INCREMENTALLY MANAGING DISTRIBUTED CONFIGURATION DATA

• US 20110208841A1
• Filed: 03/03/2010
• Published: 08/25/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Mutatkar, Sameer S., Hong, Liu, Snover, Jeffrey P., Maknojia, Rahim, Payette, Bruce G., Robertson, James G.
• Granted Patent: US 8,595,334 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/220
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/177 Initialisation or configuration control processor initialisation G06F9/4405
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/252 between a Database Management System and a front-end application
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/08 Configuration management of networks or network elements address allocation H04L61/50
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks

Abstract

A configuration management system provides a partitioned data model for collecting and representing configuration information from a diverse set of sources to allow easier modeling of very large, highly redundant sets of enterprise configuration information. The system partitions large configuration schema into logical subcomponents that can be combined, shared, and reused. The system also partitions instantiated data models into logical sub-models that can be combined, shared, reused, and incrementally updated. Each product team can provide its own configuration schema, which allows the domain experts in a particular field to provide reusable models for their products. These models may include sub-models that allow reuse of selected portions of the configuration schema. When the system stores data related to each portion of the model, it stores the data in a partitioned manner that makes incremental updates of each component of the model more straightforward and less resource intensive.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for collecting configuration data from one or more sources, the method comprising:

loading a hierarchical configuration model that includes information about how configuration data for one or more software applications is stored at distributed computer systems;

identifying one or more sub-models associated with the loaded configuration model;

identifying one or more sources of configuration data in a target network;

beginning a parallel process of collecting configuration data from multiple identified sub-models and identified sources concurrently;

creating a partitioned configuration result store for a selected sub-model and source;

invoking the selected sub-model against the selected source to collect configuration data related to the selected sub-model stored at the selected source;

receiving at a repository server configuration data from the selected sub-model and source based upon one or more requests defined within the selected sub-model; and

storing the received configuration data in the created partitioned configuration result store for the selected sub-model and source,

wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying one or more sub-models comprises identifying one or more references in the loaded model to one or more sub-models.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying one or more sub-models comprises navigating a hierarchical format of the loaded model, where sub-models are children of the configuration model or other sub-models.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein a sub-model includes a script to run to collect data for the model and instructions for validating collected configuration data.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying one or more sources comprises receiving from an administrator a list of servers in an organization that include configuration data related to one or more identified sub-models.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein beginning a parallel process comprises determining an amount of work to perform concurrently by querying the available resources of a computer system executing the method.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein creating a partitioned result store comprises creating a folder associated with the selected sub-model and source and creating an XML file within that folder to store data collection results.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein creating a partitioned result store facilitates multiple data collection process running concurrently by preventing concurrent processes from overlapping or interfering with each other'"'"'s data.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein creating a partitioned result store comprises appending context information specified upon invoking the method to a location selected for storing the result.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving configuration data comprises collecting configuration data to a central server, wherein each sub-model defines what information to send to the central server.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein storing the received configuration data comprises populating and saving an XML file with the data resulting from invoking a script associated with the invoked sub-model.

12. The method of claim 1 further comprising validating the stored received configuration data against a schema associated with the invoked sub-model to detect one or more configuration errors.

13. A computer system for gathering and analyzing configuration data in an enterprise, the system comprising:

a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions;

a model loading component configured to load a stored model that describes one or more configuration settings;

a model interpreting component configured to identify elements of the loaded model that relate to data collection;

a data collection component configured to gather configuration data associated with one or more identified elements of the loaded model from one or more sources of configuration data;

a result repository configured to store resulting configuration data from gathering data associated with the loaded model; and

a storage partitioning component configured to manage partitioning of the result repository to allow logical separation of configuration data and concurrent gathering of identified elements of the loaded model.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the model interpreting component is further configured to identify one or more sub-models or references to separately stored sub-models related to the model.

15. The system of claim 13 wherein the model interpreting component is further configured to identify a hierarchical series of sub-models, data for each of which can be gathered by the system in parallel.

16. The system of claim 13 wherein the data collection component is further configured to manage multiple parallel execution units that each gather configuration data related to one or more elements of the loaded model concurrently.

17. The system of claim 13 wherein the data collection component is further configured to update changed elements of the loaded model incrementally without re-retrieving data for all of the loaded model.

18. The system of claim 13 further comprising a baseline model store and configuration analysis engine for performing a comparison of gathered configuration data to a baseline configuration model, wherein the baseline model store stores a declarative representation of recommended configuration settings for one or more configuration elements and the configuration analysis engine compares gathered configuration data to the declarative representation of recommended configuration settings to identify differences between the two.

19. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to incrementally update previously gathered configuration data, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:

determining that source configuration data from which previously gathered configuration data was collected has changed;

identifying a sub-model associated with the changed configuration data and a subset of the previously collected configuration data;

identifying a source of configuration data associated with the changed configuration data;

invoking the identified sub-model against the identified configuration data source to update the gathered configuration data for the subset;

receiving updated configuration data as a result of invoking the identified sub-model against the identified configuration data source; and

updating a result store partitioned at least by sub-model and configuration data source with received, updated configuration data.

20. The medium of claim 19 wherein receiving updated configuration data comprises receiving at least one aggregate configuration element that specifies a relationship between data collected by two different sub-models.