STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE AUTOMATION IN DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

• US 20080091738A1
• Filed: 12/10/2007
• Published: 04/17/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Stratavia Corp. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Luistro, Rainier, Devraj, Venkat
• Granted Patent: US 7,529,827 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/217 Database tuning G06F16/2282 takes precedence; database performance monitoring G06F11/3409

Abstract

A plurality of modules and/or engines to manage the operation and health of a plurality of data center assets through the use of standard operating procedures (SOPs). Modules of the present invention are configured to assist IT Administrators to create, and thereafter store in an accessible memory resource, a plurality of SOPs. These SOPs define procedures to address various data center asset informational states. An asset'"'"'s state information is monitored, collected and analyzed to determine, based either on a predetermined rule set or on manual input from an authorized IT Administrator, whether one or more SOPs will be applied to a particular data center asset. These SOPs can be combined and/or executed on the asset either automatically or manually.

Claims

1. A computer system for managing a data center asset, the computer system comprising:

a machine capable of executing instructions embodied as software; and

a plurality of software portions, including

one of said software portions configured to create a plurality of standard operating procedures (“

SOPs”

);

one of said software portions configured to store in a memory the plurality of SOPs;

one of said software portions configured to monitor state information about the data center asset;

one of said software portions configured to receive a tasking request identifying a subset of the plurality of SOPs;

one of said software portions configured to retrieve the subset of the plurality of SOPs from the memory; and

one of said software portions configured to execute the subset of the plurality of SOPs on the data center asset.

2. The computer system of claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of SOPs is associated with a data center asset type.

3. The computer system of claim 2 wherein each data center asset type associated SOP is compatible with each other SOP associated with that data center asset type.

4. The computer system of claim 3 wherein each data center asset type associated SOP is further associated with specific data center asset environment policies and is compatible with said associated data center asset environment policies.

5. The computer system of claim 1 wherein SOP creation includes the creation of a corresponding task recipe in human readable format.

6. The computer system of claim 1 further comprising one of said software portions configured to execute said tasking request based on a specific time interval.

7. The computer system of claim 1 wherein said tasking request is generated automatically.

8. The computer system of claim 1 wherein said tasking request is executed during a specific time window.

9. The computer system of claim 1 further comprising a software portion configured to collect and store at a central repository data associated with the data center asset independent of SOP execution.

10. The computer system of claim 1 wherein SOP creation and modification is limited to designated senior Information Technology Administrators.

11. The computer system of claim 1 wherein at least one of the plurality of SOPs is a task-based SOP.

12. The computer system of claim 1 wherein task-based SOPs are configured to perform data center administration tasks selected from a list consisting of operating system installation, operating system update, software application installation, software application update, operating system health checks, software application health checks, operating system performance parameters management, software application performance parameters management, software application-specific data backup and restoration, operating system problem root cause analysis, software application specific problem root cause analysis, database backup, database refreshes, database cloning, database health-checks, database memory resource space management, database coalescing, rebuilding fragmented database segments, database optimizer statistics analysis, database root cause analysis, database patching, database upgrades, database migrations, and database server migrations.

13. The computer system of claim 1 further comprising a software portion configured to analyze the monitored state information to determine the data center asset'"'"'s capability to conduct tasked operations.

14. The computer system of claim 13 wherein at least one of the plurality of SOPs is a healing SOP to correct the data center asset'"'"'s failure to conduct tasked operations.

15. The computer system of claim 14 wherein the healing SOPs are triggered by altered data center asset state information.

16. The computer system of claim 1 wherein SOPs are stored separate from the data center asset.

17. The computer system of claim 1 wherein monitoring identifies a data center asset failure and creates an alert based on a pre-defined rule set.

18. The computer system of claim 1 wherein state information about the data center asset is periodically collected for future analysis.

19. The computer system of claim 18 wherein analysis of data center asset'"'"'s state information uses a plurality of mathematical models including linear regression, queuing theory, simulation, and fuzzy logic to predict future data center asset state and performance.

20. The computer system of claim 1 further comprising a software portion configured to link a first subset of SOPs to a second set of SOPs to accomplish the requested task.

21. The computer system of claim 20 wherein subsets of SOPs include SOPs associated according to a particular data center asset task.

22. The computer system of claim 1 wherein designated SOPs are executed at the data center asset automatically based on pre-determined state information of the database.

23. The computer system of claim 1 wherein an Information Technology Administrator can monitor execution of SOPs at the data center asset real-time and provide manual intervention.

24. The computer system of claim 1 further comprising a software portion configured to generate an audit trail of monitored data center asset state information and SOP execution on the data center asset.

25. A computer implemented method for managing a data center asset, the method comprising:

monitoring state information about the asset;

collecting state information about the asset;

receiving a tasking request based on collected state information about the asset;

retrieving from a storage medium at least one of a plurality of standard operating procedures (“

SOPs”

) based on the tasking request; and

at the asset, executing the at least one SOP.

26. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein retrieving from said storage medium includes at least one task recipe corresponding to the at least one of the plurality of SOPs.

27. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein the tasking request is automatically generated based on an analysis of collected state information.

28. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein each of the plurality of SOPs is created by at least one designated Information Technology Administrator and stored on the storage medium and wherein each SOP is based on a specific administrative task.

29. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein the at least one SOP is linked with at least another SOP based on the tasking request.

30. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein SOP creation and modification is limited to authorized Information Technology Administrators.

31. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein the at least one SOP performs an Information Technology administration task selected from a list consisting of installation of operating system software on server machines, installation of application software on server machines, software updates (patches), application updating ticketing, task-tracking system, updating an operating system, performance parameter adjustment on application software, asset data backup and restoration, storage configuration adjustment, asset memory resource management, and data migrations.

32. The computer implemented method of claim 25, further comprising analyzing collected state information to determine the asset'"'"'s inability to conduct tasked operations based on a pre-defined rule set.

33. The computer implemented method of claim 32, wherein the least one SOP is a healing SOP to correct the asset'"'"'s inability to conduct tasked operations.

34. The computer implemented method of claim 32, wherein responsive to determining the asset'"'"'s inability to conduct tasked operations, creating an alert.

35. The computer implemented method of claim 32, wherein the analyzing of collected state information employs mathematical models including fuzzy logic, linear regression, ratio modeling or queuing theory.

36. The computer implemented method of claim 25 further comprising linking a first subset of SOPs to a second set of SOPs to accomplish the requested task.

37. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein the at least one SOP is executed at the data center asset automatically based on pre-determined state information about the asset.

38. The computer implemented method of claim 25, wherein an Information Technology Administrator can monitor execution of the at least one SOP at the data center asset real-time and when necessary manually intervene in the SOP'"'"'s execution.

39. The computer implemented method of claim 25, further comprising generating an audit trail of monitored data center asset state information and SOP execution at the asset.

40. A computer-readable storage medium tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine wherein said program of instruction comprises a plurality of program codes for managing a data center asset, said program of instruction comprising:

program code for creating a plurality of standard operating procedures (“

SOPs”

);

program code for storing in a memory the plurality of SOPs;

program code for collecting state information about the data center asset;

program code for receiving a tasking request identifying a subset of the plurality of SOPs;

program code for retrieving the subset of SOPs from the memory; and

program code for executing the subset of SOP on the data center asset.

41. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40 wherein the program code for creating includes creating data center asset task recipes in human readable format corresponding to each SOP.

42. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40 wherein said tasking request is generated automatically.

43. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 40 wherein said tasking request is based on analysis of collected state information as compared to pre-determined state information of the data center asset.