System health monitoring

• US 8,694,835 B2
• Filed: 09/21/2011
• Issued: 04/08/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/2011
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Terris, Benjamin S., Welp, Richard A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Baderman, Scott
• Assistant Examiner(s): KUDIRKA, JOSEPH R
• Application Number:
  US13/238,946
• Publication Number:
  US 20130073911A1
• Time in Patent Office: 930 Days
• Field of Search: 714/25, 714/33, 714/37, 714/47.1, 714/47.2, 714/47.3, 702/118, 702/179, 702/182, 702/183, 702/185
• US Class Current: 714/47.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/008 Reliability or availability analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0781 Error filtering or prioritizing based on a policy defined by the user or on a policy defined by a hardware/software module, e.g. according to a severity level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3055 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the status of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring if the computing system is on, off, available, not available error or fault processing without redundancy G06F11/0703; error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation G06F11/08; error detection or correction by redundancy in operation G06F11/14; error detection or correction by redundancy in hardware G06F11/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3093 Configuration details thereof, e.g. installation, enabling, spatial arrangement of the probes

Abstract

An apparatus for health monitoring includes a settings module, a field data module, a settings update module, and a monitoring module. The settings module is configured to store health monitoring settings for a plurality of monitored subsystems. The field data module is configured to receive field data, the field data comprising failure data of one or more systems of the same type as at least one of the monitored subsystems. The settings update module is configured to update the health monitoring settings stored by the settings module, wherein the health monitoring settings are updated based at least in part on the field data. The monitoring module is configured to perform one or more health monitoring tasks according to the health monitoring settings.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer readable program code executable by a processor, the computer readable program code comprising;

a settings module configured to store health monitoring settings for a plurality of monitored subsystems;

a field data module configured to receive field data, the field data comprising failure data of one or more systems of a same type as at least one of the monitored subsystems, wherein subsystems of the same type have different health monitoring settings and the different health monitoring settings are based on different up-times since failure between the same types of subsystems;

a settings update module configured to update the health monitoring settings stored by the settings module, wherein the health monitoring settings are updated based at least in part on the field data; and

a monitoring module configured to perform one or more health monitoring tasks according to the health monitoring settings.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the field data comprises one or both of local field data and global field data, wherein local field data comprises field data from the plurality of monitored subsystems and global field data comprises field data from at least one subsystem not monitored by the apparatus.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the settings update module updates the health monitoring settings based at least in part on both the local field data and the global field data.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the health monitoring settings are initiated to default values, and wherein the health monitoring settings are updated based on the field data.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein each monitored subsystem of the plurality of subsystems has a corresponding set of health monitoring settings.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the settings update module is further configured to analyze the field data and determine a risk assessment for the plurality of monitored subsystems, wherein the health monitoring settings are updated based at least in part on the risk assessment.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein each subsystem of the plurality of subsystems has a corresponding risk assessment.

8. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein subsystems of the same type but different code levels have a different risk assessment.

9. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the risk assessment comprises a mean-time between failure for at least one of the subsystems.

10. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the risk assessment comprises a stability for at least one of the subsystems.

11. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein a risk assessment reflecting increased risk results in one or both of health monitoring settings for more frequent performance of monitoring tasks and health monitoring settings for more responsive reaction to reported errors.

12. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the health monitoring settings comprise one or more of:

a polling interval setting;

a system priority setting;

a number of consecutive failures before reporting setting; and

a call home blackout period setting.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the health monitoring settings comprise a system priority setting and wherein the system priority setting is increased if a corresponding subsystem of the monitored subsystems gets skipped during a monitoring task.

14. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the health monitoring settings comprise a polling interval setting and wherein the polling interval setting is decreased for a corresponding subsystem of the monitored subsystems as a system up-time since failure for the corresponding subsystem approaches a mean-time between failure.

15. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the field data comprises one or more of an up-time before failure, an error code, a repair time, a system type, and a system code level.

16. A computer program product for system health monitoring, the computer program product comprising:

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therein, the computer readable program code configured to;

store health monitoring settings for a plurality of monitored subsystems;

receive field data, the field data comprising failure data of one or more systems of a same type as at least one of the monitored subsystems, wherein subsystems of the same type have different health monitoring settings and the different health monitoring settings are based on different up-times since failure between the same types of subsystems;

update the health monitoring settings stored by the settings module, wherein the health monitoring settings are updated based at least in part on the field data; and

perform one or more health monitoring tasks according to the health monitoring settings.

17. A system comprising:

a monitoring apparatus;

a plurality of monitored subsystems;

a communication link between the monitoring apparatus and the plurality of monitored subsystems, the monitoring apparatus comprising;

a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer readable program code executable by a processor, the computer readable program code comprising;

a settings module configured to store health monitoring settings for the plurality of monitored subsystems, wherein the health monitoring settings comprise a polling interval setting and wherein the polling interval setting is decreased for a corresponding subsystem of the monitored subsystems as a system up-time since failure for the corresponding subsystem approaches a mean-time between failure;

a field data module configured to receive field data, the field data comprising failure data of one or more systems of a same type as at least one of the monitored subsystems;

a settings update module configured to update the health monitoring settings stored by the settings module, wherein the health monitoring settings are updated based at least in part on the field data; and

a monitoring module configured to perform one or more health monitoring tasks according to the health monitoring settings.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising a global monitoring data server in communication with the monitoring apparatus, the global monitoring data server configured to provide global field data to the monitoring apparatus.