U.S. patent application number 11/965930 was filed with the patent office on 2009-07-02 for real-time information technology environments.
This patent application is currently assigned to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION. Invention is credited to Mythili K. BOBAK, Chun-Shi CHANG, Tim A. MCCONNELL, Michael D. SWANSON.
Application Number | 20090172149 11/965930 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 40799922 |
Filed Date | 2009-07-02 |
United States Patent
Application |
20090172149 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
BOBAK; Mythili K. ; et
al. |
July 2, 2009 |
REAL-TIME INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENTS
Abstract
Real-time data of business applications of an Information
Technology environment is monitored to obtain information to be
used in managing the environment. A business application includes
processing collectively performed by a plurality of components of
the environment. A component includes one or more resources, and
therefore, in one example, the real-time data being monitored is
associated with those resources.
Inventors: |
BOBAK; Mythili K.;
(Lagrangeville, NY) ; CHANG; Chun-Shi;
(Poughkeepsie, NY) ; MCCONNELL; Tim A.;
(Lexington, KY) ; SWANSON; Michael D.;
(Springfield, OR) |
Correspondence
Address: |
HESLIN ROTHENBERG FARLEY & MESITI P.C.
5 COLUMBIA CIRCLE
ALBANY
NY
12203
US
|
Assignee: |
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES
CORPORATION
Armonk
NY
|
Family ID: |
40799922 |
Appl. No.: |
11/965930 |
Filed: |
December 28, 2007 |
Current U.S.
Class: |
709/224 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 10/06 20130101;
H04L 41/0654 20130101; H04L 41/22 20130101; H04L 41/085 20130101;
H04L 41/0893 20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
709/224 |
International
Class: |
G06F 15/173 20060101
G06F015/173 |
Claims
1. A computer-implemented method of facilitating management of an
Information Technology (IT) environment, said computer-implemented
method comprising: obtaining a definition of a business application
that is to be monitored, said business application comprising
processing collectively performed by a plurality of resources of
the IT environment; and monitoring real-time data associated with
one or more resources of the business application to provide
information to be used in managing the IT environment.
2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or
more resources comprises at least one of a computer system, an
operating system, a database, a transaction monitor, a storage
facility, a network connection, an application container, an
application, vendor provided hardware or vendor provided
software.
3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the business
application is programmatically represented by a Recovery
Segment.
4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the
real-time data comprises resource data.
5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the resource
data comprises at least one of state data, property/value data,
operation execution time duration for one or more operations on a
resource or performance data.
6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising
maintaining running statistics on operation execution time
duration.
7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the
monitoring comprises periodic gathering of the real-time data.
8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the periodic
gathering comprises updating a cache with at least a portion of the
real-time data.
9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the periodic
gathering is commenced in response to notification of a change
associated with the business application.
10. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the
periodic gathering is commenced in response to initiation of a
periodic poll.
11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the
monitoring reflects a dynamic change in topology of the business
application.
12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein the
dynamic change in topology comprises at least one of adding a
resource to the business application, deleting a resource from the
business application, adding a resource relationship to the
business application or deleting a resource relationship from the
business application.
13. A system of facilitating management of an Information
Technology (IT) environment, said system comprising: a memory
having a definition of a business application to be monitored, said
business application comprising processing collectively performed
by a plurality of resources of the IT environment; and at least one
processor to monitor real-time data associated with one or more
resources of the business application to provide information to be
used in managing the IT environment.
14. The system of claim 13, wherein the real-time data comprises
resource data.
15. The system of claim 13, wherein the monitoring comprises
periodic gathering of the real-time data.
16. An article of manufacture comprising: at least one computer
usable medium having computer readable program code logic to
facilitate management of an Information Technology (IT)
environment, said computer readable program code logic when
executing performing the following: obtaining a definition of a
business application that is to be monitored, said business
application comprising processing collectively performed by a
plurality of resources of the IT environment; and monitoring
real-time data associated with one or more resources of the
business application to provide information to be used in managing
the IT environment.
17. The article of manufacture of claim 16, wherein the real-time
data comprises resource data.
18. The article of manufacture of claim 16, wherein the monitoring
comprises periodic gathering of the real-time data.
19. The article of manufacture of claim 16, wherein the monitoring
reflects a dynamic change in topology of the business
application.
20. The article of manufacture of claim 19, wherein the dynamic
change in topology comprises at least one of adding a resource to
the business application, deleting a resource from the business
application, adding a resource relationship to the business
application or deleting a resource relationship from the business
application.
Description
TECHNICAL FIELD
[0001] This invention relates, in general, to managing customer
environments to provide support for business resiliency, and in
particular, to monitoring aspects of the environment to facilitate
management thereof.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[0002] Today, customers attempt to manually manage and align their
availability management with their information technology (IT)
infrastructure. Changes in either business needs or the underlying
infrastructure are often not captured in a timely manner and
require considerable rework, leading to an inflexible
environment.
[0003] Often high availability solutions and disaster recovery
technologies are handled via a number of disparate point products
that target specific scopes of failure, platforms or applications.
Integrating these solutions into an end-to-end solution is a
complex task left to the customer, with results being either
proprietary and very specific, or unsuccessful.
[0004] Customers do not have the tools and infrastructure in place
to customize their availability management infrastructure to
respond to failures in a way that allows for a more graceful
degradation of their environments. As a result, more drastic and
costly actions may be taken (such as a site switch) when other
options (such as disabling a set of applications or users) could
have been offered, depending on business needs.
[0005] Coordination across availability management and other
systems management disciplines is either nonexistent or
accomplished via non-reusable, proprietary, custom technology.
[0006] There is little predictability as to whether the desired
recovery objective will be achieved, prior to time of failure.
There are only manual, labor intensive techniques to connect
recovery actions with the business impact of failures and
degradations.
[0007] Any change in the underlying application, technologies,
business recovery objectives, resources or their interrelationships
require a manual assessment of impact to the hand-crafted recovery
scheme.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0008] Based on the foregoing, a need exists for a capability that
facilitates management of an IT environment. In particular, a need
exists for a capability that enables real-time monitoring of
business applications of the environment and use of the information
obtained from monitoring to manage one or more aspects of the
environment.
[0009] The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and
additional advantages are provided through the provision of a
computer-implemented method to facilitate management of an
Information Technology (IT) environment. The method includes, for
instance, obtaining a definition of a business application that is
to be monitored, the business application including processing
collectively performed by a plurality of resources of the IT
environment; and monitoring real-time data associated with one or
more resources of the business application to provide information
to be used in managing the IT environment.
[0010] Computer program products and systems relating to one or
more aspects of the present invention are also described and
claimed herein.
[0011] Additional features and advantages are realized through the
techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects
of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered
a part of the claimed invention.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0012] One or more aspects of the present invention are
particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed as examples in the
claims at the conclusion of the specification. The foregoing and
other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are
apparent from the following detailed description taken in
conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
[0013] FIG. 1 depicts one embodiment of a processing environment to
incorporate and use one or more aspects of the present
invention;
[0014] FIG. 2 depicts another embodiment of a processing
environment to incorporate and use one or more aspects of the
present invention;
[0015] FIG. 3 depicts yet a further embodiment of a processing
environment to incorporate and use one or more aspects of the
present invention;
[0016] FIG. 4 depicts one embodiment of a Business Resilience
System used in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0017] FIG. 5A depicts one example of a screen display of a
business resilience perspective, in accordance with an aspect of
the present invention;
[0018] FIG. 5B depicts one example of a screen display of a
Recovery Segment, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0019] FIG. 6A depicts one example of a notification view
indicating a plurality of notifications, in accordance with an
aspect of the present invention;
[0020] FIG. 6B depicts one example of a notification message sent
to a user, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0021] FIG. 7 depicts one example of a Recovery Segment of the
Business Resilience System of FIG. 4, in accordance with an aspect
of the present invention;
[0022] FIG. 8A depicts examples of key Recovery Time Objective
properties for a particular resource, in accordance with an aspect
of the present invention;
[0023] FIG. 8B depicts one example in which Recovery Time Objective
properties collectively form an observation of a Pattern System
Environment, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0024] FIG. 9 depicts one example of a conceptual view of a
Recovery Segment, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0025] FIG. 10 depicts one embodiment of the logic to activate
observation mode, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0026] FIGS. 11A-11B depict one embodiment of the logic to prepare
for RS monitoring, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0027] FIG. 12 depicts one embodiment of the logic to initiate
periodic poll observation, in accordance with an aspect of the
present invention;
[0028] FIGS. 13A-13G depict one embodiment of the logic to respond
to periodic poll observation, in accordance with an aspect of the
present invention;
[0029] FIGS. 14A-14C depict one embodiment of the logic associated
with topology lifecycle change notification, in accordance with an
aspect of the present invention;
[0030] FIG. 15 depicts one embodiment of the logic to change a
periodic poke interval, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0031] FIG. 16 depicts one embodiment of the logic to deactivate
observation mode, in accordance with an aspect of the present
invention;
[0032] FIG. 17 depicts one embodiment of the logic associated with
RS monitoring of resources, in accordance with an aspect of the
present invention;
[0033] FIGS. 18A-18B depict one embodiment of the logic for RS
monitoring notification, in accordance with an aspect of the
present invention;
[0034] FIG. 19 depicts one embodiment of the logic to deactivate
monitoring, in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;
and
[0035] FIG. 20 depicts one embodiment of a computer program product
incorporating one or more aspects of the present invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
[0036] In managing a customer's environment, such as its business
environment, there is a set of requirements unaddressed by existing
technology, which causes unpredictable down time, large impact
failures and recoveries, and significant extra labor cost, with
resulting loss of business revenue. These requirements include, for
instance: [0037] 1. Ensuring that there is a consistent recovery
scheme across the environment, linked to the business application,
across the different types of resources; not a different
methodology performed by platform silo. The recovery is to match
the scope of the business application, not limited in scope to a
single platform. The recovery is to be end-to-end and allow for
interaction across multiple vendor products. In one example, a
business application is defined as a process that is supported by
IT services. It is supportive of the products and/or services
created by a customer. It can be of fine granularity (e.g., a
specific service/product provided) or of coarse granularity (e.g.,
a group of services/products provided). [0038] 2. Ability to group
together mixed resource types (servers, storage, applications,
subsystems, network, etc.) into logical groupings aligned with
business processes requirements for availability. [0039] 3. Ability
to share resources across logical groups of resources;
[0040] ability to nest these logical group definitions, with
specifications for goal policy accepted and implemented at each
level. [0041] 4. Pre-specified recommendations for resource
groupings, with customization possible, and pattern matching
customer configuration with vendor or customer provided
groupings/relationships--to avoid requiring customers to start from
scratch for definitions.
[0042] 5. Ability to group together redundant resources with
functional equivalence--use during validation when customer has
less redundancy than required to meet the Recovery Time Objective
(RTO) goal; in recovery to select an alternate resource for one
that has failed. [0043] 6. Ability to configure the definition of
what constitutes available, degraded, or unavailable based on
customer's own sensitivity for a given grouping of resources, and
business needs, and further aggregate the state across various
resources to produce an overall state for the business application.
The state is to be assessed real time, based on what is actually
occurring in the system at the time, rather than fixed definitions.
In some cases, a performance slowdown might flag a degraded
environment, and in other cases, a failure may be necessary before
flagging a degraded or unavailable environment. The definitions of
available, degraded and unavailable are to be consumed by an
availability system that evaluates them in the context of a policy,
and then determines appropriate action, including possibly
launching recovery automatically. [0044] 7. Ability to relate the
redundancy capability of relevant resources to the availability
status of a business application. [0045] 8. Allow customers to
configure when recovery actions can be delegated to lower level
resources, particularly since resource sharing is becoming more
relevant in many customer environments. [0046] 9. Include customer
or vendor best practices for availability as prespecified
workflows, expressed in a standards based manner, that can be
customized. [0047] 10. Ability to specify quantitative business
goals for the recovery of logical groupings of resources, effecting
both how the resources are pre-configured for recovery, as well as
recovered during errors. One such quantitative goal is Recovery
Time Objective (RTO). As part of the specification of quantitative
business goals, to be able to include time bias of applications,
and facilitate the encoding of appropriate regulatory requirements
for handling of certain workloads during changing business cycles
in selected businesses, such as financial services. [0048] 11.
Decomposition of the overall quantified RTO goal to nested logical
groups; processing for shared groups having different goals. [0049]
12. Ability to configure redundancy groupings and co-location
requirements with resources from other vendors, using a
representation for resources (which may be, for example, standards
based), with ability to clearly identify the vendor as part of the
resource definition. [0050] 13. Ability to use customer's own
historical system measures to automatically generate various system
environments, then use these system environments when specifying
quantitative recovery goals (since recovery time achievability and
requirements are not consistent across time of day, business cycle,
etc.). The function is to be able to incorporate historical
information from dependent resources, as part of the automatic
generation of system environments. [0051] 14. Specification of
statistical thresholds for acceptability of using historical
information; customer specification directly of expected operation
times and directive to use customer specified values. [0052] 15.
Environments are matched to IT operations and time of day, with
automatic processing under a new system environment at time
boundaries--no automatic internal adjustment of RTO is to be
allowed, rather changed if the customer has specified that a
different RTO is needed for different system environments. [0053]
16. Goal Validation--Prior to failure time. Ability to see
assessment of achievable recovery time, in, for instance, a Gantt
chart like manner, detailing what is achievable for each resource
and taking into account overlaps of recovery sequences, and
differentiating by system environment. Specific use can be during
risk assessments, management requests for additional recovery
related resources, mitigation plans for where there are potentials
for RTO miss. Example customer questions: [0054] What is my
expected recovery time for a given application during "end of month
close" system environment? [0055] What is the longest component of
that recovery time? [0056] Can I expect to achieve the desired RTO
during the "market open" for stock exchange or financial services
applications? [0057] What would be the optimal sequence and
parallelization of recovery for the resources used by my business
application? [0058] 17. Ability to prepare the environment to meet
the desired quantitative business goals, allowing for tradeoffs
when shared resources are involved. Ensure that both automated and
non-automated tasks can be incorporated into the pre-conditioning.
Example of customer question: What would I need to do for
pre-conditioning my system to support the RTO goal I need to
achieve for this business application? [0059] 18. Ability to
incorporate operations from any vendors' resources for
pre-conditioning or recovery workflows, including specification of
which pre-conditioning operations have effect on recoveries, which
operations have dependencies on others, either within vendor
resources or across resources from multiple vendors. [0060] 19.
Customer ability to modify pre-conditioning workflows, consistent
with supported operations on resources. [0061] 20. Ability to undo
pre-conditioning actions taken, when there is a failure to complete
a transactionally consistent set of pre-conditioning actions;
recognize the failure, show customers the optional workflow to undo
the actions taken, allow them to decide preferred technique for
reacting to the failure--manual intervention, running undo set of
operations, combination of both, etc. [0062] 21. Ability to divide
pre-conditioning work between long running and immediate,
nondisruptive short term actions. [0063] 22. Impact only the
smallest set of resources required during recovery, to avoid
negative residual or side effects for attempting to recover a
broader set of resources than what is actually impacted by the
failure. [0064] 23. Choosing recovery operations based on
determination of which recovery actions address the minimal impact,
to meet goal, and then prepare for subsequent escalation in event
of failure of initial recovery actions. [0065] 24. Choosing a
target for applications and operating systems (OS), based on
customer co-location specifications, redundancy groups, and
realtime system state. [0066] 25. Ability for customer to indicate
specific effect that recovery of a given business process can have
on another business process--to avoid situations where lower
priority workloads are recovered causing disruption to higher
priority workloads; handling situations where resources are shared.
[0067] 26. Ability to prioritize ongoing recovery processing over
configuration changes to an availability system, and over any other
administration functions required for the availability system.
