Automated agent for the causal mapping of complex environments

• US 10,474,523 B1
• Filed: 10/27/2017
• Issued: 11/12/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/27/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Emc IP Holding Company LLC (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Emc IP Holding Company LLC (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Taig, Ran, Savir, Amihai, Gefen, Avitan
• Primary Examiner(s): Kudirka, Joseph R
• Application Number:
  US15/796,010
• Time in Patent Office: 746 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/263 Generation of test inputs, e.g. test vectors, patterns or sequences ; with adaptation of the tested hardware for testability with external testers

Abstract

An automated agent for the causal mapping of complex environments. Specifically, a disclosed method and system entails the application of statistical tools, or causality tests, to measure the strength and direction of causal relations between two or more environment components. Further, the execution of the causality tests may be an offline process that may be triggered periodically to account for changes or updates to an environment over time.

Claims

1. A method for mapping causality in computing systems, comprising:

obtaining an environment component list (ECL) comprising a plurality of entries for a plurality of environment components;

selecting at least one causality test;

conducting the at least one causality test using the ECL; and

obtaining at least one scaled causality result (SCR) based on conducting the at least one causality test,

wherein the at least one SCR comprises a symmetric matrix comprising values denoting a strength and a direction for causal relations between pairs of environment components of the plurality of environment components.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein each entry of the plurality of entries specifies a data resource and a data type associated with an environment component of the plurality of environment components.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each environment component of the plurality of environment components is one selected from a group consisting of a hardware component in a computing system, a software component in the computing system, and a firmware component in the computing system.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating at least one causality graph based on the at least one SCR.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

prior to obtaining the ECL;

issuing an environment request to an environment monitoring agent (EMA); and

receiving, from the EMA, an environment response comprising the ECL.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the environment request comprises an environment context, wherein the ECL is generated based on the environment context.

7. A computing system, comprising:

a computer processor;

a causality test library (CTL) storing computer readable program code for implementing a set of causality tests; and

a test applicator (TA) executing on the computer processor and operatively connected to the CTL,

wherein the TA is programmed to;

obtain an environment component list (ECL) comprising a plurality of entries for a plurality of environment components;

select at least one causality test;

based on the selecting, retrieve computer readable program code associated with the at least one causality test;

conduct the at least one causality test, by executing the computer readable program code associated with the at least one causality test, using the ECL; and

obtain at least one scaled causality result (SCR) based on conducting the at least one causality test,

wherein the at least one SCR comprises a symmetric matrix comprising values denoting a strength and a direction for causal relations between pairs of environment components of the plurality of environment components.

8. The computing system of claim 7, further comprising:

a graph generator (GG) executing on the computer processor and operatively connected to the TA, and programmed to;

obtain the at least one SCR from the TA; and

generate at least one causality graph based on the at least one SCR.

9. The computing system of claim 7, further comprising:

an application program interface (API) executing on the computer processor and operatively connected to the TA; and

an environment monitoring agent (EMA) executing on the computer processor and operatively connected to the API,

wherein the API is programmed to;

issue an environment request to the EMA;

receive, from the EMA, an environment response comprising the ECL; and

provide the ECL to the TA.

10. The computing system of claim 9, further comprising:

a set of environment components tracked by the EMA,

wherein the ECL specifies information associated with a subset of the set of environment components.

11. The computing system of claim 10, wherein each environment component in the set of environment components is one selected from a group consisting of a hardware component of the computing system, a software component of the computing system, and a firmware component of the computing system.

12. The computing system of claim 7, further comprising:

a causality mapping agent (CMA) executing on the computer processor and comprising at least the CTL and the TA.

13. A non-transitory computer readable medium (CRM) comprising computer readable program code, which when executed by a computer processor, enables the computer processor to:

obtain an environment component list (ECL) comprising a plurality of entries for a plurality of environment components;

select at least one causality test;

conduct the at least one causality test using the ECL; and

obtain at least one scaled causality result (SCR) based on conducting the at least one causality test,

wherein the at least one SCR comprises a symmetric matrix comprising values denoting a strength and a direction for causal relations between pairs of environment components of the plurality of environment components.

14. The non-transitory CRM of claim 13, wherein each entry of the plurality of entries specifies a data resource and a data type associated with an environment component of the plurality of environment components.

15. The non-transitory CRM of claim 14, wherein each environment component of the plurality of environment components is one selected from a group consisting of a hardware component in a computing system, a software component in the computing system, and a firmware component in the computing system.

16. The non-transitory CRM of claim 13, further comprising computer readable program code, which when executed by the computer processor, enables the computer processor to:

generate at least one causality graph based on the at least one SCR.

17. The non-transitory CRM of claim 13, further comprising computer readable program code, which when executed by the computer processor, enables the computer processor to:

prior to obtaining the ECL;

issue an environment request to an environment monitoring agent (EMA); and

receive, from the EMA, an environment response comprising the ECL.

18. The non-transitory CRM of claim 17, wherein the environment request comprises an environment context, wherein the ECL is generated based on the environment context.