MONITORING OF SERVICES

• US 20150263913A1
• Filed: 05/19/2015
• Published: 09/17/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/20/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: De Temmerman, Pieter Joris, Azari, David R., Osiecki, Daniel Lee, Peterson, Ronald Kim
• Granted Patent: US 10,284,443 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 11/3065 Monitoring arrangements determined by the means or processing involved in reporting the monitored data error or fault reporting or logging G06F11/0766
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/323 Visualisation of programs or trace data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/40 Data acquisition and logging for input to computer G06F3/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/86 Event-based monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5012 determining service availability, e.g. which services are available at a certain point in time
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/067 using time frame reporting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

Various systems, methods, and programs embodied on a computer readable medium that facilitate monitoring of services and/or servers. In one embodiment, an amount of data is stored in at least one storage device, the data being generated by a plurality of services executed on a plurality of servers, and/or by the servers upon which the services are executed. A plurality of monitoring applications are executed in a monitoring server, the monitoring applications being configured to perform a plurality of monitoring functions with respect to at least a portion of the data to provide information associated with an operating condition of the services and/or the servers. An interface layer surrounds the monitoring applications in the monitoring server. The interface layer defines a messaging format that is used by external devices to interact with the monitoring applications.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying a program executable in at least one computing device, comprising:

a plurality of monitoring applications configured to perform a plurality of monitoring functions with respect to data generated by a plurality of services, the plurality of monitoring functions providing information associated with an operating condition of the plurality of services; and

an interface layer surrounding the plurality of monitoring applications, the interface layer providing for an asynchronous response capability and further providing for a plurality of actions, wherein the plurality of actions comprise at least one of;

a get action, a put action, or an action that is processed by the interface layer to generate a graphical depiction.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising a rules engine configured to receive the information through the interface layer and determine which of a plurality of responsive actions is to be taken based at least in part on the information.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of monitoring applications is configured to attach at least one search key to the data.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of monitoring applications is configured to send configuration data to a monitoring agent of at least one of the plurality of services, the configuration data specifying at least one of:

a reporting frequency configuring how often the monitoring agent transmits the data to the at least one of the plurality of monitoring applications, or a threshold that defines when an alarm event occurs.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of monitoring applications is configured to perform mining operations on the data for information associated with at least one of:

a service availability, a service latency, or a reliability of service operation.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of monitoring applications is configured to dynamically discover the plurality of services and at least one relationship among the plurality of services.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of monitoring applications is configured to discover objects and associations in the data for use by other ones of the plurality of monitoring applications.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein all access to the data by the at least one device external to the interface layer is channeled through the interface layer.

9. A system, comprising:

at least one computing device;

a plurality of monitoring applications executable in the at least one computing device, the plurality of monitoring applications configured to perform monitoring functions with respect to data generated by a plurality of servers, the monitoring functions providing information associated with an operating condition of the plurality of servers;

an interface layer surrounding the plurality of monitoring applications, the interface layer defining a messaging format that is used by at least one device external to the interface layer to interact with the plurality of monitoring applications, wherein access to the data by the at least one device is channeled through the interface layer; and

wherein the messaging format further defines a plurality of actions, wherein the plurality of actions comprise at least one of;

a get action that is processed by the interface layer to obtain a portion of the data,

a put action by which the data is received from the plurality of servers and stored, or

an action that is processed by the interface layer to generate a graphical depiction associated with at least a portion of the data generated within at least one predefined time frame.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the information further comprises information associated with an operating condition of at least one service executed upon at least one of the plurality of servers.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the interface layer is further configured to authenticate the at least one device for access to the data.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the plurality of monitoring applications are configured to operate in isolation of an operation of the plurality of servers.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the interface layer further comprises:

a synchronous response capability that is configured to generate a response to a first call involving a first action relating to at least a portion of the data within a response limit imposed by a network protocol; and

an asynchronous response capability that is configured to generate a deferred response to a second call involving a second action relating to at least a portion of the data outside the response limit imposed by the network protocol.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the second action includes retrieving a bulk amount of the data, where a time it takes to retrieve the bulk amount of the data is greater than the response limit imposed by the network protocol.

15. The system of claim 9, wherein the interface layer is further configured to:

determine a load of processing requests from the at least one device external to the interface layer; and

dynamically scale a number of hosts implementing the interface layer in response to the load of processing requests.

16. A method, comprising:

surrounding a plurality of monitoring applications with an interface layer, the interface layer defining a messaging format that is used by at least one device external to the interface layer to interact with the plurality of monitoring applications;

receiving, in the interface layer, data from a plurality of services;

channeling access to the data by the at least one device through the interface layer;

performing at least one monitoring function with respect to the data using the plurality of monitoring applications, the at least one monitoring function providing information associated with an operating condition of the plurality of services; and

wherein the messaging format further defines a plurality of actions, wherein the plurality of actions comprise at least one of;

a get action that is processed by the interface layer to obtain a portion of the data,

a put action by which the data is received from the plurality of services and stored;

or

an action that is processed by the interface layer to generate a graphical depiction associated with at least a portion of the data generated within at least one predefined time frame.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein receiving the data further comprises obtaining the data from a plurality of geographically diverse data storage sites.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein at least one of the plurality of actions is programming-language agnostic.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

determining a load of processing requests from the at least one device external to the interface layer; and

dynamically scaling a number of hosts implementing the interface layer in response to the load of processing requests.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the graphical depiction further comprises a graphical depiction of a metric occurring in a first time frame and in a second time frame, thereby allowing comparison of the metric occurring over the first time frame and the second time frame.