Distributed data gathering and aggregation agent

• US 20050021748A1
• 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 7,636,708 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• 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, comprising:

means for querying an operational metric from the plurality of members; and

means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form a unified result set.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising means for receiving a request from a requestor for an operational metric for the entity and means for returning the unified result set.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising means for setting a configuration at one of the plurality of members defining the operational metric data to be logged at each of the plurality of members and means for replicating the configuration to each of the plurality of members.

4. The system of claim 1, the operational metric being at least one of a performance metric, an event metric, a status metric and a health metric.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is adapted to aggregate the operational metric over time to form the unified result set.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is further adapted to aggregate the operational metric into data of at least one larger time period and larger time resolution to form the unified result set.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

means for setting a configuration at two or more of the members, the configuration defining the operational metric to be logged at each of the plurality of members; and

means for replicating the configuration to at least one of the other members.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the operational metric is an operational event metric and the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is adapted to coalesce events from the plurality of members to form the unified result set.

9. The system of claim 8, further comprising means for receiving a request from a requester for an operational metric and for returning the operational metric to the requestor.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising:

means for assigning each event a unique identifier; and

means for requesting and returning additional event data utilizing the unique identifier of at least one event.

11. The system of claim 9, further comprising means for filtering out events not to be returned to the requester.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the operational metric is an operational health metric and the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is adapted to aggregate the operational health metric into at least one of a single result state based on a set of predefined rules.

13. The system of claim 12, further comprising means for determining a member health state for each member based on a member specific health rule set, querying each of the member health states from the plurality of members and applying a health entity aggregation rule set to determine a health state of the entity.

14. The system of claim 12, further comprising means for applying a health member aggregation rule set to the unified result set to determine a health state of the entity.

15. The system of claim 6, wherein the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is further adapted to take one of an average, a minimum, a maximum, and a weighted average of the data.

16. The system of claim 2, the requestor being one of an external process, an internal process, an external consumer, a user interface and another entity.

17. The system of claim 2, wherein the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is adapted to aggregate the operational metric into the unified result set based on a time period requested by the requestor.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the means for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set is adapted to take one of an average, a minimum, a maximum, and a weighted average of operational metric data.

19. The system of claim 1, further comprising means for compensating for invalid operational metric data.

20. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity, comprising:

computer-executable instructions for querying an operational metric from the plurality of members; and

computer-executable instructions for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form a unified result set.

21. An electrical signal representation of computer-executable operations for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity, comprising:

computer-executable operations for querying an operational metric from the plurality of members; and

computer-executable operations for aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form a unified result set.