CLOUD MANAGEMENT USING A COMPONENT HEALTH MODEL

• US 20140195853A1
• Filed: 01/09/2013
• Published: 07/10/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Singh, Abhishek, Raghavan, Srikanth, Mani, Ajay, Syed, Saad
• Granted Patent: US 8,996,932 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/33
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2294 by remote test

Abstract

Embodiments are directed to establishing a model for testing cloud components and to preventing cascading failures in cloud components. In one scenario, a computer system models identified cloud components (including cloud hardware components and/or cloud software components) as health entities. Each health entity is configured to provide state information about the cloud component. The computer system establishes declarative safety conditions which declaratively describe cloud computing conditions that are to be maintained at the identified cloud components. The computer system then tests against the declarative safety conditions to determine which cloud components are or are becoming problematic. Upon determining that an error has occurred, the computer system notifies users of the error and the component at which the error occurred. Guarded interfaces are established to ensure that actions taken to fix the error do not cause further failures.

Claims

1. A computer system comprising the following:

one or more processors;

system memory;

one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the computing system to perform a method for establishing a model for testing cloud components, the method comprising the following;

an act of modeling one or more identified cloud components including at least one of cloud hardware components and cloud software components as health entities, wherein the health entities are configured to provide state information about the cloud component;

an act of establishing one or more declarative safety conditions which declaratively describe cloud computing conditions that are to be maintained at the identified cloud components; and

(e.g. customer should have at most one blade down at any given time, or availability must be this high)

an act of testing against at least one of the one or more declarative safety conditions to determine which cloud components are or are becoming problematic.

2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the state information comprises one or more of the following:

an indication of the last time the component was updated, an indication of recent computing events, an indication of recent computing errors, and an indication of component dependencies.

3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the health entities include a health indicator, the health indicator indicating where each cloud component'"'"'s health is trending.

4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the modeling results in a health model for cloud management components that manage cloud hardware.

5. The computer system of claim 4, wherein the health model identifies the health of cloud components at a plurality of hierarchical levels including a cluster level, a data center level and a cloud level.

6. The computer system of claim 5, further comprising presenting a graphical user interface (GUI) that shows a graphical representation of the health model, including one or more of the cloud components at each hierarchical level.

7. The computer system of claim 6, further comprising identifying one or more cloud component problems using the graphical representation of the GUI health model GUI.

8. The computer system of claim 7, wherein the identified problem is mapped to one or more known, potential failures.

9. The computer system of claim 8, wherein the identified problem is further mapped to one or more of the most likely cloud components to experience that failure.

10. The computer system of claim 7, wherein the GUI includes one or more controls for each cloud component, at each of the hierarchical levels.

11. A computer system comprising the following:

one or more processors;

system memory;

one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the computing system to perform a method for preventing cascading failures in cloud components, the method comprising the following;

an act of establishing one or more declarative safety conditions which declaratively describe cloud computing conditions that are to be maintained at one or more cloud components including at least one of hardware components and software components;

an act of detecting that at least one of the declarative safety conditions is no longer being met, indicating that an error has occurred at one or more components of a specified cloud;

an act of determining, based on which safety condition is no longer being met, where the error occurred within the specified cloud; and

an act of sending a notification to one or more users indicating that the error occurred, the notification further indicating the cloud component at which the error occurred.

12. The computer system of claim 11, further comprising an act of establishing a guarded interface to prevent one or more specified actions from occurring in response to the detected failure.

13. The computer system of claim 12, wherein customized guarded interfaces are provided for user-provided cloud components.

14. The computer system of claim 12, wherein upon determining that the declarative safety condition is no longer being met, performing at least one of an automatic and a user-specified action to remedy the error.

15. The computer system of claim 14, further comprising preventing the automatic or user-specified action if the action is guarded against by the guarded interface.

16. The computer system of claim 12, wherein a notification is automatically sent to other nodes in the cloud identifying that the node that experienced an error.

17. The computer system of claim 12, wherein each cloud component includes a health indicator that indicates the trending health for that node.

18. The computer system of claim 17, wherein the health indicator is used to identify cloud components that are near failure.

19. The computer system of claim 18, wherein if the health indicator reaches a specified level at an identified component, error detection is automatically initiated to determine the error at the identified component.

20. A computer system comprising the following:

one or more processors;

system memory;

one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the computing system to perform a method for establishing a model for testing cloud components, the method comprising the following;

an act of modeling one or more identified cloud components including at least one of cloud hardware components and cloud software components as health entities, wherein the health entities are configured to provide state information about the cloud component, the modeling resulting in a health model for cloud management components that manage cloud hardware, the health model identifying the health of cloud components at a plurality of hierarchical levels including a cluster level, a data center level and a cloud level;

an act of establishing one or more declarative safety conditions which declaratively describe cloud computing conditions that are to be maintained at the identified cloud components;

an act of testing against at least one of the one or more declarative safety conditions to determine which cloud components are or are becoming problematic; and

an act of presenting a graphical user interface (GUI) that shows a graphical representation of the health model, including one or more of the cloud components at each hierarchical level.