[0068] 27. Ability for recoveries and pre-conditioning actions to
run as entire transactions so that partial results are
appropriately accounted for and backed out or compensated, based on
actual effect (e.g., during recovery time or even pre-conditioning,
not all actions may succeed, so need to preserve a consistent
environment). [0069] 28. Allow for possible non-responsive
resources or underlying infrastructure that does not have known
maximum delays in response time in determining recovery actions,
while not going beyond the allotted recovery time. [0070] 29. Allow
customer to change quantified business recovery goals/targets
without disruption to the existing recovery capability, with
appropriate labeling of version of the policy to facilitate
interaction with change management systems. [0071] 30. Allow
customers to change logical groupings of resources that have
assigned recovery goals, without disruption to the existing
recovery capability, with changes versioned to facilitate
interaction with change management systems. [0072] 31. Ability to
specify customizable human tasks, with time specifications that can
be incorporated into the goal achievement validation so customers
can understand the full time involved for a recovery and where
focusing on IT and people time is critical to reducing RTO. [0073]
32. There is a requirement/desire to implement dynamically modified
redundancy groupings for those resources which are high
volume--automatic inclusion based on a specified set of
characteristics and a matching criteria.
[0074] 33. There is a requirement/desire to automatically
add/delete resources from the logical resource groupings for sets
of resources that are not needing individual assessment.
[0075] The above set of requirements is addressed, however, by a
Business Resiliency (BR) Management System, of which one or more
aspects of the present invention are included. The Business
Resiliency Management System provides, for instance:
[0076] 1. Rapid Identification of Fault Scope. [0077] Correlation
and identification of dependencies between business functions and
the supporting IT resources. [0078] Impact analysis of failures
affecting business functions, across resources used within the
business functions, including the applications and data. [0079]
Isolation of failure scope to smallest set of resources, to ensure
that any disruptive recovery actions effect only the necessary
resources.
[0080] 2. Rapid Granular and Graceful Degradation of IT Service.
[0081] Discontinuation of services based on business priorities.
[0082] Selection of alternate resources at various levels may
include selection of hardware, application software, data, etc.
[0083] Notifications to allow applications to tailor or reduce
service consumption during times of availability constraints.
[0084] 3. Integration of Availability Management with Normal
Business Operations and other Core Business Processes. [0085]
Policy controls for availability and planned reconfiguration,
aligned with business objectives. [0086] Encapsulation, integration
of isolated point solutions into availability IT fabric, through
identification of affected resources and operations initiated by
the solutions, as well as business resiliency. [0087] Goal based
policy support, associated with Recovery Segments that may be
overlapped or nested in scope. [0088] Derivation of data currency
requirements, based on business availability goals.
[0089] One goal of the BR system is to allow customers to align
their supporting information technology systems with their business
goals for handling failures of various scopes, and to offer a
continuum of recovery services from finer grained process failures
to broader scoped site outages. The BR system is built around the
idea of identifying the components that constitute a business
function, and identifying successive levels of recovery that lead
to more complex constructs as the solution evolves. The various
recovery options are connected by an overall BR management
capability that is driven by policy controls.
[0090] Various characteristics of one embodiment of a BR system
include: [0091] 1. Capability for dynamic generation of recovery
actions, into a programmatic and manageable entity. [0092] 2.
Dynamic generation of configuration changes required/desired to
support a customer defined Recovery Time Objective (RTO) goal.
[0093] 3. Dynamic definition of key Pattern System Environments
(PSEs) through statistical analysis of historical observations.
[0094] 4. Validation of whether requested RTO goals are achievable,
based on observed historical snapshots of outages or customer
specified recovery operation time duration, in the context of key
Pattern System Environments. [0095] 5. BR system dynamic, automatic
generation and use of standards based Business Process Execution
Language (BPEL) workflows to specify recovery transactions and
allow for customer integration through workflow authoring tools.
[0096] 6. Ability to configure customized scopes of recovery, based
on topologies of resources and their relationships, called Recovery
Segments (RSs). [0097] 7. Best practice workflows for configuration
and recovery, including, but not limited to, those for different
resource types: servers, storage, network, and middleware, as
examples. [0098] 8. Ability to customize the definition of
available, degraded, unavailable states for Recovery Segments.
[0099] 9. Ability to represent customers' recommended
configurations via best practice templates. [0100] 10. Ability to
define the impact that recovery of one business application is
allowed to have on other business applications. [0101] 11. Ability
to correlate errors from the same or multiple resources into
related outages and perform root cause analysis prior to initiating
recovery actions. [0102] 12. Quantified policy driven, goal
oriented management of unplanned outages. [0103] 13. Groupings of
IT resources that have associated, consistent recovery policy and
recovery actions, classified as Recovery Segments. [0104] 14.
Handling of situations where the underlying error detection and
notifications system itself is unavailable.
[0105] A Business Resilience System is capable of being
incorporated in and used by many types of environments. One example
of a processing environment to incorporate and use aspects of a BR
system, including one or more aspects of the present invention, is
described with reference to FIG. 1.
[0106] Processing environment 100 includes, for instance, a central
processing unit (CPU) 102 coupled to memory 104 and executing an
operating system 106. Examples of operating systems include
AIX.RTM. and z/OS.RTM., offered by International Business Machines
Corporation; Linux; etc. AIX.RTM. and z/OS.RTM. are registered
trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk,
N.Y., U.S.A. Other names used herein may be registered trademarks,
trademarks or product names of International Business Machines
Corporation or other companies.
[0107] The operating system manages execution of a Business
Resilience Runtime Component 108 of a Business Resilience System,
described herein, and one or more applications 110 of an
application container 112.
[0108] As examples, processing environment 100 includes an
IBM.degree. System z.TM. processor or a pSeries.TM. server offered
by International Business Machines Corporation; a Linux server; or
other servers, processors, etc. Processing environment 100 may
include more, less and/or different components than described
herein. (pSeries.RTM. is a registered trademark of International
Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., USA.)
[0109] Another example of a processing environment to incorporate
and use aspects of a BR System, including one or more aspects of
the present invention, is described with reference to FIG. 2.
[0110] As shown, a processing environment 200 includes for
instance, a central processing complex 202 coupled to an
input/output (I/O) subsystem 204. Central processing complex 202
includes, for instance, a central processing unit 206, memory 208,
an operating system 210, a database management system 212, a
Business Resilience Runtime Component 214, an application container
216 including one or more applications 218, and an I/O facility
220.
[0111] I/O facility 220 couples central processing complex 202 to
I/O subsystem 204 via, for example, a dynamic switch 230. Dynamic
switch 230 is coupled to a control unit 232, which is further
coupled to one or more I/O devices 234, such as one or more direct
access storage devices (DASD).
[0112] Processing environments 100 and/or 200 may include, in other
embodiments, more, less and/or different components.
[0113] In yet another embodiment, a central processing complex 300
(FIG. 3) further includes a network service 302, which is used to
couple a central processing complex 300 to a processing environment
304 via a network subsystem 306.
[0114] For example, network service 302 of central processing
complex 300 is coupled to a switch 308 of network subsystem 306.
Switch 308 is coupled to a switch 310 via routers 312 and firewalls
314. Switch 310 is further coupled to a network service 316 of
processing environment 304.
[0115] Processing environment 304 further includes, for instance, a
central processing unit 320, a memory 322, an operating system 324,
and an application container 326 including one or more applications
328. In other embodiments, it can include more, less and/or
different components.
[0116] Moreover, CPC 300 further includes, in one embodiment, a
central processing unit 330, a memory 332, an operating system 334,
a database management system 336, a Business Resilience Runtime
Component 338, an application container 340 including one or more
applications 342, and an I/O facility 344. It also may include
more, less and/or different components.
[0117] I/O facility 344 is coupled to a dynamic switch 346 of an
I/O subsystem 347. Dynamic switch 346 is further coupled to a
control unit 348, which is coupled to one or more I/O devices
350.
[0118] Although examples of various environments are provided
herein, these are only examples. Many variations to the above
environments are possible and are considered within the scope of
the present invention.
[0119] In the above-described environments, a Business Resilience
Runtime Component of a Business Resilience System is included.
Further details associated with a Business Resilience Runtime
Component and a Business Resilience System are described with
reference to FIG. 4.
[0120] In one example, a Business Resilience System 400 is a
component that represents the management of recovery operations and
configurations across an IT environment. Within that Business
Resilience System, there is a Business Resilience Runtime Component
(402) that represents the management functionality across multiple
distinct Recovery Segments, and provides the service level
automation and the support of creation of the recovery sequences.
In addition, there are user interface (404), administration (406),
installation (408) and configuration template (410) components
within the Business Resilience System that enable the
administrative operations that are to be performed. Each of these
components is described in further detail below.
[0121] Business Resilience Runtime Component 402 includes a
plurality of components of the BR System that are directly
responsible for the collection of observations, creation of PSEs,
policy acceptance, validation, error detection, and formulation of
recovery sequences. As one example, Business Resilience Runtime
Component 402 includes the following components:
[0122] 1. One or More Business Resilience Managers (BRM) (412).
[0123] The Business Resilience Manager (BRM) is the primary
component containing logic to detect potential errors in the IT
environment, perform assessment to find resources causing errors,
and formulate recovery sequences to reestablish the desired state
for resources for all Recovery Segments that may be impacted.
[0124] The Business Resilience Manager is a component of which
there can be one or more. It manages a set of Recovery Segments,
and has primary responsibility to formulate recovery sequences. The
association of which Recovery Segments are managed by a given BRM
is determined at deployment time by the customer, with the help of
deployment time templates. BRMs are primarily responsible for
operations that relate to error handling and recovery workflow
generation, and cross RS interaction.
[0125] 2. One or More Recovery Segments (RS) (414).
[0126] Recovery Segments are customer-defined groupings of IT
resources to which consistent availability policy is assigned. In
other words, a Recovery Segment acts as a context within which
resource recovery is performed. In many cases, Recovery Segments
are compositions of IT resources that constitute logical entities,
such as a middleware and its related physical resources, or an
"application" and its related components. [0127] There is no
presumed granularity of a Recovery Segment. Customers can choose to
specify fine-grained Recovery Segments, such as one for a given
operating system, or a coarser grained Recovery Segment associated
with a business process and its component parts, or even a site, as
examples. [0128] Relationships between IT resources associated with
a RS are those which are part of the IT topology. [0129] Recovery
Segments can be nested or overlapped. In case of overlapping
Recovery Segments, there can be policy associated with each RS, and
during policy validation, conflicting definitions are reconciled.
Runtime assessment is also used for policy tradeoff. [0130] The
Recovery Segment has operations which support policy expression,
validation, decomposition, and assessment of state. [0131] The
number of Recovery Segments supported by a BR System can vary,
depending on customer configurations and business needs. [0132] One
BRM can manage multiple Recovery Segments, but a given RS is
managed by a single BRM. Further, Recovery Segments that share
resources, or are subset/superset of other Recovery Segments are
managed by the same BRM, in this example. Multiple BRMs can exist
in the environment, depending on performance, availability, and/or
maintainability characteristics.
[0133] 3. Pattern System Environments (PSEs) (416). [0134] Pattern
System Environments (PSEs) are representations of a customer's
environment. Sets of observations are clustered together using
available mathematical tooling to generate the PSEs. In one
embodiment, the generation of a PSE is automatic. A PSE is
associated with a given RS, but a PSE may include information that
crosses RSs. [0135] As one example, the representation is
programmatic in that it is contained within a structure from which
information can be added/extracted.
[0136] 4. Quantified Recovery Goal (418). [0137] A quantified
recovery goal, such as a Recovery Time Objective (RTO), is
specified for each Recovery Segment that a customer creates. If
customers have multiple Pattern System Environments (PSEs), a
unique RTO for each PSE associated with the RS may be
specified.
[0138] 5. Containment Region (CR) (420). [0139] Containment
Region(s) are components of the BR System which are used at runtime
to reflect the scope and impact of an outage. A Containment Region
includes, for instance, identification for a set of impacted
resources, as well as BR specific information about the
failure/degraded state, as well as proposed recovery. CRs are
associated with a set of impacted resources, and are dynamically
constructed by BR in assessing the error. [0140] The original
resources reporting degraded availability, as well as the resources
related to those reporting degraded availability, are identified as
part of the Containment Region. Impacted resources are accumulated
into the topology by traversing the IT relationships and inspecting
the attributes defined to the relationships. The Containment Region
is transitioned to an inactive state after a successful recovery
workflow has completed, and after all information (or a selected
subset in another example) about the CR has been logged.
[0141] 6. Redundancy Groups (RG) (422). [0142] Redundancy Group(s)
(422) are components of the BR System that represent sets of
logically equivalent services that can be used as alternates when a
resource experiences failure or degradation. For example, three
instances of a database may form a redundancy group, if an
application server requires connectivity to one of the set of
three, but does not specify one specific instance. [0143] There can
be zero or more Redundancy Groups in a BR System. [0144] Redundancy
Groups also have an associated state that is maintained in
realtime, and can contribute to the definition of what constitutes
available, degraded, or unavailable states. In addition, Redundancy
Groups members are dynamically and automatically selected by the BR
System, based on availability of the member and co-location
constraints.
[0145] 7. BR Manager Data Table (BRMD) (424). [0146] BR maintains
specific internal information related to various resources it
manages and each entry in the BR specific Management Data (BRMD)
table represents such a record of management. Entries in the BRMD
represent IT resources.
[0147] 8. BR Manager Relationship Data Table (BRRD) (426). [0148]
BR maintains BR specific internal information related to the
pairings of resources it needs to interact with, and each entry in
the BR specific Relationship Data (BRRD) table represents an
instance of such a pairing. The pairing record identifies the
resources that participate in the pairing, and resources can be any
of those that appear in the BRMD above. The BRRD includes
information about the pairings, which include operation ordering
across resources, failure and degradation impact across resources,
constraint specifications for allowable recovery actions, effect an
operation has on resource state, requirements for resource to
co-locate or anti-co-locate, and effects of preparatory actions on
resources.
[0149] 9. BR Asynchronous Distributor (BRAD) (428). [0150] The BR
Asynchronous Distributor (BRAD) is used to handle asynchronous
behavior during time critical queries for resource state and key
properties, recovery, and for getting observations back from
resources for the observation log.
[0151] 10. Observation Log (430). [0152] The Observation Log
captures the information that is returned through periodic
observations of the environment. The information in the Observation
Log is used by cluster tooling to generate Pattern System
Environments (PSE).
[0153] 11. RS Activity Log (432). [0154] Each RS has an activity
log that represents the RS actions, successes, failures. Activity
logs are internal BR structures. Primarily, they are used for
either problem determination purposes or at runtime, recovery of
failed BR components. For example, when the RS fails and recovers,
it reads the Activity Log to understand what was in progress at
time of failure, and what needs to be handled in terms of
residuals.
[0155] 12. BRM Activity Log (434). [0156] The BRM also has an
activity log that represents BRM actions, success, failures.
Activity logs are internal BR structures.
[0157] 13. Transaction Table (TT) (436). [0158] The transaction
table is a serialization mechanism used to house the counts of
ongoing recovery and preparatory operations. It is associated with
the RS, and is referred to as the RS TT.
[0159] In addition to the Business Resilience Runtime Component of
the BR system, the BR system includes the following components,
previously mentioned above.
[0160] User Interface (UI) Component (404). [0161] The User
interface component is, for instance, a graphical environment
through which the customer's IT staff can make changes to the BR
configuration. As examples: create and manage Recovery Segments;
specify recovery goals; validate achievability of goals prior to
failure time; view and alter BR generated workflows. [0162] The
user interface (UI) is used as the primary interface for
configuring BR. It targets roles normally associated with a
Business Analyst, Solution Architect, System Architect, or
Enterprise Architect, as examples. [0163] One purpose of the BR UI
is to configure the BR resources.
[0164] It allows the user to create BR artifacts that are used for
a working BR runtime and also monitors the behaviors and
notifications of these BR resources as they run. In addition, the
BR UI allows interaction with resources in the environment through,
for instance, relationships and their surfaced properties and
operations. The user can add resources to BR to affect recovery and
behaviors of the runtime environment. [0165] The BR UI also
surfaces recommendations and best practices in the form of
templates. These are reusable constructs that present a best
practice to the user which can then be approved and realized by the
user. [0166] Interaction with the BR UI is based on the typical
editor save lifecycle used within, for instance, the developmental
tool known as Eclipse (available and described at www.Eclipse.org).
