Method for monitoring a sub-system health

• US 20030217146A1
• Filed: 01/10/2003
• Published: 11/20/2003
• 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 7,373,556 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• 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 method of monitoring the health of a server comprising:

providing a server health monitor;

initializing a sub-system; and

monitoring the sub-system by the server health monitor.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said initializing a sub-system includes:

configuring the sub-system to be monitored by the server; and

transmitting information to the server health monitor indicating the sub-system is to be monitored by the server health monitor.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein said configuring the sub-system includes configuring a MBean residing in the sub-system.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said monitoring the sub-system includes:

detecting a triggering event; and

performing a health status update on the sub-system by the sub-system, the sub-system determining a health information for the sub-system as a result of the health status update; and

processing the health information.

5. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein the triggering event is a change in the status of the sub-system.

6. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein the triggering event is an event occurring external to the sub-system, the occurrence of the event communicated to the sub-system.

7. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein said processing includes storing the sub-system health information by the sub-system.

8. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein said processing includes performing corrective action on the sub-system by the sub-system.

9. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein said monitoring the sub-system further comprises:

providing sub-system health information to an entity, the entity having requested the sub-system'"'"'s health information from the sub-system.

10. The method as claimed in claim 9 wherein said providing sub-system health information to an entity includes indicating to the entity that the sub-system health may be characterized as being either good or failed.

11. The method as claimed in claim 2 further comprising:

performing shutdown of the sub-system, the sub-system unregistering from being monitored by the server health monitor.