Distributed data gathering and aggregation agent

• US 20050021306A1
• Filed: 08/23/2004
• Published: 01/27/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/10/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Zizys, Giedrius, Thomas, Michael W., Sutton, Alexander M., Sprague, Roger W., Garcea, Federico, Murstein, Michael S.
• Granted Patent: US 7,203,623 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/186
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3419 by assessing time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3447 Performance evaluation by modeling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/86 Event-based monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0681 Configuration of triggering conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A system and method is provided for gathering and aggregating operational metrics (e.g., performance metrics, process events, health monitor state, server state) for a plurality of members as a single entity and for a plurality of entities as a singular entity. The system and method provides for operational metrics of members and entities to be aggregated and retrieved as a single result set, such that entity wide operational metrics can be acquired, monitored and displayed as a single entity.

Claims

1. A system for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity to determine a health state of the entity, comprising:

at least one of the plurality of members having a gathering and aggregation system adapted to gather operational metric data from the plurality of members and aggregate the operational metric data into at least one of a single result state based on a set of predefined rules.

2. The system of claim 1, each of the plurality of members determining a member health state based on a member specific health rule set, the gathering and aggregation system gathering the member health states from the plurality of members and applying a health entity aggregation rule set to determine the health state of the entity.

3. The system of claim 1, the gathering and aggregation system aggregating the operational metric data from the plurality of members into a unified result set and applying a health member aggregation rule set to determine the health state of the entity.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein each of the plurality of members have a gathering and aggregation system such that the unified result set can be gathered and aggregated by any of the plurality of members.

5. The system of claim 2, further comprising a metric monitor system for each of the plurality of members, the metric monitor system monitoring the member health states and employing a time aggregation component to aggregate the member health states over time.

6. The system of claim 5, the time aggregation component being further operable to aggregate the member health states over larger time periods and larger time resolutions.

7. The system of claim 6, the time aggregation component aggregating the member health states over larger time periods and larger time resolutions by taking one of an average, a minimum, a maximum, and a weighted average of the member health states.

8. The system of claim 2, the gathering and aggregation system further comprising a metric aggregation component adapted to gather and aggregate the health states of a particular time period and time resolution from the plurality of members based on a time period requested by a requestor.

9. The system of claim 8, the metric aggregation component being operable to aggregate the health states having similar data times to form a unified result set over the particular time period and time resolution.

10. The system of claim 8, the requestor being one of an external process, an internal process, an external consumer, a user interface and another entity.

11. The system of claim 2, at least one of the plurality of members logging the member health state to a data store corresponding to that particular member.

12. The system of claim 2, at least one of the plurality of members being configurable to receive a configuration setting defining the member health states to be gathered and replicating the configuration setting to one or more of the plurality of members.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein any of the plurality of members are configurable to receive the configuration setting defining the member health states to be gathered.

14. The system of claim 2, the gathering and aggregation system being operable to compensate for invalid member health states.

15. A system for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity to determine a health state of the entity, comprising:

a metric monitor system, the metric monitor system monitoring the operational metrics and determining one or more member health states based on a member health rule set and logging the one or more member health states in a datastore.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising a metric aggregation system operable to poll the one or more member health states from one or more members.

17. The system of claim 16, the metric aggregation system including a health entity aggregation component and a health entity aggregation rule set, the health entity aggregation component adapted to aggregate the one or more member health states of one or more members and operable to determine the health state of the entity based on the health entity aggregation rule set.

18. The system of claim 15, further comprising a health entity aggregation component operable to poll the one or more member health states directly from the one or more members, aggregate the one or more member health states and determine the health state of the entity based on a health member aggregation rule set.

19. The system of claim 15, further comprising a health entity aggregation component operable to poll the one or more member health states directly from the datastore, aggregate the one or more member health states and determine the health state of the entity based on a health member aggregation rule set.

20. An electrical signal representation for use in a system for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity to determine a health state of the entity, comprising:

computer-executable operations for gathering and aggregating one or more member health states from the plurality of members, the computer-executable operations including operations to monitor the operational metrics and determining the one or more member health states based on a member health rule set and logging the one or more member health states to a datastore.

21. The electrical signal representation of claim 20, the computer-executable operations further comprising operations for polling the one or more member health states from one or more members.

22. The electrical signal representation of claim 20, the computer-executable operations further comprising operations for aggregating the one or more member health states of the plurality of members and determining the health state of the entity based on a health entity aggregation rule set.

23. The electrical signal representation of claim 20, the computer-executable operations further comprising operations for polling the one or more member health states directly from the datastore, aggregating the one or more member health states and determining the health state of the entity based on a health member aggregation rule set.

24. The electrical signal representation of claim 20 embodied on a computer-readable medium.