Method for initiating a sub-system health check

• US 20030221002A1
• Filed: 01/10/2003
• Published: 11/27/2003
• 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 7,360,122 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 for monitoring the health of a server comprising:

initiating a health check of a sub-system of a server;

determining sub-system health information as a result of the health check; and

determining the health of the server using the sub-system health information.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said initiating a health check includes:

detecting the occurrence of a health check event; and

transmitting a request by a server health monitor to the sub-system for the sub-system health information, the request triggered by said detection of the health check event.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein the health check event is the expiration of a period of time.

4. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein the health check event is a request from an administration server.

5. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein the health check event is an event occurring external to the server, the occurrence of the event communicated to the server health monitor.

6. The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein said transmitting a request includes transmitting a request from the server health monitor to all sub-systems in a server for each sub-system'"'"'s health information.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said determining sub-system health information includes receiving sub-system health information by a server health monitor, the sub-system health information transmitted by the sub-system and indicating the health of the sub-system.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said determining sub-system health information includes the server health monitor failing to receive sub-system health information from a sub-system, the server health monitor determining the sub-system is failed as a result of the failure to receive sub-system health information from the sub-system.

9. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said determining the health of the server includes determining whether all the sub-systems are in a failed state.

10. The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said determining the health of the server includes determining whether a critical sub-system is in a failed state.

11. The method as claimed in claim 1 further comprising:

processing the server health information.

12. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein said processing includes restarting a failed sub-system.

13. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein said processing includes restarting all sub-systems if a critical sub-system is failed.

14. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein said processing includes storing the sub-system health information.

15. The method as claimed in claim 11 wherein said processing includes determining if a condition is met.

16. The method as claimed in claim 15 wherein said processing includes determining if the sub-system'"'"'s health status has changed.