Management System and Method for Managing Distributed Resources

• US 20070245357A1
• Filed: 12/09/2004
• Published: 10/18/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/18/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Breiter, Gerd, Spatzier, Thomas, Breh, Jochen
• Granted Patent: US 8,631,062 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/320
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]

Abstract

The present invention provides a new management system and a new method for managing distributed resources (61-66), comprising a workflow engine (88) that can execute management workflows in order to actively control the distributed resources (61-66).

The new management system is characterized in that autonomic Correlation Services (74-76) are introduced that manage different functional parts of the managed system in cooperation with workflow engine (88), whereby each Correlation Service (74-76) employs a Correlation Engine (174, 175) and a set of rules (184, 185, 186) that describe how underlying resources (61-66) shall be managed, whereby a controller (44) communicates with the Correlation Services (74-76).

Claims

1. A management system for managing distributed resources comprising:

a workflow engine for executing management workflows in order to actively control the distributed resources;

wherein autonomic correlation services are introduced that manage different functional parts of the managed system in cooperation with the workflow engine, wherein each correlation service employs a correlation engine and a set of rules that describe how underlying resources shall be managed, and wherein a controller communicates with the correlation services.

2. The management system according to claim 1, wherein the correlation services directly communicate with resources.

3. The management system according to claim 1, wherein rules for filtering low-level events issued by resources are deployed into an event service application that is used to filter high-level events out of low-level events.

4. The management system according to claim 3, wherein the controller communicates with the event service application.

5. The management system according to claim 1, wherein the correlation services are modeled as stateful web services.

6. A method for managing distributed resources, comprising the steps of:

a) a user defining a correlation model comprising the definitions of several correlation services for different functional parts of the managed system; and

b) the controller instantiates correlation services as running stateful web services in accordance with the definitions of the correlation model.

7. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the step of:

storing handles to all of the resources managed by a correlation service within that correlation service.

8. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the steps of:

defining high-level events to which a specific correlation service shall react; and

a respective correlation service creating subscriptions with an event service in order to be notified when said events are detected.

9. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the step of:

the higher-level correlation services using web service introspection for seeing which events are issued by another correlation service.

10. The method according to claim 6, further comprising the step of:

the correlation services triggering an execution of workflows in order to actively manage their resources.

11. A computer program product comprising a computer useable medium embodying program instructions executable by a computer, said program instructions comprising method steps to implement the method of claim 6.