Method and apparatus for generating configuration rules for computing entities within a computing environment using association rule mining

• US 20080301081A1
• Filed: 05/31/2007
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Symantec Corporation (NortonLifeLock Inc.)
• Inventors: Karnik, Neeran, Roy, Subhojit, Kabra, Navin
• Granted Patent: US 8,051,028 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/48
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files

Abstract

A method and apparatus for generating computer configuration rules comprising receiving configuration data regarding a plurality of computers, analyzing the configuration data to determine associations within the configuration data, and generating configuration rules from a result of the analysis.

Claims

1. A method of automatically generating at least one configuration rules for computing entities within a computing environment comprising:

receiving configuration data regarding a plurality of computing entities;

analyzing the configuration data to determine associations within the configuration data; and

generating configuration rules from a result of the analysis.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the receiving step further comprises gathering configuration date through at least one of polling of the computing entities, and applying agents to the computing entities.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the receiving step further comprises saving the configuration data in a database.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the analyzing step comprises preprocessing the configuration data.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein a configuration table comprises the configuration data and the preprocessing step removes columns from the configuration table.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the analyzing step infers relationships between the configuration data from the plurality of computing entities.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the analyzing step performs an analysis with respect to the configuration data.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising applying statistical analysis to the configuration rules.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the statistical analysis determines a reliability of each of the configuration rules.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising performing post processing with respect to the configuration rules.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

comparing the generated configuration rules to configuration data; and

identifying violations of the generated configuration rules within the configuration data.

12. An apparatus for automatically generating computer configuration rules for computing entities within a computing environment, comprising:

an analyzer for analyzing configuration data collected from a plurality of computing entities and generating at least one configuration rule as a result of the analysis.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, further comprising a datacenter containing at least some of the plurality of computing entities.

14. The apparatus of claim 12 further comprising a configuration data collection system for compiling configuration data for the plurality of computing entities.

15. The apparatus of claim 12 further comprises a preprocessor for preprocessing the configuration data.

16. The apparatus of claim 12 wherein the analyzer infers relationships between the configuration data from the plurality of computing entities.

17. The apparatus of claim 12 wherein the analyzer performs a market basket analysis with respect to the configuration data.

18. The apparatus of claim 12 further comprising a post processor that applies statistical analysis to at least one of configure the rules and validates the rules.

19. The apparatus of claim 18 wherein the statistical analysis determines a reliability of each of the configuration rules.

20. The apparatus of claim 12 further comprising:

a violation analyzer for comparing at least one of generated configuration rules and predefined rules to configuration data and identifying violations of the generated configuration rules within the configuration data.