapping of the selected OS volume to Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) Logical Units (LUs) in the SAN.

17. The computer program product of claim 16 , further comprising program code for:

when a selection of a scalable host is received, automatically providing a next window within a split screen configuration of the GUI to simultaneously display both the host centric view and topology view in separate window panes;

concurrently displaying the host centric view and a topology view in adjacent windows within the GUI; and

enabling dynamic change of the topology view to highlight hosting partitions associated with a scalable host selected by a user within the host centric view.

18. The system of claim 1 , said management application further providing the functionality of:

managing the partitioned hosts by extending SAN manager host-centric logical views to show (1) the host partition hierarchy and (2) the storage resource ownership for a SAN-attached scalable host; and

extending the SAN manager view to show how hosting (trusted) partitions, blades, and/or cluster members physically connect to a SAN.

19. The SAN of claim 7 , said management application further providing the functionality of:

managing the partitioned hosts by extending SAN manager host-centric logical views to show (1) the host partition hierarchy and (2) the storage resource ownership for a SAN-attached scalable host; and

extending the SAN manager view to show how hosting (trusted) partitions, blades, and/or cluster members physically connect to a SAN.

20. The computer program product of claim 13 , further comprising program code for:

managing the partitioned hosts by extending SAN manager host-centric logical views to show (1) the host partition hierarchy and (2) the storage resource ownership for a SAN-attached scalable host; and

extending the SAN manager view to show how hosting (trusted) partitions, blades, and/or cluster members physically connect to a SAN.