Method to identify transactions and manage the capacity to support the transaction
First Claim
1. A method for monitoring a comparative load for servers within a group of servers on a network in which a first server forwards requests to a plurality of second servers, said method comprising the steps of:
- preparing a first table containing, for each of said plurality of second servers, an address and a respective counter;
dumping a copy of an address resolution protocol cache to a storage area to form a cache dump;
determining, from said cache dump, which of said plurality of second servers are present in said cache dump and for each of said second servers present, incrementing a respective counter;
after said determining and incrementing steps are completed, comparing said plurality of respective counters with each other to determine if a load imbalance between said second servers is greater than a threshold value;
if said load imbalance is greater than said threshold value, sending a message regarding said load imbalance.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A monitoring program contains a method for detecting a load imbalance in a group of servers and providing notification so that corrections can be made. An embodiment of the invention reads from the address resolution protocol (ARP) cache to determine which server addresses are present, then clears the ARP cache. The address resolution protocol will repopulate the cache from traffic it snoops and from new requests. By performing this query and clear operation periodically, the tracking program can form a picture of the activity levels of the servers. When a significant imbalance exists, the program notifies a control console for human intervention to solve the problem. The tracking program will periodically write its results to a log file, allowing reports for various time periods to be produced as needed. By this mechanism, not only can an imbalance be quickly detected, but underutilization can be picked up by comparing known capability of a resource to its actual usage.
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Citations
11 Claims
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1. A method for monitoring a comparative load for servers within a group of servers on a network in which a first server forwards requests to a plurality of second servers, said method comprising the steps of:
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preparing a first table containing, for each of said plurality of second servers, an address and a respective counter;
dumping a copy of an address resolution protocol cache to a storage area to form a cache dump;
determining, from said cache dump, which of said plurality of second servers are present in said cache dump and for each of said second servers present, incrementing a respective counter;
after said determining and incrementing steps are completed, comparing said plurality of respective counters with each other to determine if a load imbalance between said second servers is greater than a threshold value;
if said load imbalance is greater than said threshold value, sending a message regarding said load imbalance. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
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5. A network, comprising:
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a first server connected to the Internet and having an address resolution protocol cache;
a plurality of second servers connected to form a network with said first server, wherein said first server forwards a plurality of requests, received from the Internet, to respective ones of said plurality of second servers;
a program, running on said first server, said program performing the steps of;
preparing a first table that contains, for each of said plurality of second servers, an address and a respective counter;
dumping said address resolution process cache to a cache dump;
for each address in said cache dump, if said address in said cache dump matches an address in said first table, incrementing by one a respective counter;
comparing said plurality of counters with each other to determine if a load imbalance between said second servers is greater than a threshold value;
if said load imbalance is greater than said threshold value, sending a message to an operator console regarding said load imbalance. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7)
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8. A computer program product in a machine-readable format, said computer program product comprising:
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first instructions for preparing a first table that contains, for each of a plurality of servers, an address and a respective first counter;
second instructions for dumping an address resolution process cache to form a cache dump;
third instructions for incrementing, for each address in said first table that matches an address in said cache dump, a respective counter in said first table;
fourth instruction for comparing said plurality of first counters with each other to determine if a load imbalance between said second servers is greater than a threshold value; and
fifth instructions for, if said load imbalance is greater than said threshold, sending a message to an operator console regarding said load imbalance. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11)
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Specification