The user typically opens or edits an existing resource, makes
modifications, and those modifications are not persisted back to
the resource until the user saves the editor. [0167] Predefined
window layouts in Eclipse are called perspectives. Eclipse views
and editors are displayed in accordance with the perspective's
layout, which can be customized by the user. The BR UI provides a
layout as exemplified in the screen display depicted in FIG. 5A.
[0168] Screen display 500 depicted in FIG. 5A displays one example
of a Business Resilience Perspective. Starting in the upper left
corner and rotating clockwise, the user interface includes, for
instance:
[0169] 1. Business Resilience View 502 [0170] This is where the
user launches topologies and definition templates for viewing and
editing.
[0171] 2. Topology/Definition Template Editor 504 [0172] This is
where the editors are launched from the Business Resilience View
display. The user can have any number of editors open at one
time.
[0173] 3. Properties View/Topology Resources View/Search View
[0174] The property and topology resource views are driven off the
active editor. They display information on the currently selected
resource and allow the user to modify settings within the
editor.
[0175] 4. Outline View 508 [0176] This view provides a small
thumbnail of the topology or template being displayed in the
editor. The user can pan around the editor quickly by moving the
thumbnail. [0177] The topology is reflected by a RS, as shown in
the screen display of FIG. 5B. In FIG. 5B, a Recovery Segment 550
is depicted, along with a list of one or more topology resources
552 of the RS (not necessarily shown in the current view of the
RS). [0178] In one example, the BR UI is created on the Eclipse
Rich Client Platform (RCP), meaning it has complete control over
the Eclipse environment, window layouts, and overall behavior. This
allows BR to tailor the Eclipse platform and remove Eclipse
artifacts not directly relevant to the BR UI application, allowing
the user to remain focused, while improving usability. [0179] BR
extends the basic user interface of Eclipse by creating software
packages called "plugins' that plug into the core Eclipse platform
architecture to extend its capabilities. By implementing the UI as
a set of standard Eclipse plug-ins, BR has the flexibility to plug
into Eclipse, WebSphere Integration Developer, or Rational product
installs, as examples. The UI includes two categories of plug-ins,
those that are BR specific and those that are specific to
processing resources in the IT environment. This separation allows
the resource plug-ins to be potentially re-used by other products.
[0180] By building upon Eclipse, BR has the option to leverage
other tooling being developed for Eclipse. This is most apparent in
its usage of BPEL workflow tooling, but the following packages and
capabilities are also being leveraged, in one embodiment, as well:
[0181] The Eclipse platform provides two graphical toolkit
packages, GEF and Draw2D, which are used by BR, in one example, to
render topology displays and handle the rather advanced topology
layouts and animations. These packages are built into the base
Eclipse platform and provide the foundation for much of the tooling
and topology user interfaces provided by this design. [0182] The
Eclipse platform allows building of advanced editors and forms,
which are being leveraged for BR policy and template editing. Much
of the common support needed for editors, from the common save
lifecycle to undo and redo support, is provided by Eclipse. [0183]
The Eclipse platform provides a sophisticated Welcome and Help
system, which helps introduce and helps users to get started
configuring their environment. Likewise, Eclipse provides a
pluggable capability to create task instructions, which can be
followed step-by-step by the user to accomplish common or difficult
tasks.
[0184] BR Admin Mailbox (406) (FIG. 4). [0185] The BR Admin (or
Administrative) Mailbox is a mechanism used by various flows of the
BR runtime to get requests to an administrator to take some action.
The Admin mailbox periodically retrieves information from a table,
where BR keeps an up-to-date state. [0186] As an example, the Admin
Mailbox defines a mechanism where BR can notify the user of
important events needing user attention or at least user awareness.
The notifications are stored in the BR database so they can be
recorded while the UI is not running and then shown to the user
during their next session. [0187] The notifications are presented
to the user, in one example, in their own Eclipse view, which is
sorted by date timestamp to bubble the most recent notifications to
the top. An example of this view is shown in FIG. 6A. As shown, a
view 600 is presented that includes messages 602 relating to
resources 604. A date timestamp 606 is also included therewith.
[0188] Double clicking a notification opens an editor on the
corresponding resource within the BR UI, which surfaces the
available properties and operations the user may need to handle the
notification. [0189] The user is able to configure the UI to notify
them whenever a notification exceeding a certain severity is
encountered. The UI then alerts 650 the user of the notification
and message when it comes in, as shown in FIG. 6B, in one example.
[0190] When alerted, the user can choose to open the corresponding
resource directly. If the user selects No, the user can revisit the
message or resource by using the above notification log view.
[0191] BR Install Logic (408) (FIG. 4). [0192] The BR Install logic
initializes the environment through accessing the set of
preconfigured template information and vendor provided tables
containing resource and relationship information, then applying any
customizations initiated by the user.
[0193] Availability Configuration Templates (410):
[0194] Recovery Segment Templates [0195] The BR System has a set of
Recovery Segment templates which represent common patterns of
resources and relationships. These are patterns matched with each
individual customer environment to produce recommendations for RS
definitions to the customer, and offer these visually for
customization or acceptance.
[0196] Redundancy Group Templates [0197] The BR System has a set of
Redundancy Group templates which represent common patterns of
forming groups of redundant resources. These are optionally
selected and pattern matched with each individual customer
environment to produce recommendations for RG definitions to a
customer.
[0198] BR Manager Deployment Templates [0199] The BR System has a
set of BR Manager Deployment templates which represent recommended
configurations for deploying the BR Manager, its related Recovery
Segments, and the related BR management components. There are
choices for distribution or consolidation of these components. Best
practice information is combined with optimal availability and
performance characteristics to recommend a configuration, which can
then be subsequently accepted or altered by the customer.
[0200] Pairing Templates [0201] The BR System has a set of Pairing
Templates used to represent best practice information about which
resources are related to each other.
[0202] The user interface, admin mailbox, install logic and/or
template components can be part of the same computing unit
executing BR Runtime or executed on one or more other distributed
computing units.
[0203] To further understand the use of some of the above
components and their interrelationships, the following example is
offered. This example is only offered for clarification purposes
and is not meant to be limiting in any way.
[0204] Referring to FIG. 7, a Recovery Segment RS 700 is depicted.
It is assumed for this Recovery Segment that: [0205] The Recovery
Segment RS has been defined associated with an instantiated and
deployed BR Manager for monitoring and management. [0206]
Relationships have been established between the Recovery Segment RS
and the constituent resources 702a-702m. [0207] A goal policy has
been defined and validated for the Recovery Segment through
interactions with the BR UI. [0208] The following impact pairings
have been assigned to the resources and relationships:
TABLE-US-00001 [0208] Rule Resource #1 State Resource #2 State 1
App-A Degraded RS Degraded 2 App-A Unavailable RS Unavailable 3 DB2
Degraded CICS Unavailable 4 CICS Unavailable App-A Unavailable 5
CICS Degraded App-A Degraded 6 OSStorage-1 Unavailable CICS
Degraded 7 OSStorage-1 Unavailable Storage Copy Set Degraded 8 DB2
User & Degraded DB2 Degraded Log Data 9 OSStorage-2 Unavailable
DB2 User & Degraded Log Data 10 z/OS Unavailable CICS
Unavailable 11 z/OS Unavailable DB2 Unavailable 12 Storage Copy Set
Degraded CICS User & Degraded Log Data 13 Storage Copy Set
Degraded DB2 User & Degraded Log Data
[0209] The rules in the above table correspond to the numbers in
the figure. For instance, #12 (704) corresponds to Rule 12 above.
[0210] Observation mode for the resources in the Recovery Segment
has been initiated either by the customer or as a result of policy
validation. [0211] The environment has been prepared as a result of
that goal policy via policy validation and the possible creation
and execution of a preparatory workflow. [0212] The goal policy has
been activated for monitoring by BR.
[0213] As a result of these conditions leading up to runtime, the
following subscriptions have already taken place: [0214] The BRM
has subscribed to runtime state change events for the RS. [0215] RS
has subscribed to state change events for the constituent
resources.
[0216] These steps highlight one example of an error detection
process: [0217] The OSStorage-1 resource 702h fails (goes
Unavailable). [0218] RS gets notified of state change event. [0219]
1.sup.st level state aggregation determines: [0220] Storage Copy
Set.fwdarw.Degraded [0221] CICS User & Log Data.fwdarw.Degraded
[0222] DB2 User & Log Data.fwdarw.Degraded [0223]
DB2.fwdarw.Degraded [0224] CICS.fwdarw.Unavailable [0225]
App-A.fwdarw.Unavailable [0226] 1.sup.st level state aggregation
determines: [0227] RS.fwdarw.Unavailable [0228] BRM gets notified
of RS state change. Creates the following Containment Region:
TABLE-US-00002 [0228] Resource Reason OSStorage-1 Unavailable
Storage Copy Set Degraded CICS User & Log Data Degraded DB2
User & Log Data Degraded DB2 Degraded App-A Unavailable CICS
Unavailable RS Unavailable
[0229] Creates a recovery workflow based on the following
resources:
TABLE-US-00003 [0229] Resource State OSStorage-1 Unavailable
Storage Copy Set Degraded CICS User & Log Data Degraded DB2
User & Log Data Degraded DB2 Degraded App-A Unavailable CICS
Unavailable RS Unavailable
[0230] In addition to the above, BR includes a set of design points
that help in the understanding of the system. These design points
include, for instance:
Goal Policy Support
[0231] BR is targeted towards goal based policies--the customer
configures his target availability goal, and BR determines the
preparatory actions and recovery actions to achieve that goal
(e.g., automatically).
[0232] Availability management of the IT infrastructure through
goal based policy is introduced by this design. The BR system
includes the ability to author and associate goal based
availability policy with the resource Recovery Segments described
herein. In addition, support is provided to decompose the goal
policy into configuration settings, preparatory actions and runtime
procedures in order to execute against the deployed availability
goal. In one implementation of the BR system, the Recovery Time
Objective (RTO--time to recover post outage) is a supported goal
policy. Additional goal policies of data currency (e.g., Recovery
Point Objective) and downtime maximums, as well as others, can also
be implemented with the BR system. Recovery Segments provide the
context for association of goal based availability policies, and
are the scope for goal policy expression supported in the BR
design. The BR system manages the RTO through an understanding of
historical information, metrics, recovery time formulas (if
available), and actions that affect the recovery time for IT
resources.
[0233] RTO goals are specified by the customer at a Recovery
Segment level and apportioned to the various component resources
grouped within the RS. In one example, RTO goals are expressed as
units of time intervals, such as seconds, minutes, and hours. Each
RS can have one RTO goal per Pattern System Environment associated
with the RS. Based on the metrics available from the IT resources,
and based on observed history and/or data from the customer, the
RTO goal associated with the RS is evaluated for achievability,
taking into account which resources are able to be recovered in
parallel.
[0234] Based on the RTO for the RS, a set of preparatory actions
expressed as a workflow is generated. This preparatory workflow
configures the environment or makes alterations in the current
configuration, to achieve the RTO goal or to attempt to achieve the
goal.
[0235] In terms of optimizing RTO, there are tradeoffs associated
with the choices that are possible for preparatory and recovery
actions. Optimization of recovery choice is performed by BR, and
may include interaction at various levels of sophistication with IT
resources. In some cases, BR may set specific configuration
parameters that are surfaced by the IT resource to align with the
stated RTO. In other cases, BR may request that an IT resource
itself alter its management functions to achieve some portion of
the overall RS RTO. In either case, BR aligns availability
management of the IT resources contained in the RS with the stated
RTO.
Metrics and Goal Association
[0236] In this design, as one example, there is an approach to
collecting the required or desired metrics data, both observed and
key varying factors, system profile information that is slow or
non-moving, as well as potential formulas that reflect a specific
resource's use of the key factors in assessing and performing
recovery and preparatory actions, historical data and system
information. The information and raw metrics that BR uses to
perform analysis and RTO projections are expressed as part of the
IT resources, as resource properties. BR specific interpretations
and results of statistical analysis of key factors correlated to
recovery time are kept as BR Specific Management data (BRMD).
Relationships Used by BR, and BR Specific Resource Pairing
Information
[0237] BR maintains specific information about the BR management of
each resource pairing or relationship between resources.
Information regarding the BR specific data for a resource pairing
is kept by BR, including information such as ordering of operations
across resources, impact assessment information, operation effect
on availability state, constraint analysis of actions to be
performed, effects of preparatory actions on resources, and
requirements for resources to co-locate or anti-co-locate.
Evaluation of Failure Scope
[0238] One feature of the BR function is the ability to identify
the scope and impact of a failure. The BR design uses a Containment
Region to identify the resources affected by an incident. The
Containment Region is initially formed with a fairly tight
restriction on the scope of impact, but is expanded on receiving
errors related to the first incident. The impact and scope of the
failure is evaluated by traversing the resource relationships,
evaluating information on BR specific resource pairing information,
and determining most current state of the resources impacted.
Generation and Use of Workflow
[0239] Various types of preparatory and recovery processes are
formulated and in some cases, optionally initiated. Workflows used
by BR are dynamically generated based on, for instance, customer
requirements for RTO goal, based on actual scope of failure, and
based on any configuration settings customers have set for the BR
system.
[0240] A workflow includes one or more operations to be performed,
such as Start CICS, etc. Each operation takes time to execute and
this amount of time is learned based on execution of the workflows,
based on historical data in the observation log or from customer
specification of execution time for operations. The workflows
formalize, in a machine readable, machine editable form, the
operations to be performed.
[0241] In one example, the processes are generated into Business
Process Execution Language (BPEL) compliant workflows with
activities that are operations on IT resources or specified manual,
human activities. For example, BRM automatically generates the
workflows in BPEL. This automatic generation includes invoking
routines to insert activities to build the workflow, or forming the
activities and building the XML (Extensible Mark-Up Language).
Since these workflows are BPEL standard compliant, they can be
integrated with other BPEL defined workflows which may incorporate
manual activities performed by the operations staff. These BR
related workflows are categorized as follows, in one example:
[0242] Preparatory--Steps taken during the policy prepare phase in
support of a given goal, such as the setting of specific
configuration values, or the propagation of availability related
policy on finer grained resources in the Recovery Segment
composition. BR generates preparatory workflows, for instance,
dynamically. Examples of preparatory actions include setting up
storage replication, and starting additional instances of
middleware subsystems to support redundancy. [0243] Recovery--Steps
taken as a result of fault detection during runtime monitoring of
the environment, such as, for example, restarting a failed
operating system (OS). BR generates recovery workflows dynamically,
in one example, based on the actual failure rather than a
prespecified sequence. [0244] Preventive--Steps taken to contain or
fence an error condition and prevent the situation from escalating
to a more substantial outage or impact; for example, the severing
of a failed resource's relationship instances to other resources.
Preventive workflows are also dynamically generated, in one
example. [0245] Return--Steps taken to restore the environment back
to `normal operations` post recovery, also represented as
dynamically generated workflows, as one example.
Capturing of Workflow Information
[0246] Since the set of BR actions described above modify existing
IT environments, visibility to the actions that are taken by BR
prior to the actual execution is provided. To gain trust in the
decisions and recommendations produced by BR, the BR System can run
in `advisory mode`. As part of advisory mode, the possible actions
that would be taken are constructed into a workflow, similar to
what would be done to actually execute the processes. The workflows
are then made visible through standard workflow authoring tooling
for customers to inspect or modify. Examples of BPEL tooling
include: [0247] Bolie, et al., BPEL Cookbook: Best Practices for
SOA-based Integration and Composite Applications Development, ISBN
1904811337, 2006, PACKT Publishing, hereby incorporated herein by
reference in its entirety; [0248] Juric, et al., Business Process
Execution Language for Web Services: BPEL and BPEL YWS, ISBN
1-904811-18-3, 2004, PACKT Publishing, hereby incorporated herein
by reference in its entirety. [0249]
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/integration/wid/about/?S_CMP=mav
[0250] http://www.eclipse.org/bpel/ [0251]
http://www.parasoft.com/jsp/products/home.jsp;jessionid=aaa56iqFywA-HJ?pr-
oduct=BPEL&redname=googbpelm&referred=searchengine%2Fgoogle%Fbpel
Tooling Lifecycle, Support of Managed Resources and Roles
[0252] BR tooling spans the availability management lifecycle from
definition of business objectives, IT resource selection,
availability policy authoring and deployment, development and
deployment of runtime monitors, etc. In one example, support for
the following is captured in the tooling environment for the BR
system: [0253] Visual presentation of the IT resources & their
relationships, within both an operations and administration
context. [0254] Configuration and deployment of Recovery Segments
and BRMs. [0255] Authoring and deployment of a BR policy. [0256]
Modification of availability configuration or policy changes for
BR. [0257] BPEL tooling to support viewing of BR created, as well
as customer authored, workflows. [0258] BPEL tooling to support
monitoring of workflow status, related to an operations console
view of IT resource operational state.
