Dynamic Health Map for Enterprise Service Discovery

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Solution Overview

Problem

Designing a monitoring system that can automatically discover and provide health state information for enterprise-scale services with dynamic server arrangements and multiple service copies is challenging due to the fluid nature of server additions, removals, and maintenance, as well as the complexity of managing external resources.

Innovation Solution

A monitoring system that dynamically discovers local applications and external resources, instantiates them into a health map, and updates it in real-time, monitoring health indicators such as events, performance counters, and SNMP service events to perform root cause analysis and raise alerts upon fault detection.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Extent of automation

If a monitoring system is designed to automatically discover services in a dynamic enterprise environment, then the system's adaptability and automation extent are improved, but the device complexity and difficulty of detecting and measuring increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveautomatic service discoveryVSAvoidmonitoring system complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Extent of automationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The monitoring system performs self-discovery by automatically detecting services, applications, and external resources without manual configuration. The system autonomously maps dependencies and updates the health map dynamically, allowing the enterprise environment to monitor itself through automated agents and discovery protocols embedded within the infrastructure.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

Solution Approach 2:

The health map serves as a universal data structure that can represent multiple types of objects (services, applications, external resources) and their various relationships. This multi-functional approach allows a single system to handle diverse monitoring requirements across different service types and dependency configurations, reducing overall system complexity.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

2Measurement precision

If the monitoring system dynamically updates the health map in real-time, then the measurement precision and reliability of health state information are improved, but the use of energy and device complexity increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvehealth state monitoring accuracyVSAvoidreal-time update energy consumption
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system implements periodic health map updates triggered by specific events such as service changes, application deployments, or resource modifications. Rather than continuous real-time monitoring of all parameters, the system updates the health map at meaningful intervals or upon detection of significant changes, reducing energy consumption while maintaining measurement precision for critical health indicators.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #19Periodic action

Solution Approach 2:

The monitoring system maintains continuous surveillance of health indicators through distributed agents that constantly collect metrics, but the actual health map updates occur only when changes are detected. This continuous action approach ensures measurement precision is maintained while avoiding unnecessary energy expenditure on redundant updates when the system state remains stable.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #20Continuity of useful action

3Reliability

If the system monitors multiple health indicators including events, performance counters, and SNMP service events, then the reliability and measurement precision are improved, but the device complexity and difficulty of detecting and measuring increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvefault detection reliabilityVSAvoidhealth indicator monitoring complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The monitoring system divides health indicator collection into separate functional modules: event monitoring agents, performance counter collectors, and SNMP service event handlers. Each segment specializes in collecting specific types of data, and the health map integrates these segmented data sources. This segmentation reduces the complexity of detecting and measuring individual indicator types while maintaining comprehensive monitoring reliability.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The health map acts as an intermediary data structure that standardizes and integrates diverse health indicators from multiple sources. Rather than directly processing complex raw data from events, performance counters, and SNMP protocols, the system uses the health map as a mediator to normalize and correlate information, simplifying the detection and measurement processes while improving fault detection reliability through unified analysis.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Data Source

PatentEP3047378B1Dynamic discovery of applications, external dependencies, and relationships
Publication Date: 2022.02.16 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC
  • EP3047378B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3047378B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP3047378B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

A monitoring system is arranged for automatically and dynamically discovering local applications running on servers in an enterprise-scale service environment as well as discovering external resources (both partitioned and non-partitioned resources) that the local applications use. The discovered objects and their dependencies are instantiated into a health map and the map is dynamically updated as applications and resources are added to and deleted from the enterprise-scale service environment. Health indicators such as events, performance counters, synthetic transactions, and SysLog and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) service events for the mapped objects are monitored. The monitored health indicators are attributed to either the health of a local application or that of an external resource. Upon detection of a fault, the health map enables performance of root cause analyses and determination of the impact of the fault on the objects in the environment so that appropriate alerts can be raised.