Patent Grant
8346931
This invention relates, in general, to managing customer environments to provide support for business resiliency, and in particular, to providing and employing resource pairing information to manage the environment.
Today, customers attempt to manually manage and align their availability management with their information technology (IT) infrastructure. Changes in either business needs or the underlying infrastructure are often not captured in a timely manner and require considerable rework, leading to an inflexible environment.
Often high availability solutions and disaster recovery technologies are handled via a number of disparate point products that target specific scopes of failure, platforms or applications. Integrating these solutions into an end-to-end solution is a complex task left to the customer, with results being either proprietary and very specific, or unsuccessful.
Customers do not have the tools and infrastructure in place to customize their availability management infrastructure to respond to failures in a way that allows for a more graceful degradation of their environments. As a result, more drastic and costly actions may be taken (such as a site switch) when other options (such as disabling a set of applications or users) could have been offered, depending on business needs.
Coordination across availability management and other systems management disciplines is either nonexistent or accomplished via non-reusable, proprietary, custom technology.
There is little predictability as to whether the desired recovery objective will be achieved, prior to time of failure. There are only manual, labor intensive techniques to connect recovery actions with the business impact of failures and degradations.
Any change in the underlying application, technologies, business recovery objectives, resources or their interrelationships require a manual assessment of impact to the hand-crafted recovery scheme.
Based on the foregoing, a need exists for a capability that facilitates management of an IT environment. For example, a need exists for a capability that enables the management to be conditionally controlled based on runtime analysis of the environment. In one particular example, a need exists for a capability that enables conditional management of the environment based on runtime analysis of pairing constructs.
The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantages are provided through the provision of a computer-implemented method to facilitate management of an Information Technology (IT) environment. The method includes, for instance, evaluating at runtime one or more pairing constructs usable in managing the IT environment; and conditionally controlling management of the IT environment based on the runtime evaluation of at least one pairing construct of the one or more pairing constructs.
Computer program products and systems relating to one or more aspects of the present invention are also described and claimed herein.
Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention.
One or more aspects of the present invention are particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed as examples in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The foregoing and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
In managing a customer's environment, such as its business environment, there is a set of requirements unaddressed by existing technology, which causes unpredictable down time, large impact failures and recoveries, and significant extra labor cost, with resulting loss of business revenue. These requirements include, for instance:
The above set of requirements is addressed, however, by a Business Resiliency (BR) Management System, of which one or more aspects of the present invention are included. The Business Resiliency Management System provides, for instance:
One goal of the BR system is to allow customers to align their supporting information technology systems with their business goals for handling failures of various scopes, and to offer a continuum of recovery services from finer grained process failures to broader scoped site outages. The BR system is built around the idea of identifying the components that constitute a business function, and identifying successive levels of recovery that lead to more complex constructs as the solution evolves. The various recovery options are connected by an overall BR management capability that is driven by policy controls.
Various characteristics of one embodiment of a BR system include:
A Business Resilience System is capable of being incorporated in and used by many types of environments. One example of a processing environment to incorporate and use aspects of a BR system, including one or more aspects of the present invention, is described with reference to
Processing environment 100 includes, for instance, a central processing unit (CPU) 102 coupled to memory 104 and executing an operating system 106. Examples of operating systems include AIX® and z/OS®, offered by International Business Machines Corporation; Linux; etc. AIX® and z/OS® are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., U.S.A. Other names used herein may be registered trademarks, trademarks or product names of International Business Machines Corporation or other companies.
The operating system manages execution of a Business Resilience Runtime Component 108 of a Business Resilience System, described herein, and one or more applications 110 of an application container 112.
As examples, processing environment 100 includes an IBM® System z™ processor or a pSeries® server offered by International Business Machines Corporation; a Linux server; or other servers, processors, etc. Processing environment 100 may include more, less and/or different components than described herein. (pSeries® is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., USA.)
