System and method of enterprise systems and business impact management

• US 6,983,321 B2
• Filed: 07/06/2001
• Issued: 01/03/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: BMC Software Incorporated (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: BMC Software Incorporated (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: Trinon, Jean-Marc, Pignault, Olivier, Moitroux, Philippe, Lemercier, Bernard
• Primary Examiner(s): Etienne, Ario
• Assistant Examiner(s): LAZARO, DAVID R
• Application Number:
  US09/900,283
• Publication Number:
  US 20020138571A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,642 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223, 709/224, 705/1, 705/7, 703/22
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/067 Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/4015 using location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/069 using logs of notifications; Post-processing of notifications
• 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 41/5054 Automatic deployment of services triggered by the service manager, e.g. service implementation by automatic configuration of network components
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0817 by checking functioning

Abstract

A system architecture and a method for management using a cellular architecture to allow multi-tier management of events such as the managing of the actual impact or the potential impact of IT infrastructure situations on business services. A preferred embodiment includes a high availability management backbone to frame monitoring operations using a cross-domain model where IT Component events are abstracted into IT Aggregate events. By combining IT Aggregate events with transaction events, an operational representation of the business services is possible. Another feature is the ability to connect this information to dependent business user groups such as internal end-users or external customers for direct impact measurement. A web of peer-to-peer rule-based cellular event processors preferably using Dynamic Data Association constitutes management backbone crossed by event flows, the execution of rules, and distributed set of dynamic inter-related object data rooted in the top data instances featuring the business services.

Claims

1. In an information technology infrastructure where users rely on business services to submit business transaction involving an orderly sequence of application transactions along a plurality of paths of the structure forming aggregates, a method for managing impact of events of the infrastructure on the business services, the method comprising:

configuring a management backbone comprising an abstraction layer for intermediate processing, wherein configuring the abstraction layer comprises;

installing at least one peer-to-peer domain processor in the infrastructure,

configuring the at least one peer-to-peer domain processor with a prepackaged set of event structures, data structures, and rules such that the at least one peer-to-peer domain processor can deliver at least one abstraction service,

installing at least one peer-to-peer object directory services processor in the infrastructure, and

configuring the at least one peer-to-peer object directory services processor with a pre-packaged set of event structures, data structures, and rules such that the at least one peer-to-peer object directory services processor can deliver at least one object directory service, and

wherein configuring the management backbone further comprises;

installing at least one peer-to-peer service processor in the infrastructure, and

configuring the at least one peer-to-peer service processor with a pre-packaged set of event structures, data structures, and rules such that the service processor can deliver business impact statements;

monitoring the paths used by the application transactions to form monitoring information;

monitoring the aggregates to supplement the monitoring information;

automatically abstracting the monitoring information into business impact information;

using the business impact information to manage the impact of events on the business services;

decomposing at least one of the business services into at least one of the business transactions, wherein each of the business transactions branches to at least one site specific instance defined as a site business transaction;

decomposing each of a site business transactions into at least one site application transaction;

organizing each of the site application transactions into an orderly sequence;

defining one of the paths for each of the site application transactions;

associating to each of the site application transactions at least one first parameter to remotely submit a sample site application transaction at an associated source location of the infrastructure;

associating to each of a site application transactions at least one second parameter to request the management backbone to capture related execution information for each of the sample site application transactions executed at the associated source location of the infrastructure; and

defining at least one business user group as a resource dependent on at least one of the site business transactions of the at least one business service.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of monitoring the paths further comprises remotely submitting sample application transactions at selected source locations while requesting the management backbone to capture execution information along the paths of each application transaction.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of monitoring the aggregates further comprises collating and optionally controlling underlying monitoring threads in conjunction with distributed management policies.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein at least one of the monitoring threads is an indicator.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of using the business impact information to manage the impact of events on the business services further comprises:

translating an availability or a performance impact ascertained for the business transaction on given location in a business impact statement for a plurality of dependent business user groups; and

translating the availability or the performance impact ascertained for all the business transactions on all the possible locations in a business impact statement for the business service.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of using the business impact information to manage the impact of events on the business services further comprises recording impact events for providing off-line reporting capabilities.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of using the business impact information to manage the impact of events on the business services further comprises running simulation sessions in parallel of a real-time session.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the management backbone comprises an access layer for low-end monitoring, and wherein the method further comprises the step of configuring the access layer.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the management backbone comprises a plurality of production servers, and wherein configuring the access layer comprises:

installing a peer-to-peer server processor on each production server;

configuring the peer-to-peer server processor with a pre-packaged set of event structures, data structures, control structures, actions, and rules such that the peer-to-peer server processor is capable of capturing external events, using embedded instrumentation functions, applying mapping methods, and enforcing distributed management polices;

auto-discovering or declaring components of the infrastructure owned by the peer-to-peer server processor; and

referencing other components in dependency relationships, wherein the dependency relationships define at least one first component as a master resource and define at least one second component as a dependent resource.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising defining a domain of the infrastructure as a logical realm.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the act of defining the domain comprises:

linking the domain to at least one of the peer-to-peer domain processors configured to deliver abstraction services; and

linking each of the domain processors of the domain to one of the peer-to-peer object directory services processors.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

associating at least one of the aggregates to one of the domains such that at least one of the peer-to-peer domain processors will own the aggregate; and

decomposing the aggregate into at least one aggregation pattern used by the peer-to-peer domain processor to query the peer-to-peer object directory services processor and identify matching components of the infrastructure.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising branching each path onto at least one of the aggregates creating an auditable snapshot of the path.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising defining an indicator of the infrastructure as an accretion point for a range of events carrying information related to a same operational parameter in a given management discipline.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

associating the indicator to an independent event source or a controlled event source;

setting appropriate event capture arguments for the indicator when associated to the independent event source;

setting appropriate instrumentation arguments for the indicator when associated to the controlled event source;

auto-associating at least one peer-to-peer server processor to the indicator; and

registering the indicator onto the at least one peer-to-peer server processor.