Distributed data gathering and aggregation agent

• US 20050027727A1
• Filed: 08/23/2004
• Published: 02/03/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/10/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• 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.
• Application Number:
  US10/924,290
• Publication Number:
  US 20050027727A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 method for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity, comprising the steps of:

querying an operational metric from the plurality of members; and

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

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of receiving a request from a requester for an operational metric for the entity prior to the step of querying and returning the unified result step after the step of aggregating.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of aggregating the operational metric over time at each of the plurality of members prior to the step of querying.

4. The method of claim 3, the step of aggregating the operational metric over time at each of the plurality of members comprising the step of aggregating the operational metric into data of at least one larger time period and larger time resolution.

5. The method of claim 4, the operational metric being an operational performance metric and the step of aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form a unified result set comprising aggregating data performance values having similar data times to form a unified result set.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of 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 replicating the configuration to each of the plurality of members.

7. The method of claim 1, the operational metric being an operational event metric and the step of aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form a unified result set comprising the step of coalescing events from the plurality of members to form the unified result set.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising the steps of receiving a request from a requestor for events for the entity prior to the step of querying and returning a portion of the unified result step after the step of aggregating.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising the step of assigning each event a unique identifier and the step of requesting and returning additional event data utilizing the unique identifier of at least one event.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising the step of filtering out events not to be returned to the requestor.

11. The method of claim 1, the operational metric being an operational health metric and the step of aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form a unified result set comprising the step of aggregating the operational data into at least one of a single result state based on a set of predefined rules.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising the steps of 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.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of applying a health member aggregation rule set to the unified result set to determine a health state of the entity.

14. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the steps of claim 1.

15. An electrical signal representation of computer-executable operations for performing the steps of claim 1.

16. The method of claim 4, the step of aggregating the operational metric into data of at least one larger time period and larger time resolution comprising taking one of an average, a minimum, a maximum, and a weighted average of the data.

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

18. The method of claim 2, the step of aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set comprising aggregating the operational metric into the unified result set based on a time period requested by the requester.

19. The method of claim 2, the step of aggregating the operational metric from the plurality of members to form the unified result set comprising taking one of an average, a minimum, a maximum, and a weighted average of operational metric data.

20. The method of claim 6, wherein the configuration is set at more than one of the plurality of members.

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

22. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of compensating for invalid operational metric data.

23. A method for gathering and aggregating operational metrics of a plurality of members configured as an entity to determine a status of the entity, comprising:

monitoring member specific operational metrics from the plurality of members;

logging the member specific operational metrics to a data store;

querying the data store to retrieve the member specific operational metrics from the data store;

aggregating the member specific operational metrics to form a composite result set; and

determining the status of the entity by applying an entity based rule set to the composite result set.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the composite result set is formed by aggregating the member specific operational metrics over time.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein aggregating the member specific operational metrics over time comprises aggregating the members specific operational metrics into data of at least one larger time period and larger time resolution.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein aggregating the members specific operational metrics into data of at least one larger time period and larger time resolution comprises taking one of an average, a minimum, a maximum, and a weighted average of member specific operational metrics data.

27. The method of claim 23, the member specific operational metrics being at least one of member specific performance metrics, member specific event metrics, member specific status metrics, and member specific health metrics.

28. The method of claim 23, further comprising receiving a request from an interface for the operational metrics for the entity prior to querying the data store to retrieve the member specific operational metrics from the data store

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising returning the composite result set to the interface.

30. The method of claim 28, further comprising returning the status of the entity to the interface.

31. The method of claim 28, the interface being one of an external process, an internal process, an external consumer, a user interface and another entity.

32. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the method of claim 23.

33. An electrical signal representation of computer-executable operations for performing the method of claim 23.