Another example of a processing environment to incorporate and use aspects of a BR System, including one or more aspects of the present invention, is described with reference to
As shown, a processing environment 200 includes for instance, a central processing complex 202 coupled to an input/output (I/O) subsystem 204. Central processing complex 202 includes, for instance, a central processing unit 206, memory 208, an operating system 210, a database management system 212, a Business Resilience Runtime Component 214, an application container 216 including one or more applications 218, and an I/O facility 220.
I/O facility 220 couples central processing complex 202 to I/O subsystem 204 via, for example, a dynamic switch 230. Dynamic switch 230 is coupled to a control unit 232, which is further coupled to one or more I/O devices 234, such as one or more direct access storage devices (DASD).
Processing environments 100 and/or 200 may include, in other embodiments, more, less and/or different components.
In yet another embodiment, a central processing complex 300 (
For example, network service 302 of central processing complex 300 is coupled to a switch 308 of network subsystem 306. Switch 308 is coupled to a switch 310 via routers 312 and firewalls 314. Switch 310 is further coupled to a network service 316 of processing environment 304.
Processing environment 304 further includes, for instance, a central processing unit 320, a memory 322, an operating system 324, and an application container 326 including one or more applications 328. In other embodiments, it can include more, less and/or different components.
Moreover, CPC 300 further includes, in one embodiment, a central processing unit 330, a memory 332, an operating system 334, a database management system 336, a Business Resilience Runtime Component 338, an application container 340 including one or more applications 342, and an I/O facility 344. It also may include more, less and/or different components.
I/O facility 344 is coupled to a dynamic switch 346 of an I/O subsystem 347. Dynamic switch 346 is further coupled to a control unit 348, which is coupled to one or more I/O devices 350.
Although examples of various environments are provided herein, these are only examples. Many variations to the above environments are possible and are considered within the scope of the present invention.
In the above-described environments, a Business Resilience Runtime Component of a Business Resilience System is included. Further details associated with a Business Resilience Runtime Component and a Business Resilience System are described with reference to
In one example, a Business Resilience System 400 is a component that represents the management of recovery operations and configurations across an IT environment. Within that Business Resilience System, there is a Business Resilience Runtime Component (402) that represents the management functionality across multiple distinct Recovery Segments, and provides the service level automation and the support of creation of the recovery sequences. In addition, there are user interface (404), administration (406), installation (408) and configuration template (410) components within the Business Resilience System that enable the administrative operations that are to be performed. Each of these components is described in further detail below.
Business Resilience Runtime Component 402 includes a plurality of components of the BR System that are directly responsible for the collection of observations, creation of PSEs, policy acceptance, validation, error detection, and formulation of recovery sequences. As one example, Business Resilience Runtime Component 402 includes the following components:
In addition to the Business Resilience Runtime Component of the BR system, the BR system includes the following components, previously mentioned above.
The user interface, admin mailbox, install logic and/or template components can be part of the same computing unit executing BR Runtime or executed on one or more other distributed computing units.
To further understand the use of some of the above components and their interrelationships, the following example is offered. This example is only offered for clarification purposes and is not meant to be limiting in any way.
Referring to
As a result of these conditions leading up to runtime, the following subscriptions have already taken place:
These steps highlight one example of an error detection process:
The OSStorage-1 resource 702h fails (goes Unavailable).
In addition to the above, BR includes a set of design points that help in the understanding of the system. These design points include, for instance:
Goal Policy Support
BR is targeted towards goal based policies—the customer configures his target availability goal, and BR determines the preparatory actions and recovery actions to achieve that goal (e.g., automatically).
Availability management of the IT infrastructure through goal based policy is introduced by this design. The BR system includes the ability to author and associate goal based availability policy with the resource Recovery Segments described herein. In addition, support is provided to decompose the goal policy into configuration settings, preparatory actions and runtime procedures in order to execute against the deployed availability goal. In one implementation of the BR system, the Recovery Time Objective (RTO—time to recover post outage) is a supported goal policy. Additional goal policies of data currency (e.g., Recovery Point Objective) and downtime maximums, as well as others, can also be implemented with the BR system. Recovery Segments provide the context for association of goal based availability policies, and are the scope for goal policy expression supported in the BR design. The BR system manages the RTO through an understanding of historical information, metrics, recovery time formulas (if available), and actions that affect the recovery time for IT resources.
