Resource management with rule based consistency check

• US 7,908,349 B2
• Filed: 09/25/2007
• Issued: 03/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/13/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: D'Alo', Salvatore, Di Balsamo, Arcangelo, Donatelli, Alessandro, Marinelli, Claudio
• Primary Examiner(s): Burgess; Barbara N
• Application Number:
  US11/860,930
• Publication Number:
  US 20080040459A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,267 Days
• Field of Search: 709/220, 709/226, 709/221, 709/217, 709/223, 709/224, 709/229
• US Class Current: 709/221
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/082 the condition being updates or upgrades of network functionality

Abstract

A mechanism is provided for implementing an adaptive model. The mechanism allows an authority to define a desired target state of several kinds of resources, which are directly controlled by different subjects. The authority publishes a series of rules in a shared repository; each rule indicates the target state of a resource for a corresponding logic or physic category of the subjects. Each subject retrieves the rules corresponding to its logic category from the shared repository. The rules are then applied by the subject; as a result, the physic category of the subject is updated. The subject now retrieves and applies the rules corresponding to its physic category. In this way, different dependency schemes may be implemented without any explicit definition in the rules.

Claims

1. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer useable medium having a computer readable program stored thereon, wherein the computer readable program, when executed in a data processing system including a plurality of subject entities and at least one authority entity:

performs a resource management method for consistently self-configuring a subject entity within the plurality of subject entities when the computer readable program is run on a computer of the subject entity, wherein each subject entity in the plurality of subject entities controls an instance of at least one resource and belongs to at least one logic category of a plurality of logic categories and to at least one physic category of a plurality of physic categories, the at least one authority entity defining a target state of the at least one resource by;

publishing a plurality of rules, at least one rule of the plurality of rules including an indication of the target state of the at least one resource for the at least one logic category of each subject entity and at least a further rule of the plurality of rules including the indication of the target state of the resource for the at least one physic category of each subject entity, and for each subject entity;

determining if a current state of the at least one resource on the subject entity corresponds to the target state;

responsive to the current state failing to correspond to the target state, enforcing a management action to bring the current state of the at least one resource to the target state;

responsive to the current state corresponding to the target state, retrieving a first set of rules from the plurality of rules corresponding to the at least one logic category of the subject entity;

configuring each subject entity according to the target state by applying the first set of rules;

retrieving a second set of rules corresponding to the at least one physic category of each subject entity; and

configuring the subject entity according to the target state by applying the second set of rules.

2. The computer program product according to claim 1, wherein publishing the plurality of rules includes inserting the plurality of rules into a shared memory space accessible by the subject entities.

3. The computer program product according to claim 1, wherein each logic category includes a dynamic component, and for each subject entity detecting the dynamic component of the at least one logic category of the subject entity by retrieving the dynamic component associated with an identifier of the subject entity from a further shared memory space accessible by the subject entities.

4. The computer program product according to claim 1, further for each subject entity:

detecting the at least one physic category of the subject entity by performing a scan of hardware or software characteristics of the subject entity.

5. The computer program product according to claim 4, wherein the at least one resource consists of a scanner module for detecting the hardware or software characteristics of the subject entity, and wherein at least one of the plurality of rules defines the hardware or software characteristics to be detected by the scanner module.