Health monitoring of applications in a guest partition

• US 9,098,609 B2
• Filed: 03/24/2014
• Issued: 08/04/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Eck, Christopher, Reuther, Lars, Koppolu, Lokesh Srinivas, Ekren, Steven, Dion, David, Meshcheryakov, Sergey, Fischer, Jonathan, Bezbaruah, Angshuman, Dave, Rajesh
• Primary Examiner(s): Wilson, Yolanda L
• Application Number:
  US14/223,196
• Publication Number:
  US 20140208166A1
• Time in Patent Office: 498 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0712 in a virtual computing platform, e.g. logically partitioned systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0766 Error or fault reporting or storing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45591 Monitoring or debugging support
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual middleware or OS functionality using virtual machines to implement generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking G06F11/1484
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45545 Guest-host, i.e. hypervisor is an application program itself, e.g. VirtualBox
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects

Abstract

A health monitoring technique monitors the health and performance of applications executing in a guest partition in a virtualized environment. In an embodiment, a guest integration component interacts with an application through an application programming interface in order for the virtualization platform to monitor the health and performance of the application. In another embodiment, the guest integration component may include a monitoring agent that accesses an event log and/or a performance monitor log to access the health and performance of the application. The health and performance of the application may then be analyzed by the virtualization platform to determine an appropriate remedial action.

Claims

1. A method implemented on a computing device having at least one processor, the method comprising:

executing an application in a first guest partition of a virtualized platform, the first guest partition isolated from other guest partitions in the virtualized platform, the first guest partition including a guest operating system and a guest integration component; and

applying a sequence of remedial actions to remedy at least one event affecting performance of the execution of the application, the sequence including a first remedial action applied by the application, a second remedial action applied by the guest operating system when the first remedial action is unsuccessful, a third remedial action applied by a guest integration component when the second remedial action is unsuccessful, and a fourth remedial action applied by the virtualized platform when the third remedial action is unsuccessful.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing, by the application, data pertaining to health of the application to the guest integration component;

forwarding, by the guest integration component, the health data to the virtualized platform; and

detecting, by the virtualized platform, the at least one event.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the application provides the data pertaining to the health of the application using one or more application programming interfaces (APIs).

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the first guest partition includes a monitoring agent and at least one log, the at least one log collects data pertaining to health of the application, the monitoring agent monitors the at least one log for an indication of the at least one event which is provided to the guest integration component.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the guest integration component utilizes a dedicated channel to provide a communication path from the first guest partition and the virtualized platform.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtualized platform provides the guest integrated component with the third remedial action.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the guest integration component is provided by the virtualized platform.

8. A computer-readable storage medium, not generating a propagating signal per se, storing thereon processor-executable instructions, that when executed perform actions, the actions comprising:

executing an application in a first guest partition of a virtualized platform, the first guest partition isolated from other guest partitions in the virtualized platform, the first guest partition including a guest operating system and a guest integration component; and

applying a sequence of remedial actions to remedy at least one event affecting performance of the execution of the application, the sequence including a first remedial action applied by the application, a second remedial action applied by the guest operating system when the first remedial action is unsuccessful, a third remedial action applied by a guest integration component when the second remedial action is unsuccessful, and a fourth remedial action applied by the virtualized platform when the third remedial action is unsuccessful.

9. The medium of claim 8, further comprising:

providing, by the application, data pertaining to health of the application to the guest integration component;

forwarding, by the guest integration component, the health data to the virtualized platform; and

detecting, by the virtualized platform, the at least one event.

10. The medium of claim 9, wherein the application provides the data pertaining to the health of the application using one or more application programming interfaces (APIs).

11. The medium of claim 8, wherein the first guest partition includes a monitoring agent and at least one log, the at least one log collects data pertaining to health of the application, the monitoring agent monitors the at least one log for an indication of the at least one event which is provided to the guest integration component.

12. The medium of claim 8, wherein the guest integration component utilizes a dedicated channel to provide a communication path from the first guest partition and the virtualized platform.

13. The medium of claim 8, wherein the virtualized platform provides the guest integrated component with the third remedial action.

14. The method medium of claim 8, wherein the guest integration component is provided by the virtualized platform.

15. A system comprising:

at least one processor of a computing device;

at least one memory of the computing device, the at least one memory including;

a first guest partition including a guest integration component, an application,

and a guest operating system, the first guest partition operates as an independent execution environment to execute the application; and

a virtualized platform causing the at least one processor to provide the first guest partition with the guest integration component;

wherein the application attempts to remedy an event affecting health of the application;

wherein the guest operating system attempts to remedy the event when the application is unable;

wherein the guest integration component attempts to remedy the event when the guest operating system is unable;

wherein the virtualized platform attempts to remedy the event when the guest integration component is unable.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising a first dedicated channel communicatively coupled between the guest integration component and the virtualized platform.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the virtualized platform provides the guest integration component with a remedial action to remedy the event.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the guest integration component receives data pertaining to the health of the application from the application which is forwarded to the virtualized platform.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the guest integration component receives data pertaining to the health of the application from a monitoring agent, wherein the monitoring agent monitors at least one log containing data pertaining to the health of the application.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the virtualized platform receives data pertaining to the health of the application through the guest integration component.