International Business Machines Corporation

Gautam Kar

Anca Sailer

Alexander M Keller

Manoj Kumar Agarwal

Anindya Neogi

Manish Satyapal Gupta

Ruchi Mahindru

Joseph L Hellerstein

Xing Wei

Parviz Kermani

John Frederick Morar

W Nathaniel Mills, Iii

Karen Appleby

Andrzej P Kochut

Heiko Hary Ludwig

Asit Dan

Kirk Alan Beaty

Norman Bobroff

Sebastian Daniel Hassinger

Uri Blumenthal

Lorraine Jackson

Gunjan Khanna

Techniques are provided for automatically structuring free form heterogeneous data. In one aspect of the invention, the techniques include obtaining free form heterogeneous data, segmenting the free form heterogeneous data into one or more units, automatically labeling the one or more units based on one or more machine learning techniques, wherein each unit is associated with a label indicating an information type, and structuring the one or more labeled units in a format to facilitate one or more operations that use at least a portion of the labeled units, e.g., information technology (IT) operations.

Method and apparatus for automatically structuring free form heterogeneous data

Method and apparatus for automatically structuring free form hetergeneous data

Techniques for dynamic management of virtual machine environments are disclosed. For example, a technique for automatically managing a first set of virtual machines being hosted by a second set of physical machines comprises the following steps/operations. An alert is obtained that a service level agreement (SLA) pertaining to at least one application being hosted by at least one of the virtual machines in the first set of virtual machines is being violated. Upon obtaining the SLA violation alert, the technique obtains at least one performance measurement for at least a portion of the machines in at least one of the first set of virtual machines and the second set of physical machines, and a cost of migration for at least a portion of the virtual machines in the first set of virtual machines. Based on the obtained performance measurements and the obtained migration costs, an optimal migration policy is determined for moving the virtual machine hosting the at least one application to another physical machine.

Dynamically managing virtual machines

A method of identifying at least one resource in a distributed computing system which is a potential root cause of performance degradation of the system includes the steps of: computing operational bounds for the system and operational bounds for at least one resource in the system; comparing current end-to-end system performance with the operational bounds for the system; when the current end-to-end system performance is outside of the operational bounds for the system, comparing current performance of the at least one resource in the system with the operational bounds for the at least one resource; and generating at least one output identifying the at least one resource in the system which is a potential root cause of performance degradation of the system.

Performance degradation root cause prediction in a distributed computing system

Described are methods, apparatus and computer programs for determining run-time dependencies between logical components of a data processing environment. Components of the data processing environment are monitored by monitoring agents accessing run-time activity data via APIs of the managed system. A dependency generator identifies correlations between the run-time activity of the monitored components. For synchronous monitored systems, the dependency generator calculates an activity period for monitored components and determines which component's activity periods contain the activity periods of other components. Containment is used as an indicator of a likely dependency relationship, and a weighting is computed for each dependency relationship based on the consistency of containment.

Systems, methods and computer programs for determining dependencies between logical components in a data processing system or network

Techniques are provided for automatically discovering one or more features in free form heterogeneous data. In one aspect of the invention, the techniques include obtaining free form heterogeneous data, wherein the data comprises one or more data items, applying a label to each data item, using the labeled data to build a language model, wherein a word distribution associated with each label can be derived from the model, and using the word distribution associated with each label to discover one or more features in the data, wherein discovering one or more features in the data facilitates one or more operations that use at least a portion of the labeled data.

Method and apparatus for automatically discovering features in free form heterogeneous data

Electronic contracts or 'eContracts' for representing service level agreements are provided. In one illustrative embodiment, the eContract may comprise information pertaining to: (a) descriptions of business transactions in IT terms; (b) financial implications of business transaction service levels; and (c) reporting to be done in business terms. Of course, the eContract may comprise other terms and conditions. In an illustrative aspect of the invention, a system for managing IT resources in terms of business financials comprises an electronic contract authoring system or 'ecAuthoring system,' an electronic contract manager module or &#x201c;ecManager,&#x201d; and one or more electronic contract agent modules or &#x201c;ecAgents&#x201d; that may run on IT elements (e.g., components of the network) that are being managed. Analysts interact with the ecAuthoring system to construct eContracts. An eContract is input to an ecManager that interprets the contract to report on and optimize IT resources based on business financials. The ecManager collaborates with ecAgents to monitor, report, and enforce contracts expressed in such business terms.

Automated service level management in financial terms

A problem determination system and method reduces the time and effort required by system administrators to trouble shot transaction processing difficulties in a large distributed I/T environment by monitoring system component performance and computing operational performance threshold limits based on dependency graphs for the system. Using this data, a prioritized list of suspect components for the I/T system is generated.

System and method for problem determination using dependency graphs and run-time behavior models

A technique for determining an impact of a condition (e.g., service outage) of at least one subject component in a computing environment comprises the following steps/operations. First, one or more components in the computing environment which depend on the at least one subject component (e.g., dependents) are identified. Identification comprises traversing at least a portion of a model representative of an existence of one or more relationships associated with at least a portion of components of the computing environment and which is capable of accounting for a full lifecycle (e.g., including deployment, installation and runtime) associated with at least one component of the computing environment. Then, one or more procedures are performed in accordance with the one or more identified components to determine a condition status associated with each of the one or more identified components. By way of example, the inventive techniques may be applied to a distributed computing environment. The computing environment may also be an autonomic computing environment.

Methods and apparatus for impact analysis and problem determination

A technique for determining a root cause of a condition (e.g., service outage) of at least one subject component in a computing environment comprises the following steps/operations. First, one or more components in the computing environment upon which the at least one subject component depends (e.g., antecedents) are identified. Identification comprises traversing at least a portion of a model representative of an existence of one or more relationships associated with at least a portion of components of the computing environment and which is capable of accounting for a full lifecycle (e.g., including deployment, installation and runtime) associated with at least one component of the computing environment. Then, one or more procedures are performed in accordance with the one or more identified components to determine a condition status associated with each of the one or more identified components. By way of example, the inventive techniques may be applied to a distributed computing environment. The computing environment may also be an autonomic computing environment.

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Yorktown Heights, NY, United States of America

Gautam Kar