System for monitoring a subsystem health

• US 20030212928A1
• Filed: 01/10/2003
• Published: 11/13/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/22/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Srivastava, Rahul, Halpern, Eric M.
• Granted Patent: US 7,360,121 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/47
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0757 by exceeding a time limit, i.e. time-out, e.g. watchdogs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3082 the data filtering being achieved by aggregating or compressing the monitored data

Abstract

A server self health monitor (SHM) system monitors the health of the server it resides on. The health of a server is determined by the health of all of a server'"'"'s sub-systems and deployed applications. The SHM may make health check inquiries to server sub-systems periodically or based on external trigger events. The sub-systems perform self health checks on themselves and provide sub-system health information to requesting entities such as the SHM. Sub-systems self health updates may be based on internal events such as counters or changes in status or based on external entity requests. Corrective action may be performed upon sub-systems by the SHM depending on their health status or the health status of the server. Corrective action may also be performed by a sub-system upon itself.

Claims

1. A system for monitoring the health of a server comprising:

an administration server, the administration server having a user interface and configured to transmit and receive messages; and

a managed server, the managed server comprising;

at least one sub-system, each of the at least one sub-systems configured to determine the health status of the sub-system and to transmit and receive messages; and

a self health monitor, the self health monitor configured to transmit and receive messages with the administration server and the at least one sub-system and monitor the health of each sub-system, the self health monitor able to determine the health of said managed server from the health of the sub-systems.

2. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein said self health monitor includes a counter, the counter having a value representing a time period, said self health monitor performing a health check on a sub-system periodically at the expiration of the time period.

3. The system as claimed in claim 1 wherein the self health monitor is configured to transmit a health check message to each sub-system, each sub-system configured to ascertain a health information for said sub-system and attempt to provide the health information to the self health monitor in response to the health check message.

4. The system as claimed in claim 3 wherein the self health monitor determines the health of said managed server by determining the health information of all the sub-systems indicate the sub-systems are failed.

5. The system as claimed in claim 3 wherein the self health monitor determines the health of said managed server by determining if the health information of a critical sub-system indicates the critical sub-system is failed.

6. The system as claimed in claim 1 further comprising an external administrative agent configured to transmit and receive messages to the sub-system and the administration server.

7. The system as claimed in claim 6 wherein the external administrative agent transmits and receives messages using a JMX interface.

8. A self health monitoring system for monitoring the health of a server comprising:

a node including;

a managed server having at least one subsystem and a server self health monitor, the server self health monitor configured to determine the health and provide health information of the at least one subsystem;

an administrative server configured to communicate with the self health monitor and the at least one subsystem; and

a node manager configured to communicate with said administration server and said managed server; and

an administrative agent, the administrative agent configured to communicate with the managed server.

9. The self health monitoring system as described in claim 8 wherein said at least one subsystem is configured to determine a health status of said at least one subsystem and to provide the health status to a requesting entity.

10. A system for monitoring the health of servers in a distributed network, the system comprising:

a server having at least one subsystem and a self health monitor, said server a part of a distributed network, wherein said self health monitor is configured to determine the health of the at least one subsystems and the server; and

a node manager configured to perform maintenance on said server, said maintenance including restarting the server if the server is determined to be unhealthy by the self health monitor.

11. A system for monitoring the health of a server comprising:

an administration server, the administration server configured to transmit and receive messages; and

a managed server comprising including a self health monitor, the self health monitor configured to transmit and receive messages with the administration server.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the administration server includes a user interface, the administration server configured to allow a user to manually send and receive messages.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the administration server is configured to automatically send and receive messages.

14. The system of claim 11 wherein a managed server includes at least one sub-system, each of the at least one sub-system configured to determine a health status of said at least one sub-system and transmit and receive messages, the self health monitor configured to transmit and receive messages with the at least one sub-system and monitor the health of each sub-system, the self health monitor operable to determine the health of said managed server from the health of the sub-systems.

15. A system for monitoring the health of a server comprising:

a managed server comprising including a self health monitor, the self health monitor configured to transmit and receive messages;

a node manager;

an administration server, the administration server hosting a java MBean and configured to transmit and receive messages with said managed server and said node manager, the java MBean operable to provide a programmatic interface to the functionality of the node manager.

16. The system as claimed in claim 15 wherein the MBean may be accessed by an external administrative entity.

17. The system as claimed in claim 15 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to start a specified managed server.

18. The system as claimed in claim 15 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to shut down a specified server.

19. The system as claimed in claim 15 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to begin monitoring a specified server.

20. The system as claimed in claim 15 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to stop monitoring a specified server.

21. A system for monitoring the health of a server comprising:

a managed server including a self health monitor, the self health monitor configured to transmit and receive messages;

a node manager; and

an administration server, the administration server hosting a java MBean and configured to transmit and receive messages with said managed server and said node manager, the java MBean operable to provide a programmatic interface for JMX clients to the functionality of the node manager.

22. The system as claimed in claim 21 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to start a specified managed server.

23. The system as claimed in claim 21 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to shut down a specified server.

24. The system as claimed in claim 21 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to begin monitoring a specified server.

25. The system as claimed in claim 21 wherein the MBean includes a method implemented in java, the method configured to stop monitoring a specified server.