COMPUTER NETWORK MANAGEMENT

• US 20080103749A1
• Filed: 10/17/2007
• Published: 05/01/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/26/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Mead, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,190,416 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/13
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/082 the condition being updates or upgrades of network functionality
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0853 by actively collecting configuration information or by backing up configuration information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]

Abstract

According to one embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method of identifying components of a computer infrastructure, comprising building a graph-based model of at least a part of the computer infrastructure, determining the presence within the built graph of a predetermined sub-graph, and where it is so determined identifying the sub-graph within the built graph.

Claims

1. A method of identifying components of a computer infrastructure, comprising:

building a graph-based model of at least a part of the computer infrastructure;

determining the presence within the built graph of a predetermined sub-graph; and

where it is so determined

identifying the sub-graph within the built graph.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined sub-graph is a graph representing a predetermined software application, and wherein the step of determining the presence of the sub-graph is adapted for identifying, where the sub-graph is determined to be present in the built graph, the predetermined software application in the computer infrastructure.

3. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein the predetermined sub-graph is a graph representing a predetermined configuration of parameters.

4. The method of claim 1, 2 or 3, further comprising maintaining a configuration management database with information relating to the identified predetermined software application.

5. The method of any of claims 1, 2, 3 or 4, wherein the graph is built from information including at least one of Internet Protocol address, port number, and port status, discovered from the computer infrastructure using any of probing, agent or packet sniffing techniques.

6. The method of any previous claim, further comprising identifying as unidentified applications any part of the built graph not identified as a predetermined sub-graph.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising removing any unidentified applications from the computer infrastructure.

8. The method of any previous claim, wherein the step of determining the presence within the built graph of a predetermined sub-graph is arranged for performing sub-graph isomorphism.

9. The method of any previous claim, further comprising:

updating one or more components of the computer infrastructure;

rebuilding a graph of the computer infrastructure;

determining the presence of a sub-graph derived from the updated one or more components; and

where the presence of the sub-graph derived from the updated one or more components is not found,

signalling that the update failed.

10. Apparatus for identifying components in a computer infrastructure operable for performing a method as claimed in any of claims 1 to 9.