Displaying information technology conditions with heat maps

• US 10,121,268 B2
• Filed: 12/04/2012
• Issued: 11/06/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 12/04/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: entIT Software LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Baumecker, Klaus
• Primary Examiner(s): Yang, Ryan R
• Application Number:
  US14/649,191
• Publication Number:
  US 20150310645A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,163 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/327 Alarm or error message display
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/00 Digital computing or data processing equipment or methods, specially adapted for specific functions information retrieval, database structures or file system structures therefor G06F16/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/048 Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/30 Arrangements for executing machine instructions, e.g. instruction decode for executing microinstructions G06F9/22
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/001 Texturing; Colouring; Generation of texture or colour inpainting G06T5/77
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/206 Drawing of charts or graphs
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 3/00 Geometric image transformations in the plane of the image
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data

Abstract

Displaying information technology conditions with heat maps includes determining a severity value of current issues for each configuration item in an information technology system; generating a graph of the configuration items that visually depicts topological relationships between the configuration items, the graph having a heat map overlay; and assigning pixel colors for each configuration item in the heat map overlay according to their severity value.

Claims

1. A computer program product for displaying information technology conditions with heat maps, comprising:

a tangible computer readable storage medium, said tangible computer readable storage medium comprising computer readable program code embodied therewith, said computer readable program code comprising program instructions that, when executed, causes a processor to;

determine a severity value of current issues for each configuration item of a plurality of configuration items of an information technology system, wherein the current issues are associated with a plurality of different issue types;

generate a graph of said plurality of said configuration items that visually depicts topological relationships between said plurality of configuration items, said graph comprising a heat map overlay;

assign pixel colors for each configuration item in said heat map overlay according to their severity value, wherein a region of said heat map overlay comprises a first pixel color of the pixel colors associated with a relatively higher severity value;

display a second pixel color associated with a relatively lower severity value in said heat map overlay; and

surround the region with the second pixel color to highlight the first pixel color.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising computer readable program code to, when executed, cause said processor to cause a topological area of said information technology system to appear as a hot spot when a cluster of topologically proximate configuration items have a high severity value.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said pixel colors are selected from a color spectrum where a first color on a first end of said color spectrum represents a high severity value and a second color on a second end of said color spectrum represents a low severity value.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising computer readable program code to, when executed, cause said processor to assign said pixel colors in real time.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said topological relationships are physical topological relationships.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said topological relationships are logical topological relationships.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising computer readable program code to, when executed, cause said processor to display heat map changes over time.

8. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said severity value is based on response times, error rates, failures rates, or combinations thereof.

9. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the topological relationships comprise a bus topology.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the bus topology comprises a ring topology, a star topology, an extended star topology, a hierarchical topology or a mesh topology.

11. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the topology comprises a three dimensional topology depicting in a three dimensional space relationships of the configuration items relative to each other.

12. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the program code comprises instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:

receive user input representing selection of physical topological relationship between said plurality of configuration items and logical topological relationships between said plurality of configuration items; and

display the physical topological relationships in the graph or display the logical topological relationships in the graph based on the user input.

13. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the program code comprises instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to form a halo in said heat map overlay around the region using the second color.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein said plurality of configuration items comprise hardware items of the information technology system.

14. A system for displaying information technology conditions with heat maps, comprising:

a monitoring engine to identify current issues of configuration items of an information technology system, wherein the current issues are associated with a plurality of different issue types;

a graphing engine to generate a graph of said configuration items in their topological relationships; and

a heat map engine to;

overlay a heat map overlay on said graph;

locate a corresponding position of said configuration items in said heat map overlay;

assign severity pixel colors for each configuration item of said configuration items with said current issues in said heat map overlay according to a severity value, wherein a region of said heat map overlay comprises a first pixel color of the severity pixel colors associated with a relatively higher severity value;

display a second pixel color associated with a relatively lower severity value in said heat map overlay;

surround the region with the second pixel color to highlight the first pixel color; and

assign a third pixel color for each configuration item of said configuration items without said current issues in said heat map overlay.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein said heat map engine assigns said severity pixel colors and said third pixel color or colors in real time.

17. A method for displaying information technology conditions with heat maps, comprising:

determining a severity value of current issues for each configuration item of a plurality of configuration items of an information technology system, wherein the current issues are associated with a plurality of different issue types;

generating a graph of said plurality of configuration items that visually depicts topological relationships between said plurality of configuration items;

overlaying a heat map overlay on said graph;

locating corresponding positions of said plurality of configuration items in said heat map overlay;

assigning pixel colors for each configuration item of the plurality of configuration items in said heat map overlay according to said severity value associated with each configuration item wherein a region of said heat map overlay comprises a first pixel color of the pixel colors associated with a relatively higher severity value;

displaying a second pixel color associated with a relatively lower severity value in said heat map overlay; and

surrounding the region with the second pixel color to highlight the first pixel color.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein assigning pixel colors for each configuration item in said heat map overlay includes assigning said pixel colors in real time.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein generating the graph comprises generating the graph based on a logical topology selection or a physical topology selection by a user.