Policy Lifecycle
[0259] The policy lifecycle for BR goal policies, such as RTO
goals, includes, for example: [0260] Define--Policy is specified to
a RS, but no action is taken by the BRM to support the policy
(observation information may be obtained). [0261] Validate--Policy
is validated for syntax, capability, etc.; preparatory workflow
created for viewing and validation by customer. [0262]
Prepare--Preparatory action workflows are optionally executed.
[0263] Activate--Policy is activated for runtime monitoring of the
environment.
[0264] Modify--Policy is changed dynamically in runtime.
Configurable State Aggregation
[0265] One of the points in determining operational state of a
Recovery Segment is that this design allows for customers to
configure a definition of specific `aggregated` states, using
properties of individual IT resources. A Recovery Segment is an
availability management context, in one example, which may include
a diverse set of IT resources.
[0266] The customer may provide the rules logic used within the
Recovery Segment to consume the relevant IT resource properties and
determine the overall state of the RS (available, degraded and
unavailable, etc). The customer can develop and deploy these rules
as part of the Recovery Segment availability policy. For example,
if there is a database included in the Recovery Segment, along with
the supporting operating system, storage, and network resources, a
customer may configure one set of rules that requires that the
database must have completed the recovery of in-flight work in
order to consider the overall Recovery Segment available. As
another example, customers may choose to configure a definition of
availability based on transaction rate metrics for a database, so
that if the rate falls below some value, the RS is considered
unavailable or degraded, and evaluation of `failure` impact will be
triggered within the BR system. Using these configurations,
customers can tailor both the definitions of availability, as well
as the rapidity with which problems are detected, since any IT
resource property can be used as input to the aggregation, not just
the operational state of IT resources.
Failure During Workflow Sequences of Preparatory, Recovery,
Preventive
[0267] Failures occurring during sequences of operations executed
within a BPEL compliant process workflow are intended to be handled
through use of BPEL declared compensation actions, associated with
the workflow activities that took a failure. The BR System creates
associated "undo" workflows that are then submitted to compensate,
and reset the environment to a stable state, based on where in the
workflow the failure occurred.
Customer Values
[0268] The following set of customer values, as examples, are
derived from the BR system functions described above, listed here
with supporting technologies from the BR system: [0269] Align total
IT runtime environment to business function availability
objectives: [0270] RS definition from representation of IT
Resources; [0271] Goal (RTO) and action policy specification,
validation and activation; and [0272] Tooling by Eclipse, as an
example, to integrate with IT process management. [0273] Rapid,
flexible, administrative level: [0274] Alteration of operation
escalation rules; [0275] Customization of workflows for preparatory
and recovery to customer goals; [0276] Customization of IT resource
selection from RG based on quality of service (QoS); [0277]
Alteration of definition of IT resource and business application
state (available, degraded, or unavailable); [0278] Customization
of aggregated state; [0279] Modification of topology for RS and RG
definition; [0280] Selection of BR deployment configuration; [0281]
Alteration of IT resource recovery metrics; [0282] Customization of
generated Pattern System Environments; and [0283] Specification of
statistical tolerances required for system environment formation or
recovery metric usage. [0284] Extensible framework for customer and
vendor resources: [0285] IT resource definitions not specific to BR
System; and [0286] Industry standard specification of workflows,
using, for instance, BPEL standards. [0287] Adaptive to
configuration changes and optimization: [0288] IT resource
lifecycle and relationships dynamically maintained; [0289] System
event infrastructure utilized for linkage of IT resource and BR
management; [0290] IT resource recovery metrics identified and
collected; [0291] IT resource recovery metrics used in forming
Pattern System Environments; [0292] Learned recovery process
effectiveness applied to successive recovery events; [0293] System
provided measurement of eventing infrastructure timing; [0294]
Dynamic formation of time intervals for aggregation of related
availability events to a root cause; and [0295] Distribution of
achieved recovery time over constituent resources.
[0296] Incremental adoption and coexistence with other availability
offerings: [0297] Potential conflict of multiple managers for a
resource based on IT representation; [0298] Workflows for recovery
and preparatory reflect operations with meta data linked to
existing operations; [0299] Advisory mode execution for preparatory
and recovery workflows; and [0300] Incremental inclusion of
resources of multiple types. [0301] Support for resource sharing:
[0302] Overlapping and contained RS; [0303] Merger of CR across RS
and escalation of failure scope; and [0304] Preparatory and
recovery workflows built to stringency requirements over multiple
RS. [0305] Extensible formalization of best practices based on
industry standards: [0306] Templates and patterns for RS and RG
definition; [0307] Preparatory and recovery workflows (e.g., BPEL)
for customization, adoption; and [0308] Industry standard workflow
specifications enabling integration across customer and multiple
vendors. [0309] Integration of business resilience with normal
runtime operations and IT process automation: [0310] Option to base
on IT system wide, open industry standard representation of
resources; [0311] BR infrastructure used for localized recovery
within a system, cluster and across sites; and [0312] Utilization
of common system infrastructure for events, resource discovery,
workflow processing, visualization.
[0313] Management of the IT environment is adaptively performed, as
described herein and in a U.S. patent application "Adaptive
Business Resiliency Computer System for Information Technology
Environments," (POU920070364US1), Bobak et al., co-filed herewith,
which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety.
[0314] Many different sequences of activities can be undertaken in
creating a BR environment. The following represents one possible
sequence; however, many other sequences are possible. This sequence
is provided merely to facilitate an understanding of a BR system
and one or more aspects of the present invention. This sequence is
not meant to be limiting in any way. In the following description,
reference is made to various U.S. patent applications, which are
co-filed herewith.
[0315] On receiving the BR and related product offerings, an
installation process is undertaken. Subsequent to installation of
the products, a BR administrator may define the configuration for
BR manager instances with the aid of BRM configuration
templates.
[0316] Having defined the BRM configuration a next step could be to
define Recovery Segments as described in "Recovery Segments for
Computer Business Applications," (POU920070108US1), Bobak et al.,
which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety.
[0317] Definition of a RS may use a representation of resources in
a topology graph as described in "Use of Graphs in Managing
Computing Environments," (POU920070112US1), Bobak et al., which is
hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0318] It is expected that customers will enable BR operation in
"observation" mode for a period of time to gather information
regarding key metrics and operation execution duration associated
with resources in a RS.
[0319] At some point, sufficient observation data will have been
gathered or a customer may have sufficient knowledge of the
environment to be managed by BR. A series of activities may then be
undertaken to prepare the RS for availability management by BR. As
one example, the following steps may be performed iteratively.
[0320] A set of functionally equivalent resources may be defined as
described in "Use of Redundancy Groups in Runtime Computer
Management of Business Applications," (POU920070113US1), Bobak et
al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety.
[0321] Specification of the availability state for individual
resources, redundancy groups and Recovery Segments may be performed
as described in "Use of Multi-Level State Assessment in Computer
Business Environments," (POU920070114US1), Bobak et al., which is
hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0322] Representations for the IT environment in which BR is to
operate may be created from historical information captured during
observation mode, as described in "Computer Pattern System
Environment Supporting Business Resiliency," (POU920070107US1),
Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in
its entirety. These definitions provide the context for
understanding how long it takes to perform operations which change
the configuration--especially during recovery periods.
[0323] Information on relationships between resources may be
specified based on recommended best practices--expressed in
templates--or based on customer knowledge of their IT environment
as described in "Conditional Computer Runtime Control of an
Information Technology Environment Based on Pairing Constructs,"
(POU920070110US1), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated
herein by reference in its entirety. Pairing processing provides
the mechanism for reflecting required or desired order of execution
for operations, the impact of state change for one resource on
another, the effect execution of an operation is expected to have
on a resource state, desire to have one subsystem located on the
same system as another and the effect an operation has on preparing
the environment for availability management.
[0324] With preliminary definitions in place, a next activity of
the BR administrator might be to define the goals for availability
of the business application represented by a Recovery Segment as
described in "Programmatic Validation in an Information Technology
Environment," (POU920070111US1), Bobak et al., which is hereby
incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0325] Managing the IT environment to meet availability goals
includes having the BR system prioritize internal operations. The
mechanism utilized to achieve the prioritization is described in
"Serialization in Computer Management," (POU920070105US1), Bobak et
al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety.
[0326] Multiple operations are performed to prepare an IT
environment to meet a business application's availability goal or
to perform recovery when a failure occurs. The BR system creates
workflows to achieve the required or desired ordering of
operations, as described in "Dynamic Generation of Processes in
Computing Environments," (POU920070123US1), Bobak et al., which is
hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0327] A next activity in achieving a BR environment might be
execution of the ordered set of operations used to prepare the IT
environment, as described in "Dynamic Selection of Actions in an
Information Technology Environment," (POU920070117US1), Bobak et
al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety.
[0328] Management by BR to achieve availability goals may be
initiated, which may initiate or continue monitoring of resources
to detect changes in their operational state, as described herein,
in accordance with one or more aspects of the present invention.
Monitoring of resources may have already been initiated as a result
of "observation" mode processing.
[0329] Changes in resource or redundancy group state may result in
impacting the availability of a business application represented by
a Recovery Segment. Analysis of the environment following an error
is performed. The analysis allows sufficient time for related
errors to be reported, insures gathering of resource state
completes in a timely manner and insures sufficient time is
provided for building and executing the recovery operations--all
within the recovery time goal, as described in "Management Based on
Computer Dynamically Adjusted Discrete Phases of Event
Correlation," (POU920070119US1), Bobak et al, which is hereby
incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0330] A mechanism is provided for determining if events impacting
the availability of the IT environment are related, and if so,
aggregating the failures to optimally scope the outage, as
described in "Management of Computer Events in a Computer
Environment," (POU920070118US1), Bobak et al., which is hereby
incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0331] Ideally, current resource state can be gathered after
scoping of a failure. However, provisions are made to insure
management to the availability goal is achievable in the presence
of non-responsive components in the IT environment, as described in
"Managing the Computer Collection of Information in an Information
Technology Environment," (POU920070121US1), Bobak et al., which is
hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0332] With the outage scoped and current resource state evaluated,
the BR environment can formulate an optimized recovery set of
operations to meet the availability goal, as described in "Defining
a Computer Recovery Process that Matches the Scope of Outage,"
(POU920070124US1), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated
herein by reference in its entirety.
[0333] Formulation of a recovery plan is to uphold customer
specification regarding the impact recovery operations can have
between different business applications, as described in "Managing
Execution Within a Computing Environment," (POU920070115US1), Bobak
et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety.
[0334] Varying levels of recovery capability exist with resources
used to support a business application. Some resources possess the
ability to perform detailed recovery actions while others do not.
For resources capable of performing recovery operations, the BR
system provides for delegation of recovery if the resource is not
shared by two or more business applications, as described in
"Conditional Actions Based on Runtime Conditions of a Computer
System Environment," (POU920070116US1), Bobak et al., which is
hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0335] Having evaluated the outage and formulated a set of recovery
operations, the BR system resumes monitoring for subsequent changes
to the IT environment.
[0336] In support of mainline BR system operation, there are a
number of activities including, for instance: [0337] Coordination
for administrative task that employ multiple steps, as described in
"Adaptive Computer Sequencing of Actions," (POU920070106US1), Bobak
et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its
entirety. [0338] Use of provided templates representing best
practices in defining the BR system, as described in "Defining and
Using Templates in Configuring Information Technology
Environments," (POU920070109US1), Bobak et al., which is hereby
incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. [0339] Use of
provided templates in formulation of workflows, as described in
"Using Templates in a Computing Environment," (POU920070126US1),
Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in
its entirety. [0340] Making changes to the availability goals while
supporting ongoing BR operation, as described in "Non-Disruptively
Changing a Computing Environment," (POU920070122US1), Bobak et al.,
which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
[0341] Making changes to the scope of a business application or
Recovery Segment, as described in "Non-Disruptively Changing Scope
of Computer Business Applications Based on Detected Changes in
Topology," (POU920070125US1), Bobak et al., which is hereby
incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. [0342] Detecting
and recovery for the BR system is performed non-disruptively, as
described in "Managing Processing of a Computing Environment During
Failures of the Environment," (POU920070365US1), Bobak et al.,
which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety.
[0343] In order to build a BR environment that meets recovery time
objectives, IT configurations within a customer's location are to
be characterized and knowledge about the duration of execution for
recovery time operations within those configurations is to be
gained. IT configurations and the durations for operation execution
vary by time, constituent resources, quantity and quality of
application invocations, as examples. Customer environments vary
widely in configuration of IT resources in support of business
applications. Understanding the customer environment and the
duration of operations within those environments aids in insuring a
Recovery Time Objective is achievable and in building workflows to
alter the customer configuration of IT resources in advance of a
failure and/or when a failure occurs.
[0344] A characterization of IT configurations within a customer
location is built by having knowledge of the key recovery time
characteristics for individual resources (i.e., the resources that
are part of the IT configuration being managed; also referred to as
managed resources). Utilizing the representation for a resource, a
set of key recovery time objective (RTO) metrics are specified by
the resource owner. During ongoing operations, the BR manager
gathers values for these key RTO metrics and gathers timings for
the operations that are used to alter the configuration. It is
expected that customers will run the BR function in "observation"
mode prior to having provided a BR policy for availability
management or other management. While executing in "observation"
mode, the BR manager periodically gathers RTO metrics and operation
execution durations from resource representations. The key RTO
metrics properties, associated values and operation execution times
are recorded in an Observation log for later analysis through
tooling. Key RTO metrics and operation execution timings continue
to be gathered during active BR policy management in order to
maintain currency and iteratively refine data used to characterize
customer IT configurations and operation timings within those
configurations.
[0345] Examples of RTO properties and value range information by
resource type are provided in the below table. It will be apparent
to those skilled in the art that additional, less, and/or different
resource types, properties and/or value ranges may be provided.
