Systems and methods of diagnosing down-layer performance problems via multi-stream performance patternization

• US 10,142,391 B1
• Filed: 03/25/2016
• Issued: 11/27/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/25/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Quest Software, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Quest Software, Inc.
• Inventors: Brisebois, Michel Albert, Johnstone, Curtis T., Goyal, Sawan
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Thu Ha T
• Application Number:
  US15/081,104
• Time in Patent Office: 977 Days
• Field of Search: 709223, 709224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/091 Measuring contribution of individual network components to actual service level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes retrieving a time-based performance pattern of virtual meetings previously mediated by a communications platform executing in a computing environment, wherein the computing environment comprises a plurality of resources. The method further includes determining, from the time-based performance pattern, at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance. Also, the method includes determining a performance relationship between the at least one virtual-meeting attribute and a particular resource of the computing environment. In addition, the method includes generalizing the performance relationship to overall, non-meeting-specific performance of the particular resource.

Claims

1. A method of diagnosing transient down-layer performance problems using virtual-meeting performance data, comprising, by a computer system:

generating a time-based performance pattern of a plurality of virtual meetings of a communications platform executing in a computing environment, wherein the computing environment comprises a plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources that support meeting services of the communications platform and non-meeting services of other components of the computing environment;

determining, from the time-based performance pattern, at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance as indicated by measured media-stream quality for the plurality of virtual meetings;

identifying virtual meetings, of the plurality of virtual meetings of the time-based performance pattern, that have the at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance;

correlating, based at least partly on stored metadata, at least a subset of the identified virtual meetings to a particular down-layer infrastructural resource, of the plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources, that is at least partially responsible for executing each virtual meeting of the at least a subset;

examining a performance metric of the correlated at least a subset of virtual meetings that is illustrative of an infrastructural problem which is broader than the communications platform;

identifying a transient down-layer performance problem related to the particular down-layer infrastructural resource responsive to the examined performance metric satisfying a threshold; and

reporting the transient down-layer performance problem.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising generating a performance diagnostic in relation to the particular down-layer infrastructural resource.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising, prior to the identifying virtual meetings, correlating the plurality of virtual meetings of the time-based performance pattern to down-layer infrastructural resources of the plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources that are responsible executing the plurality of virtual meetings.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the examined performance metric comprises information related to network latency.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one virtual-meeting attribute comprises a combination of virtual-meeting attributes.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one virtual-meeting attribute comprises a combination of a virtual-meeting participant and a recurring time interval.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising validating an infrastructure-level significance of the relatively poor virtual-meeting performance based at least partly on the examining.

8. An information handling system comprising a processor and memory, wherein the processor and memory in combination are operable to implement a method comprising:

generating a time-based performance pattern of a plurality of virtual meetings of a communications platform executing in a computing environment, wherein the computing environment comprises a plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources that support meeting services of the communications platform and non-meeting services of other components of the computing environment;

determining, from the time-based performance pattern, at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance as indicated by measured media-stream quality for the plurality of virtual meetings;

identifying virtual meetings, of the plurality of virtual meetings of the time-based performance pattern, that have the at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance;

correlating, based at least partly on stored metadata, at least a subset of the identified virtual meetings to a particular down-layer infrastructural resource, of the plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources, that is at least partially responsible for executing each virtual meeting of the at least a subset;

examining a performance metric of the correlated at least a subset of virtual meetings that is illustrative of an infrastructural problem which is broader than the communications platform;

identifying a transient down-layer performance problem related to the particular down-layer infrastructural resource responsive to the examined performance metric satisfying a threshold; and

reporting the transient down-layer performance problem.

9. The information handling system of claim 8, the method comprising generating a performance diagnostic in relation to the particular down-layer infrastructural resource.

10. The information handling system of claim 8, the method comprising, prior to the identifying virtual meetings, correlating the plurality of virtual meetings of the time-based performance pattern to down-layer infrastructural resources of the plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources that are responsible executing the plurality of virtual meetings.

11. The information handling system of claim 8, wherein the examined performance metric comprises information related to network latency.

12. The information handling system of claim 8, wherein the at least one virtual-meeting attribute comprises a combination of virtual-meeting attributes.

13. The information handling system of claim 8, wherein the at least one virtual-meeting attribute comprises a combination of a virtual-meeting participant and a recurring time interval.

14. The information handling system of claim 8, the method comprising validating an infrastructure-level significance of the relatively poor virtual-meeting performance based at least partly on the examining.

15. A computer-program product comprising a non-transitory computer-usable medium having computer-readable program code embodied therein, the computer-readable program code adapted to be executed to implement a method comprising:

generating a time-based performance pattern of a plurality of virtual meetings of a communications platform executing in a computing environment, wherein the computing environment comprises a plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources that support meeting services of the communications platform and non-meeting services of other components of the computing environment;

determining, from the time-based performance pattern, at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance as indicated by measured media-stream quality for the plurality of virtual meetings;

identifying virtual meetings, of the plurality of virtual meetings of the time-based performance pattern, that have the at least one virtual-meeting attribute associated with relatively poor virtual-meeting performance;

correlating, based at least partly on stored metadata, at least a subset of the identified virtual meetings to a particular down-layer infrastructural resource, of the plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources, that is at least partially responsible for executing each virtual meeting of the at least a subset;

examining a performance metric of the correlated at least a subset of virtual meetings that is illustrative of an infrastructural problem which is broader than the communications platform;

identifying a transient down-layer performance problem related to the particular down-layer infrastructural resource responsive to the examined performance metric satisfying a threshold; and

reporting the transient down-layer performance problem.

16. The computer-program product of claim 15, the method comprising generating a performance diagnostic in relation to the particular down-layer infrastructural resource.

17. The computer-program product of claim 15, the method comprising, prior to the identifying virtual meetings, correlating the plurality of virtual meetings of the time-based performance pattern to down-layer infrastructural resources of the plurality of down-layer infrastructural resources that are responsible executing the plurality of virtual meetings.

18. The computer-program product of claim 15, wherein the examined performance metric comprises information related to network latency.

19. The computer-program product of claim 15, wherein the at least one virtual-meeting attribute comprises a combination of virtual-meeting attributes.

20. The computer-program product of claim 15, the method comprising validating an infrastructure-level significance of the relatively poor virtual-meeting performance based at least partly on the examining.