Service model flight recorder

• US 8,082,275 B2
• Filed: 05/20/2008
• Issued: 12/20/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: BMC Software Incorporated (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: BMC Software Incorporated (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: De Peuter, Geert, Bonnell, David, Pieters, Eric J S
• Primary Examiner(s): Timblin, Robert
• Assistant Examiner(s): BOWEN, RICHARD L
• Application Number:
  US12/123,779
• Publication Number:
  US 20090292720A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,309 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/798
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9024 Graphs; Linked lists G06F16/9027 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis

Abstract

A method, system and medium for recording events in a system management environment is described. As system events are detected in an enterprise computing environment they are stored in a manner allowing them to be “replayed” either forward or reverse to assist a system administrator or other user to determine the chain of events that affected the enterprise. The system engineer and business process owner are therefore presented with pertinent information for monitoring, administrating and diagnosing system activities and their correlation to business services.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

recording a plurality of changes, over a time period, to a computing environment, at least one change from the plurality of changes being associated with a service impact to the computing environment;

defining within a first directed acyclic graph a first state of the computing environment at a first time within the time period based on the plurality of changes, the first directed acyclic graph including a plurality of nodes representing a plurality of devices within the computing environment, each node from the plurality of nodes having a state;

defining within a second directed acyclic graph a second state of the computing environment at a second time within the time period based on the plurality of changes;

calculating a level of activity related to the computing environment over at least a portion of the time period; and

triggering display of the first directed acyclic graph and display of the second directed acyclic graph at variable speeds based on the level of activity related to the computing environment over the at least the portion of the time period.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising recording changes associated with at least a portion of the nodes based on events reported by a system monitoring tool.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising calculating a business impact based on a state of a node from the plurality of nodes included in the first directed acyclic graph.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing at least one statistical measure between the first time and the second time.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the at least one statistical measure includes at least one of a mean time to repair or a mean time between failures.

6. A computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon for causing a programmable control device to perform the method of claim 1.

7. A computer network comprising:

a plurality of processing units communicatively coupled to a computer network, the plurality of processing units configured to perform the method of claim 1.

8. A computer system comprising one or more programmable control devices communicatively coupled to each other and to a computer network, the one or more programmable control devices are programmed to perform the method of claim 1.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the second directed acyclic graph includes a plurality of nodes different from the plurality of nodes included in the first directed acyclic graph, relationships between the plurality of nodes of the first directed acyclic graph are different from relationships between the plurality of nodes of the second directed acyclic graph.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising associating a violation of a service level agreement with the service impact.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

defining a delta file based on at least a portion of the plurality of changes, the delta file including differences between the computing environment at the first time and the computing environment at the second time, the defining of the second directed acyclic graph is based on the delta file.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the second directed acyclic graph is defined based on a delta file including recorded differences between the computing environment at the first time and the computing environment at the second time.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

projecting a time duration for processing a delta file representing changes between the computing environment at the first time and the computing environment at the second time, the defining associated with the second directed acyclic graph includes defining the second directed acyclic graph as a new snapshot file based on the time duration.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the recording is initiated based on a default service model representing the computing environment.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a portion of the nodes from the plurality of nodes included in the first directed acyclic graph are classified as leaf vertices and at least a portion of the nodes from the plurality of nodes included in the first directed acyclic graph are classified as a non-leaf vertices, at least a portion of the leaf vertices have state changes defined based on logged data and at least a portion of the non-leaf vertices have re-computed state changes.

16. A method, comprising:

representing at least a portion of a computing environment as a directed acyclic graph including a plurality of nodes and relationships between the plurality of nodes;

storing a plurality of state changes to the computing environment as a plurality of changes to the directed acyclic graph, the plurality of state changes to the computing environment being within a time period;

calculating a level of activity related to the computing environment over at least a portion of the time period; and

triggering a visual representation of at least a portion of a state of the computing environment at a time within the time period based on a change to the directed acyclic graph from the plurality of changes to the directed acyclic graph, the triggering of the visual representation being performed at variable speeds based on the level of activity related to the computing environment over the at least the portion of the time period.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the visual representation is a first visual representation of the state of the computing environment at a first time in a first area of a display unit,

the method further comprising:

triggering a second visual representation of a state of the computing environment at a second time in a second area of the display unit.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising the plurality of state changes are based on events reported by a system monitoring tool.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the visual representation of the at least the portion of the state of computing environment includes the state of at least a portion of the nodes included in the directed acyclic graph.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the visual representation includes a business impact calculation based on the at least the portion of the state of the computing environment.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein the visual representation includes at least one statistical measure related to the plurality of state changes to the computing environment.

22. The method of claim 21 wherein the at least one statistical measure includes at least one of a mean time to repair or a mean time between failures.

23. A computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon for causing a programmable control device to perform the method of claim 16.

24. A computer network comprising:

a plurality of processing units communicatively coupled to a computer network, the plurality of processing units configured to perform the method of claim 16.

25. A computer system comprising one or more programmable control devices communicatively coupled to each other and to a computer network, the one or more programmable control devices are programmed to perform the method of claim 16.

26. The method of claim 16, wherein the plurality of state changes includes a modified attribute of a node from the plurality of nodes propagated within the directed acyclic graph.

27. The method of claim 16, wherein at least a portion of the changes to the directed acyclic graph are stored in a delta file representing differences between the computing environment different times within the time period.

28. A computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon for causing a programmable control device to perform a process, the instructions including instructions to:

record a plurality of changes, over a time period, to a computing environment, at least one change from the plurality of changes being associated with a service impact to the computing environment;

define within a first directed acyclic graph a first state of the computing environment at a first time within the time period based on the plurality of changes, the first directed acyclic graph including a plurality of nodes representing a plurality of devices within the computing environment, each node from the plurality of nodes having a state;

define within a second directed acyclic graph a second state of the computing environment at a second time within the time period based on the plurality of changes;

calculate a level of activity related to the computing environment over the time period; and

replay the changes to the computing environment as represented in a plurality of directed acyclic graphs over the time period at variable speeds based on a level of activity related to the computing environment over the time period, the plurality of directed acyclic graphs including the first directed acyclic graph and the second directed acyclic graph.