TABLE-US-00004 Resource Type Property Value Range Operating System
Identifier Text State Ok, stopping, planned stop, stopped,
starting, error, lost monitoring capability, unknown Memory Size
Units in MB Number of systems in sysplex, if integer applicable
Last IPL time of day Units in time of day/clock Type of last IPL
Cold, warm, emergency Total Real Storage Available Units in MB GRS
Star Mode Yes or No Complete IPL time to reach Units of elapsed
time `available` Total CPU using to reach Units of elapsed time
available during IPL Total CPU delay to reach Units of elapsed time
available during IPL Total Memory using to reach Units in MB
available during IPL Total Memory delay to reach Units of elapsed
time available during IPL Total i/o requests Integer value, number
of requests Total i/o using to reach available Units of elapsed
time during IPL Total i/o delay to reach available Units of elapsed
time during IPL Computer System (LPAR, Identifier Text Server,
etc.) State Ok, stopping, stopped, planned down, starting, error,
lost monitoring capability, unknown Type of CPU - model, type, Text
value serial Number of CPUs integer Number of shared processors
integer Number of dedicated processors integer Last Activate Time
of Day Units in time of day/clock Network Components Group of
Network Connections Identity Operational State Ok, Starting,
Disconnected, Stopping, Degraded, Unknown State of each associated
Network Text Application Connection Performance Stats on loss and
Complex delays Recovery Time for any Units in elapsed time
associated application network connections Number of active
application Integer network connections associated at time of
network problem Stopped Time/duration for Units in elapsed time
group of connectoins Maximum Network Recovery Units in elapsed time
Time for any application connection in group Maximum Number of
active Integer connections at time of network problem encountered,
for any application connection in group Maximum Number of Integer
connections processed at time of network recovery, for the group of
connections Maximum network connection Units in elapsed time
recovery time/duration for any application connection in the group
Maximum Number of Integer connections dropped at time of
application network connection recovery, for any application
connection in the group Network Application Connection Identity
Text State Ok, Stopping, Degraded, Error, Unknown Configuration
Settings Complex Associated TCP/IP Parameter Text Settings
Requirement Policies QoS or BR policies Performance Statistics,
rules, Complex service class, number of active Network OS services
State update Interval Units of elapsed time Last restart time of
day Units in time of day/clock Last Restart Time/Duration Units in
elapsed time Network Recovery Time for app Units in elapsed time
connection Number of active connections at Integer time of network
problem encountered, on a per app connection basis Number of
connections Integer processed at time of network recovery, for the
app connection application network connection Units in elapsed time
recovery time/duration Number of connections at time of Integer
application network connection problem encountered Number of
connections Integer processed at time of application network
connection recovery Number of connections dropped Integer at time
of application network connection recovery Network Host Connection
Identity Text State Ok, Stopping, Degraded, Error, Unknown
Configuration Settings Complex Associated TCP/IP Parameter Text
Settings Requirement Policies QoS or BR policies Performance
Statistics, rules, Complex service class, number of active Network
OS services State update Interval Units of elapsed time Last
restart time of day Units in time of day/clock Last Restart
Time/Duration Units in elapsed time Number of QoS Events, Integer
indicating potential degradation Number of QoS Events handled,
Integer Last handled QoS Event Text Database Subsystem Name,
identifier Text Operational State Operational, Nonoperational,
starting, stopping, in recovery, log suspended, backup initiated,
restore initiated, restore complete, in checkpoint, checkpoint
completed, applying log, backing out inflights, resolving indoubts,
planned termination, lost monitoring capability Time spent in log
apply Units of elapsed time Time spent during inflight Units of
elapsed time processing Time spent during indoubt Units of elapsed
time processing Total time to restart Units of elapsed time
Checkpoint frequency Units of time Backout Duration Number of
records to read back in log during restart processing CPU Used
during Restart Units of elapsed time CPU Delay during Restart Units
of elapsed time Memory Used during Restart Units in MB Memory Delay
during Restart Units of elapsed time I/O Requests during restart
Integer value of number of requests I/O using during restart Units
of elapsed time I/O Delay during restart Units of elapsed time
Database Datasharing Group Identifer Text Operational State
Operational, nonoperational, degraded (some subset of members non
operational), lost monitoring capability Number of locks in Shared
Integer value Facility Time spent in lock cleanup for Elapsed time
value last restart Database Identifier Text Tablespace Identifier
Text Transaction Region Identifier Text Name Text Associated job
name Text Maximum number of tasks/ Integer value threads Restart
type for next restart Warm, cold, emergency Forward log name Text
System log name Text Operational State Operational, nonoperational,
in recovery, starting, stop normal first quiesce, stop normal
second quiesce, stop normal third quiesce Time spent in log apply
Units of elapsed time Time during each recovery stage Units of
elapsed time Total time to restart Units of elapsed time CPU Used
during Restart Units of elapsed time CPU Delay during Restart Units
of elapsed time Memory Used during Restart Units in MB Memory Delay
during Restart Units of elapsed time I/O Requests during restart
Integer value of number of requests I/O connect time during restart
Units of elapsed time I/O Delay during restart Units of elapsed
time System Logsize Units in MB Forward Logsize Units in MB
Activity Keypoint frequency Integer - number of writes before
activity checkpoint taken Average Transaction Rate for Number of
transactions per this region second, on average Transaction Group
Group name Text Transaction Region File Filename Text Region Name
Text Dataset Name Text Operational State Operational/enabled,
nonoperational/disabled Open status Open, closed, closing
Transaction Identifier Text Operational State Running, failed,
shunted, retry in progress Region Name (s) that can run this Text
transaction Program Name Text Logical Replication Group of Identity
Text related datasets State Required currency characteristics
Complex for datasets Required consistency Complex characteristics
for datasets Replication Group Identity State Replication Session
Identity State Established, in progress replication, replication
successful complete Type of Session Flash copy, metro mirror, etc.
Duration of last replication Units in elapsed time Time of Day for
last replication Units in time of day/clock Amount of data
replicated at last Units in MB replication Roleset Identity Text
State CopySet Identity Text State Dataset Identity Text State Open,
Closed Storage Group Identity Text State Storage Volume Identity
Text State Online, offline, boxed, unknown Logical Storage
Subsystem Identity Text State Storage Subsystem Identity Text State
Subsystem I/O Velocity - ratio of time channels are being used
Replication Link (Logical) Identity Text between Logical Subsystems
State Operational, nonoperational, degraded redundancy Number of
configured pipes Integer Number of operational pipes Integer
[0346] A specific example of key RTO properties for a z/OS.RTM.
image is depicted in FIG. 8A. As shown, for a z/OS.RTM. image 800,
the following properties are identified: GRS mode 802, CLPA? (i.e.,
Was the link pack area page space initialized?) 804, I/O bytes
moved 806, real memory size 808, # CPs 810, CPU speed 812, and CPU
delay 814, as examples.
[0347] The z/OS.RTM. image has a set of RTO metrics associated
therewith, as described above. Other resources may also have its
own set of metrics. An example of this is depicted in FIG. 8B, in
which a Recovery Segment 820 is shown that includes a plurality of
resources 822a-m, each having its own set of metrics 822a-m, as
indicated by the shading.
[0348] Further, in one example, the RTO properties from each of the
resources that are part of the Recovery Segment for App A have been
gathered by BR and formed into an "observation" for recording to
the Observation log, as depicted at 850.
[0349] Resources have varying degrees of functionality to support
RTO goal policy. Such capacity is evaluated by BR, and expressed in
resource property RTOGoalCapability in the BRMD entry for the
resource. Two options for BR to receive information operation
execution timings are: use of historical data or use of explicitly
customer configured data. If BR relies on historical data to make
recovery time projections, then before a statistically meaningful
set of data is collected, this resource is not capable of
supporting goal policy. A mix of resources can appear in a given
RS--some have a set of observations that allow classification of
the operation execution times, and others are explicitly configured
by the customer.
[0350] Calculation of projected recovery time can be accomplished
in two ways, depending on customer choice: use of historical
observations or use of customers input timings. The following is an
example of values for the RTOGoalCapability metadata that is found
in the BRMD entry for the resource that indicates this choice:
TABLE-US-00005 UseHistoricalObservations The resource has a
collection of statistically meaningful observations of recovery
time, where definition of `statistically valid` is provided on a
resource basis, as default by BR, but tailorable by customers
UseCustomerInputTimings The customer can explicitly set the
operation timings for a resource
[0351] If the customer is in observation mode, then historical
information is captured, regardless of whether the customer has
indicated use of explicitly input timings or use of historical
information.
[0352] The administrator can alter, on a resource basis, which set
of timings BR is to use. The default is to use historical
observations. In particular, a change source of resource timing
logic is provided that alters the source that BR uses to retrieve
resource timings. The two options for retrieving timings are from
observed histories or explicitly from admin defined times for
operation execution. The default uses information from the observed
histories, gathered from periodic polls. If the customer defines
times explicitly, the customer can direct BR to use those times for
a given resource. If activated, observation mode continues and
captures information, as well as running averages, and standard
deviations. The impact to this logic is to alter the source of
information for policy validation and formulation of recovery
plan.
[0353] With respect to the historical observations, there may be a
statistically meaningful set of observations to verify. The sample
size should be large enough so that a time range for each operation
execution can be calculated, with a sufficient confidence interval.
The acceptable number of observations to qualify as statistically
meaningful, and the desired confidence interval are customer
configurable using BR UI, but provided as defaults in the BRMD
entry for the resource. The default confidence interval is 95%, in
one example.
[0354] There are metrics from a resource that are employed by BR to
enable and perform goal management. These include, for
instance:
TABLE-US-00006 Metric Qualification Last observed recovery/restart
time In milliseconds; or alternately specifying units to use in
calculations The key factors and associated Captured at last
observed recovery time, and capturable values of the resource that
affect at a point in time by BR recovery time The key factors and
associated Captured at last observed recovery time, and capturable
values of the resource that affect at a point in time by BR other
dependent resources' recovery times Observed time interval from
`start` If there are various points in the resource recovery state
to each `non-blocking` state lifecycle at which it becomes
non-blocking to other resources which depend upon it, then:
Observed time interval from `start` state to each `non-blocking`
state Resource Consumption Information If the resource can provide
information about its consumption, or the consumption of dependent
resources, on an interval basis, then BR will use this information
in forming PSEs and classifying timings. One example of this is:
cpu, i/o, memory usage information that is available from zOS WLM
for an aggregation of processes/address spaces over a given
interval.
[0355] There is also a set of information about the resource that
is employed--this information is provided as defaults in the BRMD
entry for the resource, but provided to the BR team in the form of
best practices information/defaults by the domain owners: [0356]
The operational state of the resource at which the observed
recovery time interval started. [0357] The operational state of the
resource at which the observed recovery time interval ended. [0358]
The operational states of the resource at which point it can
unblock dependent resources (example: operational states at which a
DB2 could unblock new work from CICS, at which it could allow
processing of logs for transactions ongoing at time of failure . .
. ). [0359] Values of statistical thresholds to indicate sufficient
observations for goal managing the resource (number of
observations, max standard deviations, confidence level).
[0360] In addition to the resources defined herein as part of the
IT configuration that is managed, there are other resources,
referred to herein as assessed resources. Assessed resources are
present primarily to provide observation data for PSE formation,
and to understand impact(s) on managed resources. They do not have
a decomposed RTO associated with them nor are they acted on for
availability by BR. Assessed resources have the following
characteristics, as examples: [0361] Are present to collect
observation data for PSE formation. [0362] Are present to
understand impacts on managed resources. [0363] No decomposed RTO
is associated with an assessed resource. [0364] They are resources
on which resources managed by BR depend upon, but are not directly
acted on for availability by BR. [0365] They are resources removed
(or not explicitly added) from the actively monitored set of
resources by the BR admin during RS definition. [0366] They are
resources that BR does not try to recover and BR thus will not
invoke any preparatory or recovery operations on them.
[0367] Similarly, there are likely scenarios where a resource
exists in a customer environment that already has an alternative
availability management solution, and does not require BR for its
availability. However, since other resources that are managed by BR
may be dependent on them, they are observed and assessed in order
to collect observation data and understand their impacts on managed
resources. Additionally, there may be resources that do not have
alternative management solutions, but the customer simply does not
want them managed by BR, but other managed resources are dependent
upon them. They too are classified as assessed resources.
[0368] These assessed resources share many of the same
characteristics of managed resources, such as, for example: [0369]
They have an entry in the BRMD, depending on their use, and the
BRMD entry has an indication of assessed vs. managed. [0370] The RS
subscribes to state change notifications for assessed resources
(and possibly other notifiable properties). [0371] Relationships
between observed and managed resources are possible (and likely).
[0372] BR monitors for lifecycle events on assessed resources in
the same manner as for managed resources. [0373] Assessed resources
can be added and/or removed from Recovery Segments. [0374] They can
be used to contribute to the aggregated state of an RS.
[0375] Finally, there are a few restrictions that BR imposes upon
assessed resources, in this embodiment: [0376] Again, BR does not
invoke any workflow operations on assessed resources. [0377] A
resource that is shared between two Recovery Segments is not
categorized as an assessed resource in one RS and a managed
resource in the other. It is one or the other in the RS's, but not
both.
[0378] To facilitate the building of the customer's IT
configuration, observations regarding the customer's environment
are gathered and stored in an observation log. In particular, the
observation log is used to store observations gathered during
runtime in customer environments, where each observation is a
collection of various data points. They are created for each of the
Recovery Segments that are in "observation" mode. These
observations are used for numerous runtime and administrative
purposes in the BR environment. As examples the observations are
used: [0379] To perform statistical analysis from the BR UI to form
characterizations of customers` normal execution environments,
represented in BR as Pattern System Environments (PSE). [0380] To
classify operations on resources into these PSEs for purposes of
determining operation execution duration. [0381] Help determine
approximate path length of operations that are pushed down from BR
to the resources, and possibly to the underlying instrumentation of
each resource. [0382] Help determine approximate path length of
activities executed within BPEL workflows. [0383] Finally, the data
collected via the observation is also used to update the metadata
associated with the resource (i.e., in the BRMD table) where
appropriate.
[0384] BR gathers observations during runtime when "observation
mode" is enabled at the Recovery Segment level. There are two means
for enabling observation mode, as examples: [0385] 1. The BR UI
allows the administrator to enable observation mode at a Recovery
Segment, which will change its "ObservationMode" resource property
to "True", and to set the polling interval (default=15 minutes).
The Recovery Segment is defined in order to allow observation mode,
but a policy does not have to be defined or activated for it.
[0386] 2. Once a policy is defined though and subsequently
activated, observation mode is set for the Recovery Segment (due to
the data being used in managing and monitoring the customer's
environment). Thus, it is set automatically at policy activation,
if not already set explicitly by the administrator (see 1 above)
using the default polling interval (15 minutes).
[0387] The administrator may also disable observation mode for a
Recovery Segment, which stops it from polling for data and creating
subsequent observation records for insertion in the log. However,
the accumulated observation log is not deleted. In one example, an
RS remains in observation mode throughout its lifecycle. The UI
displays the implications of disabling observation mode.
[0388] In BR, the observations that are collected by BR during
runtime can be grouped into two categories, as examples: [0389] 1.
Periodic poll. [0390] 2. Workflow (includes workflow begin/end, and
workflow activity begin/end).
[0391] A periodic poll observation is a point-in-time snapshot of
the constituent resources in a Recovery Segment. Observation data
points are collected for those resources in the Recovery Segment(s)
which have associated BR management data for any of the following
reasons, as examples: [0392] 1. Resource has RTO properties. [0393]
2. Resource has operations. [0394] 3. Resource participates in the
aggregated state for the Recovery Segment, in which it is
contained. [0395] 4. Resource participates in any of the six types
of pairing rules.
[0396] The full value of these observations is derived for an RS
when they include data that has been gathered for its constituent
resources, plus the resources that those are dependent upon. In one
embodiment, the administrator is not forced to include all
dependent resources when defining a Recovery Segment, and even if
that were the case, there is nothing that prevents them from
deleting various dependent resources. When defining a Recovery
Segment, the BR UI provides an option that allows the customer to
display the dependency graph for those resources already in the
Recovery Segment. This displays the topology from the seed node(s)
in the Recovery Segment down to and including the dependent leaf
nodes. The purpose of this capability is to give the customer the
opportunity to display the dependent nodes and recommend that they
be included in the Recovery Segment.
[0397] Preparatory and recovery workflows are built by the BR
manager to achieve the customer requested RTO policy based on
resource operations timings. During active policy monitoring by the
BR manager, measurements of achieved time for operations are
recorded in observations to the log and used to maintain the
running statistical data on operation execution times. Observations
written to the log may vary in the contained resource RTO metrics
and operation execution timings.
[0398] Observations are also collected from any of the BPEL
workflows created by BR in the customer's environment. There is a
standard template that each BR BPEL workflow uses. As part of that
template, observation data is captured at the start of, during, and
at the completion of each workflow. Specifically, in one example,
one observation is created at the end of the workflow with data
accumulated from completion of each activity. This information is
used to gather timings for workflow execution for use in creating
subsequent workflows at time of failure.
[0399] In accordance with an aspect of the present invention,
management of the BR environment is facilitated by real-time
monitoring of the environment. Real-time data associated with
business applications of the environment are monitored to provide
information regarding the applications. That information is then
used to manage the environment.
[0400] Presently, monitoring of a computer system environment is
performed by existing products in a wide variety of ways. For
example, there are automation products which are triggered off
issuance of messages or events (e.g., ENF events within z/OS.RTM.).
Additionally, there are periodic processes for gathering
information on the status of a resource, such as the system or
subsystem monitoring performed by XCF of z/OS.RTM. for Parallel
Sysplex.RTM.. (Parallel Sysplex.RTM. is a registered trademark of
International Business Machines Corporation.) However, in each case
there fails to be an association of the status of resources to the
customer business application in the context of the supporting
overall IT environment, and there fails to be an open, extensible
way for resources to surface through event changes in their state
or critical properties.
