System and method for correlating and diagnosing system component performance data

• US 20080040174A1
• Filed: 04/04/2007
• Published: 02/14/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Clouding Corporation (Marathon Patent Group, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Symantec Corporation (NortonLifeLock Inc.)
• Inventors: Murthy, Raghavendra, Menard, Cody, Wolfe, Brian
• Granted Patent: US 7,634,563 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0233 Object-oriented techniques, for representation of network management data, e.g. common object request broker architecture [CORBA]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0631 using root cause analysis; using analysis of correlation between notifications, alarms or events based on decision criteria, e.g. hierarchy, tree or time analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/02 for separating internal from external traffic, e.g. firewalls

Abstract

The system and method for correlating, predicting and diagnosing system component performance data includes capturing knowledge about system behavior, deploying the captured knowledge as baseline system behavior files, evaluating system performance data against the baseline system behavior files, performing predictive and diagnostic analysis when received system performance data exceeds thresholds in the baseline system behavior files, and notifying a user when an analysis result is generated. The method of capturing knowledge about system behavior includes defining problems to be solved, creating datasets that correspond to defined problems, constructing problem scenarios, associating data patterns modules with the problem scenarios, and generating XML definition files that characterize system behavior in terms of the scenarios, modules, and datasets. The system has the capability to activate corrective scripts in the target system and to reconfigure the target system. Detailed information on various example embodiments of the inventions are provided in the Detailed Description below, and the inventions are defined by the appended claims.

Claims

1. A system for managing business transactions and infrastructure, comprising:

a collection system embedded in a client system, said client system including a plurality of client system components, said collection system including one or more data collectors, said data collectors extracting transaction process data and infrastructure data said client system components;

a management server including a system manager for controlling the management server, said management server receiving the extracted data from the client collection system, the system manager aggregating the extracted data;

the system manager further comparing the received extracted data with predefined threshold values,

a repository wherein is stored extracted data received from said collection system,

an analysis system for performing data analysis on the extracted data that exceed threshold values, said analysis system diagnosing problems in said client system;

a communication network between said collection system and said management server providing for communication of extracted data from said collection system to said management system; and

a notification engine that notifies users of diagnosed problems based on the data analysis.

2. A system according to claim 1, further comprising a corrective actions manager for activating corrective action scripts in said client system over said communication network.

3. A system according to claim 1, wherein the data collector comprises a plug-in selected from the group consisting of application-specific plug-ins and infrastructure-specific plug-ins.

4. A system according to claim 1, wherein the management server reasoning system comprises a diagnostic engine and a predictive analysis engine for analyzing the extracted data from said collection system.

5. A system according to claim 1, wherein the system components from which data are extracted is selected from the group consisting of an application host, a web host and a database host.

6. A system according to claim 1, wherein said data collectors are organized into domains that identify a characteristic selected from the group consisting of distinct areas of the system environment, common functions, application type and shared common attributes.

7. A system for managing business transactions and an infrastructure system, comprising:

a collection system embedded in an infrastructure system, said infrastructure system including a plurality of infrastructure components, said collection system including one or more data collectors, said data collectors extracting transaction process data and infrastructure data said infrastructure components;

a management server including a system manager for controlling the management server, said management server receiving the extracted data from the client collection system, the system manager aggregating the extracted data;

the system manager further comparing the received extracted data with predefined threshold values;

a repository for storing the extracted data, wherein said management server stores data received from said collection system to said repository;

a reasoning system for performing data analysis on the extracted data that exceed threshold values, said reasoning system diagnosing problems in said infrastructure system;

a communication network between said collection system and said management server providing for communication of extracted data from said collection system to said management system; and

a notification engine that notifies users of diagnosed problems based on the data analysis.

8. A system according to claim 7, further comprising a corrective actions manager for activating corrective action scripts in said infrastructure system over said communication network.

9. A system according to claim 8, wherein the management server reasoning system comprises a diagnostic engine and a predictive analysis engine for analyzing the extracted data datasets and wherein said engines are operable to activate said corrective actions manager.

10. A system according to claim 7, wherein at least one of said data collectors comprises a plug-in specific to a particular application.

11. A system according to claim 7, wherein at least one of said data collectors comprises a plug-in specific to an infrastructure component.

12. A system according to claim 7, wherein the system components from which data are extracted is selected from the group consisting of an application host, a web host and a database host.

13. A system according to claim 7, wherein said data collectors are organized into domains that identify a characteristic selected from the group consisting of distinct areas of the system environment, common functions, application type and shared common attributes.

14. A system for managing business transactions and infrastructure across a communications network, comprising:

a collection system embedded in an infrastructure system, said infrastructure system including a plurality of infrastructure components, said collection system including one or more data collectors, said data collectors extracting electronic transaction process data and infrastructure data said infrastructure components;

a management server including a system manager for controlling the management server, said management server receiving the extracted data from the client collection system, the system manager aggregating the extracted data;

the system manager further comparing the received extracted data with predefined threshold values, further wherein said management server stores received extracted data into a repository that stores the extracted data;

an analysis system for performing data analysis on the extracted data, said analysis system diagnosing problems in said infrastructure system;

a communication network between said collection system and said management server providing for communication of extracted data from said collection system to said management system; and

wherein said management server notifies users of diagnosed problems based on the data analysis on condition of a collected data value that exceeds a predefined threshold.

15. A system according to claim 14, wherein said data collectors are organized into domains.

16. A system according to claim 15, wherein said data collectors are organized into domains that identify a characteristic selected from the group consisting of distinct areas of the system environment, common functions, application type and shared common attributes.

17. A system according to claim 14, further comprising a corrective actions manager for activating corrective action scripts in said infrastructure system over said communication network.

18. A system according to claim 14, wherein at least one of said data collectors comprises a plug-in specific to a particular application.

19. A system according to claim 14, wherein at least one of said data collectors comprises a plug-in specific to an infrastructure component.

20. A system according to claim 14, wherein the management server reasoning system comprises a diagnostic engine and a predictive analysis engine for analyzing the extracted data from said collection system.