Method and system for generic application liveliness monitoring for business resiliency

• US 9,485,156 B2
• Filed: 02/04/2014
• Issued: 11/01/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Huynh, Lap T., Williams, Michael D., Baskey, Michael E., Chang, Chun-Shi, Joseph, Dinakaran, Sahu, Sambit, Verma, Dinesh C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Serrao, Ranodhi
• Application Number:
  US14/172,633
• Publication Number:
  US 20140156837A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,001 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0805 by checking availability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/50 Testing arrangements

Abstract

A system and method for monitoring liveliness includes a management device which has an application layer where applications are executed. A connection monitor is located other than on the application layer, and the connection monitor is configured to receive requests from clients and deliver the requests to components on the application layer. The components include a generic application monitor which responds to liveliness monitor requests from the clients for all applications monitored, and one or more applications which response to requests to that application.

Claims

1. A monitoring system, comprising:

a message generator executable by a processor, said message generator configured to create messages to be used for monitoring liveliness of an application;

a sequence generator configured to create a sequence of messages to provide message exchanges for the monitoring;

a base monitor configured to validate that the sequence of messages is exchanged with the application;

a message responder to form reply messages to send back in response to liveliness requests from application monitors; and

a request router to route the liveliness requests to at least one of the message responder or to the monitored application, wherein the request router is located within the network stack of a device running the monitored application.

2. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the message generator generates messages from a set of message templates.

3. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein sequence of messages are generated from a set of sequence templates.

4. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the message responder runs on a port different from the port on which the monitored application runs.

5. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the request router makes routing decisions on the basis of predetermined policies.

6. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein monitoring requests include heartbeat requests and the system handles heartbeat requests from more than one application.

7. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the message responder checks Operating System statistics to determine the liveliness of the monitored application.

8. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the message responder checks that network statistics of packets sent and received by an application are within predetermined limits.

9. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the message responder checks that an operating system associated with the monitored application is active.

10. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the message responder monitors requests for all applications by using a same generic application liveliness responder to handle all requests to monitor.