[0401] Thus, one or more aspects of the present invention addresses
the need for maintaining relatively current information on, for
instance, resources and operation execution times, and on the use
of that data when resources report changes to the environment. In
the context of managing the IT environment for business application
availability, a balance is struck between management of cached
resource information and management of environment change
notification.
[0402] Business Resilience (BR) uses information about resources
and relationships actively during the processing of events,
including recovery related events. BR also has fairly tight
restrictions on the amount of time that can be spent in its own
processing in order to produce a meaningful recovery process.
Excessive time may be measured in seconds, as the chances for
achieving a goal (e.g., RTO) and the chances for preserving a
consistent state of the environment are reduced as internal
processing time increases. As a result of this stringent
requirement, BR implements a cache of resource and relationship
data that also includes the properties about a resource that the BR
design depends on during recovery processing. The implementation of
this cache is in a set of database tables. BR relies on, for
instance, the buffer pool capabilities of DB2.RTM. to maintain the
information for read purposes without access to external storage
for the data tables. In this manner, the BR implementation does not
have to create a cache in storage.
[0403] Cached information is utilized in conjunction with explicit
notification of change events on resource state, resource
properties and topology. BR subscribes to topics supported by the
underlying system services. Notification of events associated with
those topics is provided by resources on state and property change.
Additionally, notification events are provided on addition or
deletion of resources or relationships to the collection of
resources BR has established as a Recovery Segment representing a
customer business application.
Overview
[0404] Monitoring of the IT environment by the BR system takes
place in support of achieving the quantitative goals, such as a
RTO. Two types of monitoring are utilized: explicit periodic
requesting of resource data and subscription to resource services,
which provide event notification of changes to resource data. Two
mechanisms are utilized in order to insure changes in resource data
are detected. The event mechanism may have unbounded delays or
errors which preclude delivery of notification regarding resource
data change. Making periodic requests for resource data further
provides the needed mechanism for real-time analysis of expected
delays in request/response processing for resource data and in
event delivery.
[0405] In one implementation, monitoring may be initiated at one of
two points in time. The BR system supports a form of resource data
gathering termed observation mode during which resource data is
gathered, but BR management to an availability goal is not
performed. Observation mode uses the explicit periodic requesting
of resource data, termed periodic poll. Processing responses to
explicit requests for resource data (see Response to Periodic Poll
Observation below) includes updating a cache of resource data,
evaluating resources, RS(s) and RG(s) for state change and logging
returned resource data. Enabling observation mode (see Activate
Observation mode for RS below) may be performed before the point in
time when active management to an availability goal is requested of
the BR system. When active management to an availability goal is
requested of the BR system (see RS Monitoring of
Resource(s)--Activate Time below), if observation mode has not
previously been activated, observation mode is entered causing
periodic requests for resource data to begin. In addition to
periodic requests for resource data, when the BR system begins
active management of a goal, such as an availability goal, the BR
system subscribes to event notification services supported by
resources associated with the RS. Through subscriptions to events
associated with resource data, the BR system should be provided
direct notification by the resource representation of changes to
resource data (see RS Monitoring Notification below).
[0406] Subscriptions for notification to the BR system of changes
in resource data is discontinued when the RS is no longer managed
to a goal (see Deactivate RS for Monitoring below). Observation
mode may be discontinued if the RS is not being managed to a goal
(see Deactivate Observation Mode for RS below).
[0407] When resources or relationships are deleted from the IT
environment and are part of a RS, resource data becomes no longer
requested by the periodic poll process and subscriptions are
removed from event services providing notification of alterations
in resource data. When resources are added to the IT environment,
the BR administrator is advised of the change as it may be
desirable to add resources to an RS (see Topology Lifecycle Change
Notification below).
[0408] The monitoring process maintains a cache of resource data to
be used by other aspects of the BR system (see Response to Periodic
Poll Observation below). The cache includes, for example, data on
resource state, resource property values, resource operation
execution duration times and data regarding processor time,
processor memory usage and I/O requests made by the resource. The
set of resource data which is gathered by periodic poll and for
which event subscriptions are initiated (see RS Monitoring Prep
below) is created either when observation mode is initiated or when
the RS becomes actively monitored for availability goal
achievement. Resource state is always monitored, in one example, as
are operation execution duration times for each operation
potentially utilized by the BR system. Resource property values are
monitored if they contributed to the composed state of a resource
or the aggregated state of a RS or RG. Resource property values are
also monitored if they are utilized in evaluating pairing trigger
conditions.
[0409] As changes to resource data are received, either through the
periodic poll process or through event notification reflecting
change in resource data, an evaluation is made regarding any
alterations to resource state, RS state or RG state. If changes to
resource data result in a resource or RS becoming failed or
degraded, as assessed based on the composite state of the resource
or aggregated state of the RS or RG, error detection processing is
initiated to begin the flow for determining what recovery actions
should be taken.
[0410] The interval on which periodic poll requests for resource
data are initiated may be altered by the customer (see Change
Periodic Poke Interval below).
[0411] In accordance with one or more aspects of the present
invention, the following functionality is provided, as
examples:
[0412] 1) Periodic update of cached information on resources
associated with serving a business application:
[0413] Since a cache is by nature a copy of the information, the
coherence is to be maintained at a level that is reasonable to the
use of the data. In some cases, a cached copy of the data is
sufficient, and in other cases, it is not the preferred method. In
all cases, the cache is maintained by BR monitoring and BR
administrative flows. The periodic observations that BR uses also
gathers information on the required cache updates in an
asynchronous, phased manner, in one example.
[0414] An example of when a cache can be used is for values of
properties that are used in the BR state aggregation for RS, or in
specification of triggers in determining operational dependency
ordering. These will be as old as potentially the last
(undelivered) notification, since there is unbounded delay on the
messaging infrastructure supported by the underlying system
services.
[0415] A case of where cached data is not preferred is in the
assessment of state for resources when a recovery action is about
to be formulated. In this case, BR makes an attempt to distribute
asynchronous queries to gather state that is more recent than the
last processed event. In the latter case, using only cached data is
insufficient, and an unbounded delay on the messaging
infrastructure can result in unpredictable coherency of the
information used to recommend a recovery action. For example, if a
resource transitioned to an available state, and the message was
not delivered in the timeframe that BR has to suggest a recovery
process, then a process restarting the resource may be recommended,
even though the resource became available. However, if there is no
response to an asynchronous query for a given resource, BR resorts
to its cached state and does not wait excessively for a response
from a query operation.
[0416] BR sends a query, during each polling interval, to the set
of resources managed for a given RS to collect, for example, state,
RTO metrics, operation execution timings, properties associated
with 1 st level state aggregation rules and properties associated
with triggers for pairing rules. Roundtrip times and clock
variations are also recorded. Part of the information collected is
recorded into a log and part is used to update the BR management
data maintained in DB2.RTM. tables and cached in DB2.RTM. buffer
pools.
[0417] 2) Use of periodic data refresh to maintain running average
of resource operation execution duration time:
[0418] BR uses observed resource information to create
representations of customer IT environments referred to as Pattern
System Environments. Observed resource operation execution duration
times are related to PSE(s) and used to formulate statistics on
operation execution times. During ongoing runtime execution, BR
maintains a running average of resource operation execution times.
Statistics from logs of observations are used as a base against
which updates are made from data returned by resources in response
to periodic polling. Running averages for operation execution times
are maintained by BR in a set of DB2.RTM. tables, which
collectively relate resources to the business applications they
support and operation execution times for those resources within
the context of a customer environment represented as a PSE. The
running average of operation execution time for resources is
utilized in validating customer policy for business application
availability.
[0419] 3) Use of periodic data refresh in evaluating Redundancy
Group state:
[0420] A Redundancy Group is a BR representation of a set of
functionally equivalent resources which have an associated
aggregated state. The state of a Redundancy Group is updated when
BR gathers information on resources either on a periodic basis or
in response to a resource event reflecting an outage. The
aggregated state of a Redundancy Group can be specified by a
customer as a function of the state and property values of
associated resources. The state of a Redundancy Group can be used
by customers to affect the state of a Recovery Segment representing
a business application. State of a Redundancy Group can also be
used by customers in determining which pairing information is
currently valid through trigger specifications.
[0421] 4) Monitoring for resource state change and use of cached
data in assessing resource aggregated state:
[0422] When state change notification for a resource is received,
an assessment is performed based on, for instance, the
administrative state of the Recovery Segment (RS), the state of the
current policy for the RS, the rules for composed state of the
resource and pairing information. If the resource is part of a RS
for which there is an active BR policy governing availability
management, change in resource state may warrant initiation of
error processing. The composed state of the resource is evaluated
to determine if it has become degraded or unavailable. If a
resource changes state, as evaluated by BR for availability
purposes, the associated RS may also change state or another
resource related through a pairing may change state.
Property/values associated with resources and state associated with
resources are used from the BR cache to evaluate trigger conditions
on pairings and composed state of other resources, and aggregated
state of Redundancy Groups and Recovery Segments.
[0423] 5) Monitoring for resource property change and use of cached
data in assessing resource state:
[0424] In a manner analogous to processing for resource state
change, resource property event notification initiates an
assessment of resource composed state. Notification of property and
related value is received by BR as a result of subscription.
Notification results in update of the BR cache for the altered
resource property and value. Assessment of composed state of the
resource is performed. If the resource state, as viewed by BR for
availability management changes, an assessment of changes to other
resources or to the associated RS(s) is performed by BR. As with
resource state change, changes in property/value for a resource may
result in initiation of error processing through alteration of
resource state, Redundancy Group state and ultimately Recovery
Segment state.
[0425] 6) Monitoring for resource topology change and alteration of
resource to business application association:
[0426] BR subscribes for monitoring and change notification for
these lifecycle changes, as examples: [0427] Resources added to the
environment; [0428] Resources deleted from the environment; [0429]
Relationships added to the environment; and [0430] Relationships
deleted from the environment.
[0431] The addition of resources or relationships in the
environment does not result in BR automatically changing the scope
of any RS. The BR administrator is notified and may select to
include the resource or relationship information into a RS. In so
doing, the BR administrator may choose to build composed state or
pairing information or alter RS and RG aggregated state
processing.
[0432] In another implementation, a BR function enabling automatic
addition of selected resources and relationships to a RS based on a
set of filter rules is possible. Definition of which resources and
relationships should automatically be added to a RS and what if any
composed state and pairing information should automatically be
added is possible.
[0433] If the environment change reflects deletion of a resource,
BR removes the resource from the RS and from related pairing
information so as to prevent the removed resource from causing
inappropriate evaluation of state for other resources. A resource
being deleted implies it is no longer part of the IT environment.
That is quite different from the resource being failed or degraded.
It is gone and should not impact the state of other resources
including the Recovery Segment. Notification is provided to the BR
administrator and copies of the resource information, related
metadata and pairing information are preserved for potential use by
the BR administrator. Once deletion of the resource is confirmed by
the BR administrator, copies of information related to the deleted
resource are removed from BR, in one embodiment.
[0434] If the environment change reflects deletion of a
relationship, BR removes any pairing information derived from the
relationship and provides BR administrator notification. A
temporary copy of the removed pairing information is preserved
until the BR administrator confirms deletion of the
relationship.
Example of Preconditioning the BR Environment for Monitoring
[0435] Prior to the detection of runtime errors, there are a number
of BR-specific configuration steps performed. This list represents
one example of a high-level view of those preconditions, although
they are not necessarily executed in this order: [0436] A Recovery
Segment has been defined and deployed. The Recovery Segment
includes various resources, relationships between those resources,
topologies of resources and relationships, and composite resources
(i.e., Redundancy Group or even other Recovery Segments). [0437]
The Recovery Segment has been associated with an instantiated and
deployed BR Manager for monitoring and management. This association
is accomplished in the form of a `manages` relationship. [0438]
Relationships in the form of `manages` relationships have been
established between the Recovery Segment and its constituent
resources. [0439] Pairing rules have been assigned to the resources
and relationships through interaction with the BR UI and customized
to the customer's particular environment (e.g., impact rules for
aggregated states for the RS, RG, etc.). [0440] A goal policy has
been defined and validated for the Recovery Segment through
interactions with the BR UI. [0441] Observation mode for the
resources in the Recovery Segment has been initiated either by the
customer or as a result of policy validation. [0442] The
environment has been prepared as a result of that goal policy via
policy validation and the possible creation and execution of a
preparatory workflow. [0443] The goal policy has been activated for
monitoring by BR.
[0444] The underlying framework that BR relies upon provides a
mechanism for subscribing to specific events and subsequently
getting notified when those events occur. In one implementation,
this may be via a notification service. The types of events that
can be subscribed to are state change events and lifecycle events,
as examples. State change events result when a property of a
resource changes, and lifecycle events occur with either the
creation and/or deletion of a resource instance. This
subscription/notification process is the basis for error detection
by BR. Notifications are surfaced to the subscriber, and the
subscribers for BR are, for instance, the Recovery Segment or BR
manager.
[0445] As a result of the preconditions leading up to runtime, the
following subscriptions have taken place (again not necessarily in
this order), in one embodiment: [0446] 1. The BRM has subscribed to
runtime state change events for the RS (as a result of the Recovery
Segment getting associated with that particular BRM). [0447] 2.
Once a RS is defined, instantiated and has relationships defined
with its constituent resources, lifecycle changes to the topologies
in the RS are to be monitored. For example, changes, such as the
addition of a relationship between a resource in the RS and related
resource, may be an indication that the customer may need to (or
want to) change the definition of the RS to include new resources
or possibly change the policy associated with the Recovery Segment.
It is for this reason that the Recovery Segment has subscribed to
lifecycle changes for the resources in the Recovery Segment. Note
that a lifecycle change is different than an operational state
change. Lifecycle events result when new resources are instantiated
or explicitly destroyed. [0448] 3. Once a policy is activated for
monitoring, the operational state of the resources in the Recovery
Segment are also monitored. So, the Recovery Segment has subscribed
to the state change events for those constituent resources. [0449]
4. Also, as a result of policy activation, the Recovery Segment has
subscribed to state change events for any properties of its
resources that are a RTO metric. [0450] 5. The Recovery Segment has
subscribed to state change events on those properties that are
involved in any of the pairing rules applied during configuration
time.
[0451] A conceptual view of the above for a simple Recovery Segment
with five constituent resources is depicted in FIG. 9. [0452] 1.
Line 900 between the BR Manager 902 and the Recovery Segment 904
represents a state change subscription between BRM 902 and RS 904.
[0453] 2. Line 906 between Recovery Segment 904 and the resource
lifecycle services 908 represents the lifecycle change subscription
for resources in the Recovery Segment. [0454] 3. Lines 910 between
Recovery Segment 904 and its constituent resources 912 represent
the state change subscriptions between the RS and those resources.
There is at least one subscription between the RS and each resource
for operational state change events, but there might be others as
well based on items 4 and 5 above.
[0455] As used herein, lifecycle service refers to the function
which provides notification of a resource being created or
destroyed. It may be different for different resources. For
example, it might be a software routine which runs when a customer
adds or removes a resource definition from their CMDB. It could be
a software routine which runs when a new subsystem, like CICS.RTM.
or DB2.RTM., is installed or when a new instance of the subsystem
is defined through creation of a new start procedure in
sys1.proclib. It could be a software routine which runs when a new
storage subsystem is installed to define the storage subsystem
hardware configuration and validate correct installation and
execution of the new hardware. All of these are providing
notification that a new instance of a component/resource has become
available in the IT environment. In a similar way, when a
component/resource is removed from the IT environment the lifecycle
service provides notification. For example, if a rack of x86
servers is to be replaced, the old instances of the servers are
removed. The software providing notification of the removal could
again be running when the customer's CMDB is updated. Or, it would
be run when the customer's hardware inventory is updated. All of
these are lifecycle services. For relationships, there are similar
software routines which are the focal point for creation or removal
of new relationship instances and these are lifecycle services for
relationships. For example, when a new JDBC connector is defined
for software using a database, a new relationship is created
between the software and the database.
