Failure cause estimation device and failure cause estimation method

• US 20110314332A1
• Filed: 03/25/2011
• Published: 12/22/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/16/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Original Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Inventors: Shimada, Kuniaki, Matsumoto, Yasuhide
• Granted Patent: US 8,499,195 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36

Abstract

A failure cause estimation device includes: a database that manages the causes of failure cases, questions, and replies thereto for each of the failure cases; a condition presentation unit that presents combinations of the questions and replies managed in the database on a display screen as branch conditions used to classify the cause of a failure case; a condition selection unit that selects at least one branch condition from the presented branch conditions according selection operation; a cause estimation unit that estimates a cause satisfying the at least one branch condition from the contents of the database; and a cause presentation unit that presents the estimated cause on the display screen as a cause candidate.

Claims

1. A failure cause estimation device comprising:

a database that manages causes of past failure cases, questions, and replies thereto for each of the past failure cases;

a condition presentation unit that presents combinations of the questions and the replies thereto managed in the database on a display screen as branch conditions used to classify a cause of a failure case;

a condition selection unit that selects, according to a selection operation, at least one branch condition from the branch conditions presented by the condition presentation unit;

a cause estimation unit that estimates, from contents of the database, at least one cause satisfying the at least one branch condition selected by the condition selection unit; and

a cause presentation unit that presents the at least one cause estimated by the cause estimation unit on the display screen as at least one cause candidate.

2. The failure cause estimation device according to claim 1, further comprising:

a cause candidate selection unit that selects, according to a selection operation, a cause candidate from the at least one cause candidate presented by the cause candidate presentation unit, the selected cause candidate being used as the cause of the failure case; and

an addition registration unit that additionally registers, according to an addition registration operation, the selected cause selected by the cause candidate selection unit and a combination of the question and the reply included in the at least one branch condition used to estimate the at least one cause in the database as a new failure case.

3. The failure cause estimation device according to claim 1, wherein

the condition selection unit includes a new input unit for allowing a new question and a new reply to be inputted, and

a combination of the new question and the new reply to the new question or a combination of one of the questions presented by the condition presentation unit and the new reply to the one of the questions is selected as a new branch condition according to an input operation from the new input unit.

4. The failure cause estimation device according to claim 1, further comprising a decision tree construction unit that constructs a decision tree used when the cause of the failure case to be estimated is estimated from the causes, the questions, and the replies that are managed in the database for each of the past failure cases, and wherein

the cause estimation unit uses the decision tree to estimate a cause satisfying the at least one branch condition selected by the condition selection unit.

5. The failure cause estimation device according to claim 1, wherein the condition presentation unit computes an evaluation value indicating a selection possibility for each of the questions each time a branch condition is selected by the condition selection unit and then presents the branch conditions for the questions on the display screen in descending order of the evaluation value.

6. The failure cause estimation device according to claims 5, wherein, when the evaluation value of any one of the questions is equal to or less than a reference threshold value, the condition presentation unit prohibits the branch condition for the any one of the questions from being presented on the display screen.

7. The failure cause estimation device according to claim 1, wherein,

after the at least one cause satisfying the at least one branch condition selected by the condition selection unit is estimated and when re-search operation is detected, the cause estimation unit sequentially estimates another at least one cause that satisfies the at least one branch condition except for one of the at least one branch condition while the one of the at least one branch condition is sequentially changed, and wherein

the cause candidate presentation unit presents the another at least one cause sequentially estimated by the cause estimation unit on the display screen as another at least one cause candidate.

8. A failure cause estimation method comprising:

managing causes of past failure cases, questions, and replies thereto for each of the past failure cases in a database;

presenting combinations of the questions and the replies thereto managed in the database on a display screen as branch conditions used to classify a cause of a failure case;

selecting, according to a selection operation, at least one branch condition from the branch conditions at the presenting;

estimating, from contents of the database, at least one cause satisfying the selected at least one branch condition; and

presenting the estimated at least one cause on the display screen as at least one cause candidate.

9. A computer-readable, non-transitory medium storing a failure cause estimation program causing a computer to execute a process comprising:

managing causes of past failure cases, questions, and replies thereto for each of the past failure cases in a database;

presenting combinations of the questions and the replies thereto managed in the database on a display screen as branch conditions used to classify a cause of a failure case;

selecting, according to a selection operation, at least one branch condition from the branch conditions at the presenting;

estimating, from contents of the database, at least one cause satisfying the selected at least one branch condition; and

presenting the estimated at least one cause on the display screen as at least one cause candidate.

10. A failure cause estimation apparatus comprising:

a processor for managing causes of past failure cases, questions, and replies thereto for each of the past failure cases in a database;

presenting combinations of the questions and the replies thereto managed in the database on a display screen as branch conditions used to classify a cause of a failure case;

selecting, according to a selection operation, at least one branch condition from the branch conditions at the presenting;

estimating, from contents of the database, at least one cause satisfying the selected at least one branch condition; and

presenting the estimated at least one cause on the display screen as at least one cause candidate.