Virtual Domain Manager for Cross-Domain Root Cause Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Virtualized environments lack awareness of underlying infrastructure changes, making it difficult to track performance degradations and availability issues, and there is a need for a method to increase infrastructure awareness for root cause and impact analysis.
Innovation Solution
A virtual domain management system that constructs and maintains topology models across application, virtual, and physical domains, enabling cross-domain propagation of events and symptoms using causality models and codebook technology for root cause and impact analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If virtualization is implemented to abstract applications from physical infrastructure, then resource allocation flexibility and service portability are improved, but awareness of underlying infrastructure changes is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a virtual domain manager as an intermediary component that sits between the virtualization layer and the physical infrastructure. This manager collects infrastructure change events from the physical domain and propagates them through the virtual domain to applications, thereby mediating the information flow and restoring infrastructure awareness without compromising the abstraction benefits of virtualization.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where infrastructure change events are continuously monitored, processed, and fed back to virtual domain objects and applications. This feedback loop enables applications to be notified of underlying infrastructure changes, allowing them to respond appropriately while maintaining the virtualization abstraction layer.
2Reliability
If virtual servers operate independently from physical infrastructure, then service isolation and security are improved, but root cause analysis of performance degradations becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual domain manager serves as an intermediary that maintains the isolation boundaries while simultaneously enabling observability. It collects events from the physical domain, correlates them with virtual domain objects, and makes this information available for root cause analysis without breaking the isolation between virtual servers and physical infrastructure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the monitoring and analysis functionality into separate components: event collection at the physical domain, event propagation through the virtual domain, and analysis at the application layer. This segmentation allows each component to maintain its independence while contributing to overall system observability and root cause analysis capability.
3Adaptability or versatility
If topology models are constructed across multiple domains, then cross-domain problem propagation is enabled, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The virtual domain manager implements a universal event propagation mechanism that handles multiple domain types (physical, virtual, application) through a single standardized interface. This multi-functional approach enables cross-domain topology modeling and problem propagation without requiring separate specialized systems for each domain, thereby managing complexity while achieving versatility.
Data Source
AI summary
A virtual domain management system is provided which associates application, physical and virtual domains to enable propagation of events, symptoms and other information across the domains. The virtual domain manager collects events and symptom information across multiple domains by correlating domain topology models. Using a causality matrix and codebook technology the virtual domain manager uses the information to perform root cause and impact analysis across domains. Information from the analysis may be fed back into the domains to enhance domain management.