MONITORING DATA CATEGORIZATION AND MODULE-BASED HEALTH CORRELATIONS

• US 20120271594A1
• Filed: 06/28/2012
• Published: 10/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Yan, An, Li, Wilson, Janotti, Paulo, Avner, Jon
• Granted Patent: US 8,533,536 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/183
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/008 Reliability or availability analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0706 the processing taking place on a specific hardware platform or in a specific software environment
• 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

Architecture for aggregating health alerts from a number of related components into a single aggregated health state that can be analyzed to isolate the component responsible for the fault condition. In a hierarchy of related components within various component groups in a computer system, a number of health indicators can indicate alerts occurring in one or more of the related components whereas the fault condition occurs in only one component upon which the other components depend. The health indicators of related components are aggregated into an aggregated health state for each component group. These aggregated health states are analyzed to identify the related component associated with a root cause of the alert condition for an affected component group.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented diagnostic system, comprising:

an aggregation component for aggregating health indicators of related components of a computing system into an aggregated health state; and

a correlation component for analyzing the aggregated health state to identify a related component having an alert condition.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the correlation component further comprises a voting component for selecting a health indicator that defines the aggregated health state based on freshness or voting weight.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the correlation component further comprises a forensic component for linking forensic data to the aggregated health state.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the correlation component further comprises a health model for representing a hierarchy of related components, and an analysis component for analyzing the aggregated health state of the health model to identify a related component having a root cause of the alert condition.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a categorization component for categorizing the health indicators into key health indicators, forensic data, and non-service impacting issues.

6. A computer-implemented diagnostic system, comprising:

a health model for representing a hierarchy of related components within component groups in a computer system;

a plurality of health indicators for indicating an alert condition of the related components within the health model;

an aggregation component for aggregating health indicators of related components into an aggregated health state for each component group; and

a correlation component for analyzing the aggregated health states for the health model to identify a related component associated with a root cause of the alert condition for an affected component group.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the correlation component further comprises a voting component for selecting one of the aggregated health indicators based on at least one of a freshness or a voting weight to define the aggregated health state of each group.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein a non-selected aggregated health indicator is linked to the aggregated health state as a forensic health indicator.

9. The system of claim 6, further comprising a categorization component for categorizing the health indicators into key health indicators, forensic data, and non-service impacting issues.

10. The system of claim 6, further comprising an encapsulating component for encapsulating the health indicators of each component within a component boundary.

11. The system of claim 6, wherein the hierarchy of related components represents dependency relationships between the related components.

12. A computer-implemented method of diagnosing component health, comprising:

receiving health indicators that indicate an alert condition for components of a computer system;

aggregating health indicators of related components into an aggregated health state; and

analyzing the aggregated health state to identify a related component having the alert condition.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein aggregating the health indicators of related components into an aggregated health state comprises receiving a plurality of alerts from the respective health indicators and generating a single alert for notification of the alert condition.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising voting to select an aggregated key health indicator to define the aggregated health state, the voting based on at least one of a freshness or a voting weight of the selected aggregated key health indicator.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising linking a non-selected aggregated key health indicator to the aggregated health state as a forensic health indicator.

16. The method of claim 12, further comprising categorizing the health indicators into key health indicators, forensics data, and non-service impacting issues.

17. The method of claim 12, further comprising encapsulating health monitoring of each component within a component boundary.

18. The method of claim 12, further comprising creating a health model that represents a hierarchy of related components within component groups.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein creating the health model further comprises representing dependency relationships within the hierarchy of related components.

20. The method of claim 18, further comprising analyzing the health model to identify a related component having a root cause of the alert condition.