MONITORING AND RESOLVING DEADLOCKS, CONTENTION, RUNAWAY CPU AND OTHER VIRTUAL MACHINE PRODUCTION ISSUES

• US 20130283090A1
• Filed: 05/03/2013
• Published: 10/24/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bradley, Lisa M. W., Grigorenko, Kevin, Kelapure, Rohit D., Price, Dana L.
• Granted Patent: US 9,003,239 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/2
• 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 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/076 by exceeding a count or rate limit, e.g. word- or bit count limit
• 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 11/3006 where the computing system is distributed, e.g. networked systems, clusters, multiprocessor systems multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46; allocation of resources G06F9/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/301 where the computing system is a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems virtual machines G06F9/45533; logical partitioning of resources G06F9/5077
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3089 Monitoring arrangements determined by the means or processing involved in sensing the monitored data, e.g. interfaces, connectors, sensors, probes, agents software debugging using additional hardware using a specific debug interface G06F11/3656; performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring G06F11/3466

Abstract

Resolving virtual machine (VM) issues, by executing VM and operating system (OS) diagnostic monitors, including, monitoring a set of VM and OS health status metrics of a system at a first level, analyzing data of the monitored health status metrics to determine that an instability has occurred when the data exceeds defined bounds for the health status metrics, responding to the instability by monitoring additional VM and OS health status metrics, whereby a level of monitoring of the system is increased from the first level to a second level, greater than the first level, identifying the instability, repairing the system by taking corrective action based on the identified instability; and removing at least one of the set of monitoring and profiling tools to reduce the level of monitoring to a third level once the instability has been resolved, wherein the third level is less than the second level.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for resolving a computing system issue, comprising:

monitoring a set of computing system health status metrics of a system at a first level;

analyzing data of the monitored computing system health status metrics to determine that an instability has occurred when the data exceeds defined bounds for the computing system health status metrics;

responding to the instability by monitoring additional computing system health status metrics, whereby a level of monitoring of the system is increased from the first level to a second level, greater than the first level;

identifying the instability;

repairing the computing system by taking corrective action based on the identified instability; and

removing at least one of the set of monitoring and profiling tools to reduce the level of monitoring to a third level once the instability has been resolved, wherein the third level is less than the second level.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a user defines the sets of computing system health status metrics to be monitored and the bounds used to determine that an instability has occurred.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the computing system health status metrics monitored at the first level of monitoring comprise health status metrics of a central processing unit (CPU), a system memory, a system network activity, and a system input/output interface.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein monitoring further comprises:

monitoring no health status metrics during a period of system stability.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising writing to a system log the additional computing system health status metrics monitored, the instability, the corrective action taken, and an associated effect on system stability for future use, wherein the system log is referenced to identify the computing system health status metrics monitored and corrective actions taken to repair similar instabilities such that effective actions are repeated, and ineffective actions are not repeated.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

prior to repairing the system, receiving user authorization to take the corrective action.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the computing system is one of:

(i) a virtual machine, or (ii) an operating system.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the computing system is a virtual machine, wherein the method further comprises:

providing support for an early return from a method at any point during its execution and notifying the virtual machine that a critical resource has been exhausted.