HEALTH MONITORING OF APPLICATIONS IN A GUEST PARTITION

• US 20130013953A1
• Filed: 07/07/2011
• Published: 01/10/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Eck, Christopher, Reuther, Lars, Koppolu, Lokesh Srinivas, Dion, David, Bezbaruah, Angshuman, Dave, Rajesh, Ekren, Steven, Meshcheryakov, Sergey, Fischer, Jonathan
• Granted Patent: US 8,713,378 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0766 Error or fault reporting or storing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual middleware or OS functionality using virtual machines to implement generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking G06F11/1484
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45545 Guest-host, i.e. hypervisor is an application program itself, e.g. VirtualBox
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

A health monitoring technique monitors the health and performance of applications executing in a guest partition in a virtualized environment. In an embodiment, a guest integration component interacts with an application through an application programming interface in order for the virtualization platform to monitor the health and performance of the application. In another embodiment, the guest integration component may include a monitoring agent that accesses an event log and/or a performance monitor log to access the health and performance of the application. The health and performance of the application may then be analyzed by the virtualization platform to determine an appropriate remedial action.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

configuring, by a virtualization platform, at least one guest partition, each guest partition configured to execute at least one application, each guest partition configured to execute independent of other guest partitions and the virtualization platform;

monitoring, by the virtualization platform, execution of the application;

detecting at least one event associated with execution of the application;

determining a remedial action to remedy the event; and

applying the remedial action.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing, by the virtualization platform, a guest integration component associated with the virtualization platform and residing in the guest partition, the guest integration component communicatively coupled to the application; and

utilizing the guest integration component to monitor the event.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

configuring the guest integration component with an integration mechanism enabling the application to provide health monitoring data to the virtualization platform.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

forming the integration mechanism as an application programming interface.

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

forming the integration mechanism as a monitoring agent, the monitoring agent communicatively coupled to the guest integration component; and

configuring the monitoring agent to monitor the application.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

accessing, by the monitoring agent, an event log having at least one event.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

accessing, by the monitoring agent, a performance monitor log, the performance monitor log having at least one performance measurement; and

determining a remedial action associated with the performance measurement.

8. A computer-readable storage medium storing thereon processor-executable instructions, comprising:

instructions that configure a guest partition as an independent execution environment to execute at least one application; and

instructions, executing in the guest partition, that monitor the application for an anomalous event.

9. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, further comprising:

instructions that determine a remedial action for remedying the anomalous event.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, further comprising:

instructions, in the application, that report conditions affecting execution of the application.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, further comprising:

instructions, executing in the guest partition, that monitor an event log for an anomalous event.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, further comprising:

instructions, in the application, that report events affecting execution of the application, to an event log.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 8, further comprising:

instructions, executing in the guest partition, that monitor performance criteria associated with execution of the application.

14. An apparatus, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory unit coupled to the processor, the memory unit to store a guest partition that when executed by the processor is operative to execute at least one application, to monitor the application for an anomalous event, and to provide a remedial action to remedy the anomalous event.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, the guest partition further comprising a guest integration component that when executed by the processor is operative to monitor the application for the anomalous event, the guest integration component associated with a virtualization platform.

16. The apparatus of claim 14, the guest partition further comprising an application programming interface that when executed by the processor is operative for the application to provide a guest integration component with health monitoring data associated with the application.

17. The apparatus of claim 14, the guest partition further comprising a monitoring agent that when executed by the processor is operative to monitor an event log for the anomalous event.

18. The apparatus of claim 14, the guest partition further comprising a monitoring agent that when executed by the processor is operative to monitor a performance monitor log for performance degradation of the application.

19. The apparatus of claim 14, the guest partition further comprising a communication channel that when executed by the processor is operative to facilitate dedicated communications between the guest partition and a virtualization platform.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, the virtualization platform comprising an application health monitor and recovery engine that when executed by the processor is operative to determine a remedial action to remedy the anomalous event.