A toolkit-based approach to policy-managed storage

The goal of policy-based storage management is to allow storage resources in an IT complex to be managed by setting comparatively high-level policies, rather than by doing low-level manual configuration. We describe the policy management and rule execution architecture in a prototype autonomic storage manager being developed in IBM Research. The prototype uses generic communication, a policy repository, and policy translation and execution services provided by an autonomic manager toolkit. The prototype supports a set of policy templates developed from a policy-based storage management framework.