International Business Machines Corporation

Matt Richard Hogstrom

Rohith Kottamangalam Ashok

Hubertus Franke

Chung-Sheng Li

Pratap Chandra Pattnaik

Nagui Halim

Brad L Brech

Michael D Williams

Scott W Crowder

Radha P Ratnaparkhi

Hugh Edward Hockett

Roy Frank Brabson

Jose I Ortiz

Ruth Edith Willenborg

Dimitrios Pendarakis

David Bruce Lindquist

Jeffrey Alan Frey

Josyula R Rao

Tiia J Salo

Meeta Yadav

Balachandar Rajaraman

Matthew J Sheard

Rodney A Smith

Stefan Pappe

Gennaro A Cuomo

Omar Cardona

Dinakaran B Joseph

Daniel Christopher Berg

Tamar Eilam

Thomas M Brey

Antonio Abbondanzio

Michael H Kalantar

Rakesh Sharma

Harm Sluiman

William Carlisle Arnold

Raymond J Harrington

Tova Roth

Alexander V Konstantinou

Edward Charles Snible

Asaf Adi

Alexander Kofman

Wolfgang Segmuller

Erik Alan Daughtrey

Christopher J Blythe

Robbie John Minshall

Edward M Howard

Nikola Vouk

Al Chakra

Renato John Recio

Aaron Kyle Shook

Yu-Cheng Hsu

Fan Jing Meng

Jia Qi Li

Dong Sheng Li

Lawrence H Koved

Michael Paul Clarke

David Granshaw

Dilip Dinkar Kandlur

Pei Ni Liu

Robert Vaughn Geiner

Zi Xiao Zhu

Robert W St John

Simon Christopher Nash

Bert Vincent Laonipon

Aaron Stephen Jay Kershenbaum

Ann Eleanor Dalton

Marco Pistola

A computer-implemented method, system, and non-transitory machine readable medium for a graph-based analysis for an Information Technology (IT) operations includes generating a temporal graph by extracting one or more of operation objects, relations and attributes from operation data of workloads distributed across a plurality of levels of the IT operation within a predetermined time window. Anomalies are detected from the extracted operation data and annotating corresponding objects in the graph. A directional impact between corresponding objects on the temporal graph is determined, and the temporal graph is refined based on the determined directional impact. Accessible paths in the temporal graph indicating error propagation are searched, and potential causes for the detected anomalies in the temporal graph are identified. A list of the potential causes of the anomalies is generated, and a root cause ranked for each of the corresponding objects in the temporal graph.

Method and system for graph-based problem diagnosis and root cause analysis for IT operation

A computer-implemented method for optimizing research of an abstracted issue with a plurality of analytics engines is described. The method includes receiving a problem report at an analytics engine controller. The problem report includes symptoms of a problem in a computing system. The analytics engine forwards the problem report to a research optimization engine that abstracts one or more issues associated with the problem based on the symptoms of the problem. The research optimization engine then obtains anomaly research data for one or more of diagnosing the problem and fixing the problem. The anomaly research data is based on the one or more abstracted issues. The research optimization engine associates the abstracted issues with corresponding portions of the anomaly research data, then assigns the abstracted issues and corresponding portions of the anomaly research data to at least one of the plurality of analytics engines.

Analytics gathering of discovered and researched insights

There is a computer program product and computer system that includes program instructions programmed to establish a security container describing a workload and a set of resources in a software-defined environment, the security container including a set of sub-containers that are self-describing sub-containers having associated metadata describing content of a respectively corresponding sub-container, each sub-container of the set of sub-containers respectively corresponds to a resource-divisible portion of the workload, the set of resources being required by the workload, wherein a sub-container of the set of sub-containers is an operating system sub-container; monitor the workload and the set of resources for security events; and responsive to identifying a security event, adjust isolation mechanisms provided by the plurality of sub-containers at various layers of a stack. The set of sub-containers represents an end-to-end run time environment for processing the workload using the set of resources.

Security within a software-defined infrastructure

There is a computer program product and computer system that includes program instructions programmed to identify, in a software-defined environment, a security container describing a workload and a set of resources required by the workload, the security container including self-describing sub-containers having associated metadata describing content of a respectively corresponding sub-container; determine, for the workload, a set of resource-divisible portions of the workload including a compute-resource portion; generate a plurality of sub-containers within the security container, a sub-container within the plurality of sub-containers being a self-describing sub-container having associated metadata describing the content of the sub-container representing only one resource-divisible portion, the sub-container being an operating system sub-container; and responsive to identifying a security event while processing the workload, adjust a security mechanism associated with the security container. The plurality of sub-containers represents an end-to-end run time environment for processing the workload.

