Dynamic network monitoring

• US 10,257,071 B2
• Filed: 06/16/2017
• Issued: 04/09/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 04/08/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated (Kyndryl Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Baughman, Aaron K., Locke, Richard A., O'Connell, Brian M., Snitzer, Brian J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Scott, Randy A
• Application Number:
  US15/624,742
• Publication Number:
  US 20170289010A1
• Time in Patent Office: 662 Days
• Field of Search: 709217, 709223, 709224, 709226, 370328, 370329, 370338
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/4557 Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45595 Network integration; Enabling network access in virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/20 the monitoring system or the monitored elements being virtualised, abstracted or software-defined entities, e.g. SDN or NFV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/822 Collecting or measuring resource availability data

Abstract

Approaches for monitoring performance in a networked environment are provided. An approach includes monitoring, using a first metric, performance of a first host running a virtual machine. The approach also includes determining, using a computer device, a second metric based on the virtual machine being migrated from the first host to a second host, wherein the second metric is a function of: (i) the first metric and (ii) a comparison of the first host and the second host. The approach further includes monitoring, using the second metric, performance of the second host running the virtual machine.

Claims

1. A system for monitoring performance in a networked environment, comprising:

a hardware CPU, a hardware computer readable memory and a hardware computer readable storage medium;

program instructions to determine a length of a first edge of a traffic triangle based on a first vector that includes components associated with quantified performance characteristics of a first host which is comprised of a first hardware infrastructure;

program instructions to determine a length of a second edge of the traffic triangle based on a second vector that includes components associated with quantified performance characteristics of a second host which is comprised of a second hardware infrastructure;

program instructions to determine a multiplier based on a comparison of the length of the first edge of the traffic triangle to the length of the second edge of the traffic triangle;

program instructions to multiply a monitoring threshold associated with the first host by the multiplier to calculate an adjusted monitoring threshold; and

program instructions to determine a monitoring threshold for the second host when a virtual machine is moved between the first host and the second host, wherein the monitoring threshold for the second host is based on both the monitoring threshold associated with the first host and a comparison between the quantified performance characteristics of the first host and the second host,

wherein the program instructions are stored on the hardware computer readable storage medium for execution by the hardware CPU via the hardware computer readable memory.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the quantified performance characteristics of the first host and the quantified performance characteristics of the second host include at least one of:

network hops;

network latency;

CPU performance;

memory performance; and

I/O performance.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising program instructions to:

identify a plurality of potential new hosts for a move;

for each one of the plurality of potential new hosts, determine a respective angle of a respective traffic triangle including the first host, the one of the plurality of potential new hosts, and an edge node of the traffic triangle; and

select an optimal one of the plurality of potential new hosts based on the determined respective angles.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the plurality of potential new hosts includes the second host.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising program instructions to receive notice of of the movement of the virtual machine from the first host to the second host, wherein the virtual machine comprises a website server, and the first host and the second host are separate cloud computing nodes in a cloud computing environment.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising an edge node being a node in the networked environment through which traffic to the virtual machine is routed.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the traffic triangle including the first host, the second host, and an edge node corresponds to a cloud resource transition.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising an edge node being a hardware node in the networked environment.

9. The system of claim 5, further comprising program instructions to determine whether the move is acceptable based on comparing an angle of the traffic triangle to at least one threshold, wherein the at least one threshold comprises a lower limit and an upper limit.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the move is acceptable in response to the angle of the traffic triangle being greater than the lower limit and less than the upper limit.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the move is prevented in response to the angle of the traffic triangle being less than the lower limit or greater than the upper limit.

12. The system of claim 5, further comprising determining whether the move is mandatory.

13. The system of claim 12, further comprising determining an optimal new host based on another traffic triangle which includes the first host, an edge node, and a third host in response to the move being mandatory.

14. The system of claim 13, further comprising program instructions to determine the monitoring threshold associated with the first host based on a historical average response time.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the second host has different quantified performance characteristics than the first host.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the second host differs from the first host in at least one of the following performance characteristics:

network hops;

network latency;

CPU performance, such as cycles per second;

memory performance, such as pages per second; and

I/O performance, such as I/O reads per second.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising program instructions to define a minimum threshold and a maximum threshold which override the calculated adjusted monitoring threshold.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising program instructions to transmit metadata associated with the first host and the second host when a virtual machine is migrated from the first host to the second host.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the metadata includes date and time of the migration from the first host to the second host;

specifications of the first host;

specifications of the second host;

number of other virtual machines on the first host and/or the second host.