Programmatic validation in an information technology environment

• US 8,326,910 B2
• Filed: 12/28/2007
• Issued: 12/04/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bobak, Mythili K., Chang, Chun-Shi, McConnell, Tim A., Swanson, Michael D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Yohannes, Tesfay
• Application Number:
  US11/966,619
• Publication Number:
  US 20090172769A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,803 Days
• Field of Search: 709/200, 709/203
• US Class Current: 709/200
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0843 based on generic templates
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• 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 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

Programmatically validating service level policies established for business applications of an Information Technology environment. The programmatic validation predicts whether the policies are achievable within the environment. Examples of service level policies include quantitative goals, redundancy levels and resource use.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented validation method comprising:

obtaining a service level policy to be validated for a business application of an information technology environment, the business application comprising a plurality of resources and the service level policy specifying a customer desired level of service for the business application including an overall goal for the business application, wherein the overall goal comprises a quantitative goal; and

programmatically validating, by a processor, in real-time the service level policy for achievability, wherein the programmatically validating comprises predicting whether the service level policy is achievable, and wherein the programmatically validating comprises;

identifying multiple recovery actions to be used to recover multiple resources of the plurality of resources of the business application, wherein a recovery action comprises one or more steps to take to restore service to a level acceptable for the service level policy; and

using historical information of the multiple recovery actions, coordination of the multiple recovery actions, and current runtime conditions of the IT environment to determine achievability of the overall goal for the business application.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the quantitative goal comprises a quantitative availability goal.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the quantitative availability goal comprises a recovery time objective specified for a component of the information technology environment.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the programmatically validating uses relationships between resources of the business application to validate the service level policy.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the programmatically validating creates a set of operations which alter one or more capabilities of one or more resources supporting the business application, and wherein individual operations included in the set of operations are selected to optimally achieve an overall time period for performing a specified action for the business application.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising creating a representation of a sequence of operations for the programmatically validated service level policy.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the representation comprises a Gantt representation.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the Gantt representation is created prior to a failure for which one or more operations expressed in the Gantt representation are used in recovery of the failure.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the programmatically validating uses at least one of observed historical data or explicit specification of data values to validate the service level policy.

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

automatically detecting a change in the information technology environment; and

performing re-validation of the service level policy, in response to detecting the change.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the programmatically validating comprises validating a plurality of service level policies.

12. A computer system for performing validation, the computer system comprising:

a memory; and

a processor in communications with the memory, wherein the computer system is configured to perform a method, said method comprising;

obtaining a service level policy to be validated for a business application of an information technology environment, the business application comprising a plurality of resources and the service level policy specifying a customer desired level of service for the business application including an overall goal for the business application, wherein the overall goal comprises a quantitative goal; and

programmatically validating in real-time the service level policy for achievability, wherein the programmatically validating comprises predicting whether the service level policy is achievable, and wherein the programmatically validating comprises;

identifying multiple recovery actions to be used to recover multiple resources of the plurality of resources of the business application, wherein a recovery action comprises one or more steps to take to restore service to a level acceptable for the service level policy; and

using historical information of the multiple recovery actions, coordination of the multiple recovery actions, and current runtime conditions of the IT environment to determine achievability of the overall goal for the business application.

13. The computer system of claim 12, wherein the quantitative goal comprises a quantitative availability goal.

14. The computer system of claim 12, wherein one or more operations to be performed to achieve the programmatically validated service level policy are represented in a Gantt representation.

15. The computer system of claim 12, wherein the programmatically validating uses at least one of observed historical data or explicit specification of data values to validate the service level policy.

16. A computer program product for performing validation, said computer program product comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium readable by a processor and storing instructions for execution by the processor for performing a method comprising;

obtaining a service level policy to be validated for a business application of an information technology environment, the business application comprising a plurality of resources and the service level policy specifying a customer desired level of service for the business application including an overall goal for the business application, wherein the overall goal comprises a quantitative goal; and

programmatically validating in real-time the service level policy for achievability, wherein the programmatically validating comprises predicting whether the service level policy is achievable, wherein the programmatically validating comprises;

identifying multiple recovery actions to be used to recover multiple resources of the plurality of resources of the business application, wherein a recovery rises one or more steps to take to restore service to a level acceptable for the service level policy; and

using historical information of the multiple recovery actions, coordination of the multiple recovery actions, and current runtime conditions of the IT environment to determine achievability of the overall goal for the business application.

17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the quantitative goal comprises a quantitative availability goal.

18. The computer program product of claim 16, further comprising creating a representation of a sequence of operations for the programmatically validated service level policy.

19. The computer program product of claim 16, further comprising:

automatically detecting a change in the information technology environment; and

performing re-validation of the service level policy, in response to detecting the change.