Outcome-based adjustment of a software-defined environment (SDE) includes determining a business operation and a corresponding set of tasks to be performed in a software defined environment (SDE), establishing a first resource configuration to perform the corresponding set of tasks to achieve a business outcome target, determining a first resource cost for performing the corresponding set of tasks, assigning a priority level to tasks within the corresponding set of tasks, determining a set of performance indicators corresponding to a task having a first priority level, monitoring the SDE to identify a triggering event, responsive to identifying the triggering event, establishing a second resource configuration based, at least in part, on a performance level of a performance indicator in the set of performance indicators, the second resource configuration addressing the triggering event, and determining a second resource cost for performing the corresponding set of tasks according to the second resource configuration.

Outcome-based software-defined infrastructure

A method and system for outcome-based adjustment of a software-defined environment (SDE) that includes establishing a link between a business outcome and a first resource configuration from software defined environment, establishing a monitoring mechanism for continuously measuring a current state of the SDE, using a behavior model of the SDE to anticipate, or forecast, a triggering event, and responsive to the forecast of a triggering event, using the behavior model to determine a second resource configuration to achieve the business outcome. The link includes at least one of a utility of services for the business outcome, a cost of a set of resources consumed by the first resource configuration, and a risk of the set of resources becoming unavailable.

There is a method and system that includes establishing a security container that describes a workload and a set of resources that corresponds to the workload in a software-defined environment, determining a set of security criteria for the security container, monitoring the workload and the set of resources for security events based, at least in part, upon the set of security criteria, and responsive to identifying a security event, adjusting one or more security mechanisms. The steps of monitoring and adjusting are operated within the software-defined environment.

There is a method and system for capability-based resource allocation in a software-defined environment that performs the following steps (not necessarily in the following order): (i) determining a set of capability characteristics for a plurality of workload resources within a software-defined environment; (ii) determining a set of workload components for a specified workload; and (iii) identifying a set of workload resources from the plurality of workload resources to allocate to the specified workload based, at least in part, on the set of capability characteristics corresponding to each workload within the set of workload resources. A workload component of the set of workload components has a unique set of workload characteristics.

Capability-based abstraction of software-defined infrastructure

When a virtual machine writes to a page that is being shared across VMs, a share value is calculated to determine how different the page would be if the write command were implemented. If the share value is below a predefined threshold (meaning that the page would not be 'too different'), then the page is not copied (as it would be in a standard copy-on-write operation). Instead, the difference between the contents of the pages is stored as a self-contained delta. The physical to machine memory map is updated to point to the delta, and the delta contains a pointer to the original page. When the VM needs to access the page that was stored as a delta, the delta and the page are then fetched from memory and the page is reconstructed.

Data sharing using difference-on-write

A mechanism is provided for optimizing network communications. A first data transfer request is received via a first application level socket connection in an originating computing device. Prior to opening a kernel level socket connection to a destination computing device, a determination is made as to whether a second data transfer request has been received via a second application level socket connection in the originating computing device, the second data transfer request identifying a destination computing device that is the same as the destination computing device as the first data transfer request. Responsive to identifying the second data transfer request, the first data transfer request and the second data transfer request are coalesced into a third data transfer request stored in a single kernel level socket buffer of the originating computing device. The third data transfer request is then sent to the destination computing device via a single TCP/IP stack.

Optimizing network communications

A method, system and computer program product for managing hardware components in a cloud computing environment. Each hardware component in a data center of the cloud computing environment detects and identifies other hardware components within a communication range of the hardware component using a wireless protocol. Furthermore, each hardware component determines its actual location as well as its relative location with respect to the detected hardware components, such as based on a triangulation of the wireless signals. Such information is transmitted to an administrative server. An inventory of the hardware components in the data center, including their current location, is then compiled by the administrative server. In this manner, a hardware component can be more easily located after being relocated in the data center. Furthermore, the administrative server will be able to balance a workload across these hardware components based on their location.

Determining location of hardware components in a cloud computing environment based on hardware components self-locating other hardware components

Growing community of inventors

Cary, NC, United States of America

Matt Richard Hogstrom