Enterprise management system and method which includes statistical recreation of system resource usage for more accurate monitoring, prediction, and performance workload characterization

Abstract

A system and method for estimating statistics concerning system metrics to provide for the accurate and efficient monitoring of one or more computer systems. The system preferably comprises a distributed computing environment, i.e., an enterprise, which comprises a plurality of interconnected computer systems. At least one of the computer systems is an agent computer system which includes agent software and/or system software for the collection of data relating to one or more metrics, i.e., measurements of system resources. Metric data is continually collected over the course of a measurement interval, regularly placed into a registry of metrics, and then periodically sampled from the registry indirectly. Sampling-related uncertainty and inaccuracy arise from two primary sources: the unsampled residual segments of seen (i.e., sampled and therefore known) events, and unseen (i.e., unsampled and therefore unknown) events. The total unsampled utilization and the total unseen utilization are accurately estimated according to the properties of one or more process service time distributions. The total unseen utilization is also estimated with an iterative method using gradations of the sample interval. The length distribution of the unseen processes is determined with the same iterative method.