Method and system for managing performance of data transfers for a data access system

• US 20020052947A1
• Filed: 04/03/2001
• Published: 05/02/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Colasante, Frederico, Duimovich, Frank, Godin, Benoit, Hashim, Mohamed
• Granted Patent: US 7,277,938 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5016 based on statistics of service availability, e.g. in percentage or over a given time
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5058 Service discovery by the service manager
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/509 wherein the managed service relates to media content delivery, e.g. audio, video or TV
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

A method and system of managing performance of data transfers for a data access system providing data transfers from content servers to remote users in response to user requests, includes calculating performance data summaries at least at a subset of the user sites and transmitting the data for receipt for remote summarization and storage. The data include information indicative of transfer size, throughput, transfer time, source, time and date. The method and system include selecting a quantity of the performance data received, preferably over a time interval, and summarizing and storing the data. Further summarizes can also be calculated. The data may be used to ascertain conditions and manage the performance of the data access system. In the preferred embodiment, the method and system measure performance of Internet HTTP server applications. The method and system can monitor the performance of a plurality of data access systems, selecting performance data depending on the source of the data transfer for separate summarization and storage thus enabling a high volume of data transfer monitoring.

Claims

1. A method of managing a data access system for transferring data between a server system and a plurality of user sites upon request from said user sites and wherein at least a subset of said user sites comprise performance monitoring agents capable of calculating and transmitting performance data indicative of the data transfer performance of data access systems, said method comprising the steps of:

receiving performance data transmitted from said performance monitor agents;

selecting a quantity of data received;

summarizing the quantity of data received; and

storing said summarized quantity of data into a database.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the quantity of data selected represents performance of the data access system for a specific time interval.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the time interval is 15 minutes.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the performance data includes a timestamp means identifying a time when the performance data was observed and wherein the step of selecting comprises collecting data that was observed during the same time interval.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising, before the receiving step, the steps of

receiving data indicative of the performance of a plurality of data access systems from said performance monitoring agents;

and

filtering said data received to pertain to a selected data access system.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the performance data is correlated to factors of interest.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the server system comprises at least one Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the performance data comprises a summary of performance metrics for a HTTP page.

9. The method of claim 1 further including the step of using the stored summarized data as a basis for ascertaining quality of service conditions of said data access system.

10. The method of claim 1 further including the step of calculating further summarized data using said stored summarized data.

11. A performance management system for managing a data access system for transferring data between a server system and a plurality of user sites upon request from said user sites and wherein at least a subset of said user sites comprise performance monitoring agents capable of calculating and transmitting performance data indicative of the performance of data access systems, said performance management system comprising:

means for receiving data indicative of the performance of the data access system transmitted from said performance monitor agents;

means for selecting a quantity of data received;

means summarizing the quantity of data received;

means for storing said summarized quantity of data into a database; and

means for utilizing said the stored summarized data as a basis for ascertaining quality of service conditions of said data access system.