[0456] Now that BR has subscribed for the various state and
lifecycle change events for the resources under its management, it
waits and listens for a notification for anything that is has
subscribed to. The lifecycle runtime state of the Recovery Segment
at this point in time is Available.
Activate Observation Mode for RS
[0457] Activate Observation Mode initializes the mode where the RS
initiates periodic polls to collect information used in forming
system environments, as well as to perform ongoing collection of
key information used to keep the BRMD and BRRD current. Once
activated, observations are gathered until the administrator
explicitly stops the poll. Observation mode is activated by the BR
Administrator or by policy validation for the first policy to be
validated for the RS, if it has not been set by the administrator
prior to that time. Note that activation of observation mode does
not cause the RS to subscribe to resource state, resource property
or resource lifecycle changes. Therefore, deactivation of
observation mode does not unsubscribe.
[0458] One embodiment of the logic to activate observation mode for
a RS is described with reference to FIG. 10. As one example, the RS
component of the BR performs this logic.
[0459] Referring to FIG. 10, the periodic poll interval desired by
the BR administrator is established through the UI, STEP 1000. The
specified interval is validated including, for instance: [0460]
Interval greater than 0; [0461] Interval larger than 15 minutes
yields a warning; [0462] If previous cycles have had less than 100%
response to batch requests (RS.Pct_Resp), lowering the interval
yields a warning; [0463] If previous cycles have had less than 100%
response from all RS related resources (RS.Poll_Resp_Pct), lowering
the interval yields a warning; [0464] Interval less than the
longest time for a resource to respond (RS.Level_T2_interval_max),
yields a warning.
[0465] When an acceptable periodic poll interval has not been
requested, INQUIRY 1002, processing returns to STEP 1000.
Otherwise, observation mode for the RS is indicated
(RS.ObsMode=Yes), STEP 1004, and the desired interval is saved with
the RS (RS.PokeInterval), STEP 1006.
[0466] Statistics for the polling cycle are initialized. For
example, the total number of poll cycles with the specified
interval is set to zero (RS.Tot_Polls), STEP 1008, the percent of
responses for batch requests is set to zero (RS.Pct_Resp), STEP
1010, and the percent of resources responding in a polling cycle is
set to zero (RS.Poll_Resp_Pct), STEP 1012.
[0467] Preparation for polling of resources is invoked (e.g., RS
Monitoring Prep), STEP 1014, to create the list of resources and
resource data to be retrieved on each polling cycle, as described
below. Moreover, processing to periodically present requests to
resources for data is also invoked (e.g., Initiate Periodic Poll
Observation), STEP 1016, as described below.
RS Monitoring Prep
[0468] As previously indicated, activate observation mode invokes
RS monitoring prep (as well as RS monitoring of Resources), an
example of which is described with reference to FIGS. 11A-11B. In
one embodiment, this logic is performed by the RS component of the
BR system.
[0469] A list of resource data for RS observation mode or active
monitoring is created in this routine. It is invoked when
observation mode is made active, as described above, or when the RS
transitions to active monitoring of resources to achieve the
availability policy, as described below. This routine builds the
list of resource data in the RS (RS.BRAD_List) under the constraint
that each piece of resource data is to be requested separately. In
another implementation where support is provided by the resource
for retrieving multiple data in a single request, this routine
would build the list so groups of data requests to the same
resource would be presented in a single resource access. Resource
data may include, for example: resource state, resource operations
or resource property data required for evaluation of pairing
triggers, RS evaluation of RTO metrics or RG and RS state
evaluation.
[0470] Referring to FIG. 11A, the resource topology associated with
the RS is retrieved from the RS related topology table, STEP 1100.
One or more DAG(s) are constructed for the resources represented in
the topology, STEP 1102. DAG(s) are processed from the root to the
leaf nodes resulting in entries in the resource data list being in
root to leaf order. Subscriptions for monitoring of resources are
built in the order of resource data, such that subscriptions are
processed from root to leaf node.
[0471] When each constructed DAG has been processed, STEP 1104,
this routine ends. Each resource in a DAG is processed navigating
the DAG from the root to leaf node(s), STEP 1106. If the resource
under evaluation has already been processed, INQUIRY 1108, the next
resource in the DAG is evaluated, STEP 1106. Otherwise, the BRMD is
retrieved for the resource, STEP 1110, and the resource and a
request for the resource state data is added to the list of
resource data required by the RS, STEP 1112, and flagged as
requiring event subscription.
[0472] For the resource under evaluation, operation table entries
are retrieved through use of the BRMD, STEP 1114. For each
operation table entry, STEP 1116 (FIG. 11B), the resource and
resource operation are added to the list of resource data needed,
STEP 1118, and flagged as not requiring event subscription.
[0473] Subsequent to processing the retrieved operation table
entries, the properties associated with the resource under
evaluation are retrieved through use of the BRMD, as one example,
STEP 1120. For each property table entry retrieved, STEP 1122, a
determination is made regarding RS requirements for data on the
property, INQUIRY 1124. A set of flags in the property table
indicate if the property/value is needed for currency evaluation of
one of the pairing types or needed for gathering RTO metrics or
needed for RG or RS state evaluation. As examples:
TABLE-US-00007 Needed for RG evaluation NEEDED_RG_TRIGGER_Y Needed
for pairing trigger NEEDED_IMPACT_Y NEEDED_FAILURE_Y
NEEDED_CONSTRAINT_Y NEEDED_OPEFFECT_Y NEEDED_PREPEFFECT_Y
NEEED_COLLOCATION_Y Needed for RS state evaluation
NEEDED_LEVEL1_AGGREATION_Y Needed for RTO metrics NEEDED_RTO_Y
[0474] If not, INQUIRY 1124, the next property is evaluated, STEP
1122. Otherwise, the resource and property are added to the list of
resource data required by the RS, STEP 1126, and flagged as
requiring event subscription. When all resource property table
entries have been processed, the next resource is evaluated, STEP
1106 (FIG. 11A). When all of the resources in the DAG have been
processed, STEP 1106, the next DAG is selected, if any.
Initiate Periodic Poll Observation
[0475] In addition to RS monitoring prep, an initiate periodic poll
observation routine is also invoked by activate observation mode.
With this routine, in each polling interval, BR sends a query to
the set of resources managed for a given RS to collect, for
instance, state, RTO metrics, operation execution timings,
properties associated with evaluation of resource composed state
and properties associated with triggers for pairing. A part of the
information collected is used to update the BRMD and BRRD
information. Collected data may be recorded in a log for use by
tools evaluating the BR environment.
[0476] In one implementation the process to request data from
resources runs only when invoked by this routine. Setting of a
timer to cause this routine to run the next cycle is performed by
this routine. The following flow represents such an
implementation.
[0477] In another implementation, one in which BRAD processing is
employed to dynamically adjust resource data collection controls,
the initial invocation of the BRAD process is all that is required.
Subsequent iterations of the periodic poll process and detection of
requests to terminate the periodic poll process are incorporated
into the BRAD logic.
[0478] One embodiment of the initiate periodic poll observation is
described with reference to FIG. 12. As an example, the RS
component of the BR performs this logic.
[0479] Referring to FIG. 12, if periodic polling for data is to be
stopped, INQUIRY 1200, processing ends. Otherwise, a timer is set
to expire at the conclusion of a time interval equal to the
periodic poll interval with control to be given to this routine,
STEP 1202. The list of resource data recorded into the RS from
previous processing of the RS Monitoring Prep routine, described
above, is used to invoke services for delivering requests to
resources for data and gathering response data from resources, STEP
1204. In one implementation, this may be the BR asynchronous
distribution (BRAD) mechanism. In another example, it may be a
routine which serially invokes the resource provided interface to
retrieve each piece of data in the BRAD_List. An alternative
implementation may spawn a thread for each data item in the
BRAD_List assigning each thread one of the data requests.
Response to Periodic Poll Observation
[0480] Response(s) received from a periodic poll observation are
processed. Property values and resource state may be updated. If a
resource state is not available, a resource outage may be detected
causing error detection processing to be initiated.
[0481] One embodiment of the logic to process received responses is
described with reference to FIGS. 13A-13G. As an example, the RS
performs this logic.
[0482] Referring to FIG. 13A, a temporary list of resources having
reported or been evaluated as requiring error processing is set to
null, STEP 1300. Each resource data item present in the response
message is processed, STEP 1302. The BRMD for the resource being
processed is retrieved, STEP 1304.
[0483] If the response data for the resource in the periodic poll
response is null, INQUIRY 1306, the count of occurrences when the
resource failed to provide a response is incremented, STEP 1308,
and the next resource data in the response message is processed,
STEP 1302.
[0484] Otherwise, INQUIRY 1306, if the resource data is state data,
INQUIRY 1310, a comparison to the current BRMD resource state is
made. If the resource state is unchanged, INQUIRY 1312, the next
resource data is processed, STEP 1302. Otherwise, the BRMD resource
state is updated, STEP 1314 (FIG. 13B), and a determination is made
if the state is available, STEP 1316. If the resource state is
available, the next resource data is processed, STEP 1302 (FIG.
13A). Otherwise, the resource having a non-available state is added
to the error detect list of resources, STEP 1318 (FIG. 13B), and
processing continues at STEP 1302 (FIG. 13A).
[0485] Returning to INQUIRY 1310, if the resource data is not state
data, but is property data, INQUIRY 1320 (FIG. 13C), the resource
property table entry is retrieved, STEP 1322, and updated, STEP
1324. If the resource property data is required for RG evaluation,
INQUIRY 1326 (FIG. 13D), related RG(s) are evaluated, STEP 1327.
Otherwise, or after RG evaluation is performed, it is determined if
the property data is needed for resource state evaluation, INQUIRY
1328. If not, the next resource data is processed, STEP 1302 (FIG.
13A). Otherwise, INQUIRY 1328, evaluation of resource state is
performed, STEP 1330. If the evaluated resource state is the same
as the existing BRMD value, INQUIRY 1332, the next resource data is
processed, STEP 1302 (FIG. 13A). Otherwise, INQUIRY 1332 (FIG.
13D), processing of changed resource state is performed, STEPs
1314-1318 (FIG. 13B), before the next resource data is processed,
STEP 1302 (FIG. 13A).
[0486] Returning to INQUIRY 1320 (FIG. 13C), if the resource data
is not property data, but is operation data, INQUIRY 1334 (FIG.
13E), the resource operation table entry is retrieved, STEP 1336.
If the last execution time for the operation recorded in the
operation table entry is the same as the operation execution time
in the response message, INQUIRY 1338, the next resource data is
processed, STEP 1302 (FIG. 13A). Otherwise, INQUIRY 1338 (FIG.
13E), the last operation execution time is updated in the operation
table entry, STEP 1340, and the operation execution count is
incremented by one, STEP 1342. The average and standard deviation
for operation execution is calculated and recorded in the operation
table entry, STEP 1344. The count of invocations for the
instrumentation for the operation is incremented, STEP 1346, and
the running average and standard deviation for instrumentation
execution time is updated in the operation table, STEP 1348.
[0487] If there exists a PSE which matches the operation execution
time, INQUIRY 1350 (FIG. 13F), the PSE operation table entry is
retrieved, STEP 1352. The count of operation execution events is
incremented in the PSE operation table entry, STEP 1354, and the
running average and standard deviation of operation execution time
is updated in the PSE operation table entry, STEP 1356. On
completion of PSE operation execution data, the next resource data
is processed, STEP 1302 (FIG. 13A).
[0488] Returning to INQUIRY 1334 (FIG. 13E), if the resource data
is not operation data, but is WLM data, INQUIRY 1360 (FIG. 13G),
the BRMD WLM data is updated, STEP 1362. If there exists a PSE
which matches the observation time, INQUIRY 1364, the PSE resource
table is retrieved, STEP 1366, and the WLM data associated with the
PSE resource table is updated, STEP 1368. Subsequently, or if no
PSE matching the observation time or if the resource data is not
WLM data, the next resource data is processed, STEP 1302 (FIG.
13A).
[0489] Returning to STEP 1302, when the resource data has been
processed, each error detect list entry recorded during processing,
STEP 1372, is used to invoke error detect processing (e.g.,
asynchronously), STEP 1374. When each of the error detect list
entries is processed, the response to periodic poll observation is
complete.
Topology Lifecycle Change Notification
[0490] One example of a lifecycle change notification is described
with reference to FIGS. 14A-14C. As one example, this logic is
performed by the RS component of the BR system.
[0491] In one example, BR subscribes to lifecycle service for
monitoring and change notification of: resources added to the
environment; resources deleted from the environment; relationships
added to the environment; and relationships deleted from the
environment.
[0492] This logic is initiated by the Recovery Segment initially
subscribing to the four lifecycle change events and subsequently
receiving notification of such a change.
[0493] Referring to FIG. 14A, if resources or relationships have
been added to the BR environment, INQUIRY 1400, notification is
sent to the BR administrator via, for instance, the mailbox, STEP
1402. The BR administrator, on review of the changed environment,
may choose to modify the BR environment through changes to existing
RS(s) or formation of new RS(s). In another implementation, filters
on resource type and resource property could be applied to events
providing notification of resource or relationship additions. For
example, an x86 server of a particular configuration could be
matched to a filter, or a storage volume of a specified type and
naming convention could be matched to a filter. If the added
resource or relationship matched the filter for an RS, processing
could be performed to add the resource or relationship along with
best practices for pairings to the RS.
[0494] If a resource or relationship has been removed from the BR
environment, INQUIRY 1400, monitoring of deleted items may be
discontinued and updates are made to BR tables to reflect the
deletion. For each resource data item as reflected in the
RS.BRAD_List, (e.g., built during RS monitoring prep, described
herein), STEP 1404, if the resource data item has been subscribed
to based on indicator settings in the entry, subscription for event
notification is terminated through, for instance, invocation of
system services, STEP 1406. Further, the entry is removed from the
RS.BRAD_List, STEP 1408, which terminates subsequent periodic poll
cycle requests for the resource data.
[0495] Subsequent to processing the BRAD_List entries, flow
continues at STEP 1410. At STEP 1410, BRRD entries, where the
relationship is represented or where the deleted resource
participates as Resource 1 or Resource 2, are deleted and inserted
into a data structure of pending deletions, STEP 1412. As one
example, the deleted data is recorded in a "deletes to_process"
external storage location accessible by the BR runtime and the BR
administrator. In one implementation, the "deletes_to_Process"
store is a DB2.RTM. table. Other implementations may utilize a file
system store or a log, such as the BR activity log.
[0496] Deleted resources are removed from any RG table entries,
STEP 1414, and those modified RG table entries are recorded in the
structure of pending deletions, STEP 1416. The BRMD of a deleted
resource is removed, STEP 1418, and recorded in the structure of
pending deletions, STEP 1420 (FIG. 14B).
[0497] Pairing(s) in the BRRD, where data related to the deleted
resource is referenced in triggers (BRRD.TRIGGER), are updated to
remove references to the deleted resource data, STEP 1422. Updated
BRRD entries are recorded in the structure of pending deletions,
STEP 1424. RG table entries where the deleted resource is
referenced in RG state (RG.STATE_RULE) are updated to remove
references to the deleted resource data, STEP 1426. Updated RG
entries are recorded in the structure of pending deletions, STEP
1428. RS table entries where the deleted resource is referenced in
the RS state (RS.STATE_RULE) are updated to remove references to
the deleted resource data, STEP 1430. Updated RS entries are
recorded in the structure of pending deletions, STEP 1432.
[0498] Mailbox notification is sent to the BR Administrator, STEP
1434, requesting confirmation of resources and relationship for
which there exists pending delete processing.
[0499] When the BR Administrator receives the mailbox notification
and has initiated processing of pending deletes, recorded data from
the table of pending deletions is presented for confirmation, STEP
1440 (FIG. 14C). On acknowledging delete processing for resources
and relationship, pending delete table entries are removed, STEP
1442.
Change Periodic Poke Interval
[0500] The interval at which the RS initiates a poll for query of
information can be altered. The change takes affect on the next
poll, and the scope of the change is for a RS. Processing is
initiated through the UI by the BR administrator.
[0501] Note, in one implementation, historical information on the
periodic poll process may be presented to the BR administrator.
Historical information may include changes made to the number of
resources in a batch, number of BRAD responses and number of
resources responding for previous poll cycles. Trend data showing
the effects of dynamic changes to the periodic poll control
mechanisms may be presented to assist the BR administrator in
setting a new periodic poll interval. Periodic poll control
mechanisms include, for example: initiation of requests to previous
poll cycle non responsive resources first, number of concurrent
requests for resource data, number of requests in a batch, and
duration of the periodic poll interval.
[0502] One embodiment of the logic to change the periodic poke
interval is described with reference to FIG. 15. As one example,
this logic is performed by the RS.
[0503] Referring to FIG. 15, data related to the current periodic
poll interval is presented to the BR Administrator through the UI,
STEP 1500. Data may include, for instance: the current periodic
poll interval, the total number of poll cycles that have been
completed with the current periodic poll interval, the percentage
of responses which have been received to groups of requests for
resource data, the percentage of resources responding in a poll
cycle to requests for data, and the longest time interval from a
request for resource data to the corresponding response. Through
the UI, the BR Administrator specifies a desired periodic poll
interval, STEP 1502. The specified interval is evaluated using the
same criteria as when observation mode was initiated, as described
above.
[0504] If the specified interval is not acceptable, INQUIRY 1504,
UI interaction continues, STEP 1500. Otherwise, the desired
interval value is used to update the RS periodic poll interval,
STEP 1506. Statistics regarding the current periodic poll interval
are reset, STEP 1508, including, for instance, setting to zero:
total number of poll cycles with this interval, percent of
responses which have been received to groups of requests for
resource data, and the percentage of resources responding in a poll
cycle to requests for data. Processing completes with use of the
modified periodic poll interval picked up on the next cycle of the
periodic poll process in the Initiate Periodic Poll Observation
routine described above.
Deactivate Observation Mode for RS
[0505] Observation mode for the RS can be stopped to prevent
further periodic polls from occurring until reactivation of
observation mode. The BR Administrator explicitly invokes this
operation, in one example.
[0506] One embodiment of the logic to deactivate observation mode
is described with reference to FIG. 16. As one example, this logic
is performed by RS.
[0507] Referring to FIG. 16, if the RS is not currently in
observation mode, INQUIRY 1600, an error message is issued, STEP
1602. Otherwise, the RS is indicated to not currently be in
observation mode, STEP 1604. Further, an indicator, checked by the
periodic polling process, is set to cause periodic polling to end
(RS.StopPoke), STEP 1606. Processing ends with further shutdown of
the periodic poll process completed by the Initiate Periodic Poll
Observation process.
RS Monitoring of Resource(S)--Activate Time
[0508] This flow is invoked from, for instance, activate policy (or
in another embodiment, from another routine or independently), and
initiates subscriptions to resources that have not already been
subscribed to by this RS. Input to this routine includes the RS
table data reflecting the resources associated with the RS. Some
resources associated with the RS may have been subscribed to by the
RS as a result of preparing the environment for meeting the
specified policy goal. Requests to subscribe to resources are
processed, for instance, in an order determined by the one or more
DAG(s) reflecting relationships among resources in the RS.
Processing of resource subscriptions proceeds from the root of the
DAG to the leaf nodes, in one example.
[0509] One embodiment of the logic for RS monitoring of resources
is described with reference to FIG. 17. As an example, the RS
performs this logic.
[0510] Referring to FIG. 17, the RS administrative state is to be
one of ActiveMonitoring, MonitoringPrepared, or
DeactivateMonitoring, STEP 1700. If the RS is not in one of those
administrative states, an error message is issued, STEP 1702, and
processing ends. Otherwise, the RS Monitoring Prep routine is
invoked, STEP 1704, to build the list of resource data used to
support RS.
[0511] On return from building the list of resource data, an index
for processing subscriptions is initialized to one, STEP 1706. If
all subscriptions have been processed, INQUIRY 1708, the RS
administrative state is updated to ActiveMonitoring, STEP 1710.
Further, the topology table entry for each resource is indicated as
having been subscribed to, STEP 1712, and processing ends.
Otherwise, INQUIRY 1708, if the number of remaining subscriptions
to be issued is less than 50, INQUIRY 1714, the number of
subscriptions to issue is set to the remaining count for the RS,
STEP 1716. If the number of subscriptions remaining to be issued is
greater than 51, INQUIRY 1714, the number of subscriptions for this
cycle is set to 50, STEP 1718.
[0512] Subsequent to setting the number of subscriptions,
subscriptions for resource data as reflected in the RS
(RS.BRAD_List) are processed from the current index for the number
to be done in this cycle, STEP 1720. The processing includes, for
instance, invoking system services which cause the RS Monitoring
Notification routine, described below, to be given control on
change to the subscribed resource data. The SUBSCRIBED_TO1
indicator is set in the topology table for the resource. The index
for the current processing of RS resource data subscriptions is
updated for the number of subscriptions processed in this cycle,
STEP 1722, and the need for another cycle is evaluated, INQUIRY
1708.
RS Monitoring Notification
[0513] One embodiment of the logic for RS monitoring notification
is described with reference to FIGS. 18A-18B. As an example, this
logic is performed by the RS component of the BR system.
[0514] When resource data change notifications are received at the
Recovery Segment, they are assessed based on metadata associated
with the property for that resource. Error detection is initiated
at the Recovery Segment when a subscribed to resource publishes a
state change notification or notification of change in a property
value which alters the composed state of resources to not be
available and the aggregated state of the RS to be unavailable or
degraded.
[0515] Referring to FIG. 18A, the BRMD of the resource is retrieved
based on identification of the resource in the notification, STEP
1800. If the notification is for a property which is needed for
pairing or RTO data processing, INQUIRY 1802, the associated
property table entry for the resource is retrieved, STEP 1804, (in
one implementation, the same property table flags are used as with
INQUIRY 1224 (FIG. 12B)). The property table is updated with the
property value provided in the notification, STEP 1806. Further,
the settings of flags associated with the property table entry are
tested to determine if an evaluation of RG state is required,
INQUIRY 1808. If true, the RG is evaluated, STEP 1810, and
processing continues with INQUIRY 1812 (FIG. 18B). If false,
processing skips the RG evaluation and continues at INQUIRY
1812.
[0516] At INQUIRY 1812, if the property is needed for evaluation of
resource state, and if the administrative state of the RS is
"Active Monitoring", INQUIRY 1814, the state of the resource is
evaluated, STEP 1816. The BRMD of the resource is updated with the
evaluated state, STEP 1818, and the state of the resource is tested
for being in an "Available" state, INQUIRY 1820. If the resource is
not in an available state, error detect processing is initiated,
STEP 1822. Thereafter, or if the resource state is available, the
notification event is logged along with recording of actions taken
in processing the event notification, STEP 1824, before processing
ends.
[0517] Returning to INQUIRIES 1812 and 1814, if either evaluates
false, processing continues at STEP 1824.
Deactivate RS for Monitoring
[0518] As described above, activation of monitoring of resources by
a Recovery Segment results in subscriptions for notification events
related to changes in resource state, property, operation and
lifecycle.
[0519] Deactivate monitoring for a RS unsubscribes to the set of
resources it manages, and leaves the environment `prepared`. An
administrator may be required to deactivate the RS for monitoring
if changes to the RS are found to be disruptive to ongoing
operations. For example, if resources are added to a RS which alter
the preparatory actions required and those preparatory operations
cannot be performed while the IT resources continue to provide
service to the business applications represented by the RS, RS
monitoring is deactivated.
[0520] One embodiment of the logic to deactivate RS for monitoring
is described with reference to FIG. 19. As an example, the RS
performs this logic.
[0521] Referring to FIG. 19, deactivate for RS monitoring can be
performed if the runtime state of the RS is one of
ActiveMonitoring, Failed or RecoveryFailed, INQUIRY 1900.
Otherwise, an error message is issued, STEP 1902, and processing
ends.
[0522] If the runtime state is in an allowed state, the RS is
indicated as not being in observation mode, STEP 1904, and an
indication to stop periodic poll processing is set, STEP 1906.
[0523] The list of resource data being monitored is used to build,
for instance, one or more DAG(s) representing the resources
associated with the RS, STEP 1908. As resources are processed, they
are removed from the list of resource data being monitored
resulting in subsequent DAG(s) having fewer resources.
Unsubscribing to resources is performed from leaf nodes up the
DAG(s) to root nodes, in one example. Ordering from leaf node(s) to
root maintains logical consistency for reported events. Events
which reflect outages in leaf nodes may cause error processing to
evaluate resources on which the leaf node depends. Removing leaf
nodes removes the possibility of actions taken on nodes nearer the
root in the DAG to recover the leaf node. If an error is reported
on a resource nearer the root in the DAG, root cause analysis
causes the recovery of the node nearer the root in the DAG to be
effected and there is no outage reported by the leaf node
resources. If no resources exist in the constructed DAG, INQUIRY
1910, the RS runtime state is set to deactivate monitoring, STEP
1912, and processing ends. Otherwise, there are resources to be
processed. Each leaf node in the formed DAG(s) is processed, STEP
1914, before reforming the DAG(s) to find the next level of
resources, STEP 1908.
[0524] For each resource, monitoring of events is terminated, STEP
1906. Subscriptions for events related to changes in resource
state, property, operation and lifecycle are removed, STEPS
1916-1918. Property value subscriptions may have been in effect in
support of RTO metrics, resource property data supporting pairing
rules or property data supporting evaluation of RS and RG state.
The list of resource data being monitored is updated for the
unsubscribed events, STEP 1920, and the next resource is processed,
STEP 1914.
[0525] Described in detail herein is a capability for monitoring
real-time data of a business application, in which the business
application includes processing collectively performed by a
plurality of components of the IT environment. Each component may
include one or more resources, and the real-time data is associated
with those resources. The real-time data includes, for instance,
resource state, property/value data, operation execution time
duration and/or performance data (e.g., utilization).
[0526] One or more aspects of the present invention can be included
in an article of manufacture (e.g., one or more computer program
products) having, for instance, computer usable media. The media
has therein, for instance, computer readable program code means or
logic (e.g., instructions, code, commands, etc.) to provide and
facilitate the capabilities of the present invention. The article
of manufacture can be included as a part of a computer system or
sold separately.
[0527] One example of an article of manufacture or a computer
program product incorporating one or more aspects of the present
invention is described with reference to FIG. 20. A computer
program product 2000 includes, for instance, one or more computer
usable media 2002 to store computer readable program code means or
logic 2004 thereon to provide and facilitate one or more aspects of
the present invention. The medium can be an electronic, magnetic,
optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or
apparatus or device) or a propagation medium. Examples of a
computer readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state
memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random
access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic
disk and an optical disk. Examples of optical disks include compact
disk-read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk-read/write (CD-R/W)
and DVD.
[0528] A sequence of program instructions or a logical assembly of
one or more interrelated modules defined by one or more computer
readable program code means or logic direct the performance of one
or more aspects of the present invention.
[0529] Advantageously, a capability is provided for facilitating
management of an IT environment by monitoring real-time data of
that environment and using that data in the management. This
provides up-to-date information to be used in management decisions,
such as in recovery that can be performed manually, in response to
the customer receiving the colleted information, or automatically
by a recovery process provided by the BR system.
[0530] Although various embodiments are described above, these are
only examples. For example, the processing environments described
herein are only examples of environments that may incorporate and
use one or more aspects of the present invention. Environments may
include other types of processing units or servers or the
components in each processing environment may be different than
described herein. Each processing environment may include
additional, less and/or different components than described herein.
Further, the types of central processing units and/or operating
systems or other types of components may be different than
described herein. Again, these are only provided as examples.
[0531] Moreover, an environment may include an emulator (e.g.,
software or other emulation mechanisms), in which a particular
architecture or subset thereof is emulated. In such an environment,
one or more emulation functions of the emulator can implement one
or more aspects of the present invention, even though a computer
executing the emulator may have a different architecture than the
capabilities being emulated. As one example, in emulation mode, the
specific instruction or operation being emulated is decoded, and an
appropriate emulation function is built to implement the individual
instruction or operation.
[0532] In an emulation environment, a host computer includes, for
instance, a memory to store instructions and data; an instruction
fetch unit to obtain instructions from memory and to optionally,
provide local buffering for the obtained instruction; an
instruction decode unit to receive the instruction fetched and to
determine the type of instructions that have been fetched; and an
instruction execution unit to execute the instructions. Execution
may include loading data into a register for memory; storing data
back to memory from a register; or performing some type of
arithmetic or logical operation, as determined by the decode unit.
In one example, each unit is implemented in software. For instance,
the operations being performed by the units are implemented as one
or more subroutines within emulator software.
[0533] Further, a data processing system suitable for storing
and/or executing program code is usable that includes at least one
processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through
a system bus. The memory elements include, for instance, local
memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk
storage, and cache memory which provide temporary storage of at
least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code
must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution.
[0534] Input/Output or I/O devices (including, but not limited to,
keyboards, displays, pointing devices, DASD, tape, CDs, DVDs, thumb
drives and other memory media, etc.) can be coupled to the system
either directly or through intervening I/O controllers. Network
adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data
processing system to become coupled to other data processing
systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening
private or public networks. Modems, cable modems, and Ethernet
cards are just a few of the available types of network
adapters.
[0535] Further, although the environments described herein are
related to the management of availability of a customer's
environment, one or more aspects of the present invention may be
used to manage aspects other than or in addition to availability.
Further, one or more aspects of the present invention can be used
in environments other than a business resiliency environment.
[0536] Yet further, many examples are provided herein, and these
examples may be revised without departing from the spirit of the
present invention. For example, in one embodiment, the description
is described in terms of availability and recovery; however, other
goals and/or objectives may be specified in lieu of or in addition
thereto. Additionally, the resources may be other than IT
resources. Further, there may be references to particular products
offered by International Business Machines Corporation or other
companies. These again are only offered as examples, and other
products may also be used. Additionally, although tables and
databases are described herein, any suitable data structure may be
used. There are many other variations that can be included in the
description described herein and all of these variations are
considered a part of the claimed invention.
[0537] Further, for completeness in describing one example of an
environment in which one or more aspects of the present invention
may be utilized, certain components and/or information is described
that is not needed for one or more aspects of the present
invention. These are not meant to limit the aspects of the present
invention in any way.
[0538] As used herein, the phrase "obtaining" includes having,
receiving, being provided, creating, defining, or forming, as
examples.
[0539] One or more aspects of the present invention can be
provided, offered, deployed, managed, serviced, etc. by a service
provider who offers management of customer environments. For
instance, the service provider can create, maintain, support, etc.
computer code and/or a computer infrastructure that performs one or
more aspects of the present invention for one or more customers. In
return, the service provider can receive payment from the customer
under a subscription and/or fee agreement, as examples.
Additionally or alternatively, the service provider can receive
payment from the sale of advertising content to one or more third
parties.
[0540] In one aspect of the present invention, an application can
be deployed for performing one or more aspects of the present
invention. As one example, the deploying of an application
comprises providing computer infrastructure operable to perform one
or more aspects of the present invention.
[0541] As a further aspect of the present invention, a computing
infrastructure can be deployed comprising integrating computer
readable code into a computing system, in which the code in
combination with the computing system is capable of performing one
or more aspects of the present invention.
[0542] As yet a further aspect of the present invention, a process
for integrating computing infrastructure, comprising integrating
computer readable code into a computer system may be provided. The
computer system comprises a computer usable medium, in which the
computer usable medium comprises one or more aspects of the present
invention. The code in combination with the computer system is
capable of performing one or more aspects of the present
invention.
[0543] The capabilities of one or more aspects of the present
invention can be implemented in software, firmware, hardware, or
some combination thereof. At least one program storage device
readable by a machine embodying at least one program of
instructions executable by the machine to perform the capabilities
of the present invention can be provided.
[0544] The flow diagrams depicted herein are just examples. There
may be many variations to these diagrams or the steps (or
operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of
the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a
differing order, or steps may be added, deleted, or modified. All
of these variations are considered a part of the claimed
invention.
[0545] Although embodiments have been depicted and described in
detail herein, it will be apparent to those skilled in the relevant
art that various modifications, additions, substitutions and the
like can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention
and these are therefore considered to be within the scope of the
invention as defined in the following claims.
* * * * *
References