RTO goals are specified by the customer at a Recovery Segment level and apportioned to the various component resources grouped within the RS. In one example, RTO goals are expressed as units of time intervals, such as seconds, minutes, and hours. Each RS can have one RTO goal per Pattern System Environment associated with the RS. Based on the metrics available from the IT resources, and based on observed history and/or data from the customer, the RTO goal associated with the RS is evaluated for achievability, taking into account which resources are able to be recovered in parallel.
Based on the RTO for the RS, a set of preparatory actions expressed as a workflow is generated. This preparatory workflow configures the environment or makes alterations in the current configuration, to achieve the RTO goal or to attempt to achieve the goal.
In terms of optimizing RTO, there are tradeoffs associated with the choices that are possible for preparatory and recovery actions. Optimization of recovery choice is performed by BR, and may include interaction at various levels of sophistication with IT resources. In some cases, BR may set specific configuration parameters that are surfaced by the IT resource to align with the stated RTO. In other cases, BR may request that an IT resource itself alter its management functions to achieve some portion of the overall RS RTO. In either case, BR aligns availability management of the IT resources contained in the RS with the stated RTO.
Metrics and Goal Association
In this design, as one example, there is an approach to collecting the required or desired metrics data, both observed and key varying factors, system profile information that is slow or non-moving, as well as potential formulas that reflect a specific resource's use of the key factors in assessing and performing recovery and preparatory actions, historical data and system information. The information and raw metrics that BR uses to perform analysis and RTO projections are expressed as part of the IT resources, as resource properties. BR specific interpretations and results of statistical analysis of key factors correlated to recovery time are kept as BR Specific Management data (BRMD).
Relationships Used by BR, and BR Specific Resource Pairing Information
BR maintains specific information about the BR management of each resource pairing or relationship between resources. Information regarding the BR specific data for a resource pairing is kept by BR, including information such as ordering of operations across resources, impact assessment information, operation effect on availability state, constraint analysis of actions to be performed, effects of preparatory actions on resources, and requirements for resources to co-locate or anti-co-locate.
Evaluation of Failure Scope
One feature of the BR function is the ability to identify the scope and impact of a failure. The BR design uses a Containment Region to identify the resources affected by an incident. The Containment Region is initially formed with a fairly tight restriction on the scope of impact, but is expanded on receiving errors related to the first incident. The impact and scope of the failure is evaluated by traversing the resource relationships, evaluating information on BR specific resource pairing information, and determining most current state of the resources impacted.
Generation and Use of Workflow
Various types of preparatory and recovery processes are formulated and in some cases, optionally initiated. Workflows used by BR are dynamically generated based on, for instance, customer requirements for RTO goal, based on actual scope of failure, and based on any configuration settings customers have set for the BR system.
A workflow includes one or more operations to be performed, such as Start CICS, etc. Each operation takes time to execute and this amount of time is learned based on execution of the workflows, based on historical data in the observation log or from customer specification of execution time for operations. The workflows formalize, in a machine readable, machine editable form, the operations to be performed.
In one example, the processes are generated into Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) compliant workflows with activities that are operations on IT resources or specified manual, human activities. For example, BRM automatically generates the workflows in BPEL. This automatic generation includes invoking routines to insert activities to build the workflow, or forming the activities and building the XML (Extensible Mark-Up Language). Since these workflows are BPEL standard compliant, they can be integrated with other BPEL defined workflows which may incorporate manual activities performed by the operations staff. These BR related workflows are categorized as follows, in one example:
Since the set of BR actions described above modify existing IT environments, visibility to the actions that are taken by BR prior to the actual execution is provided. To gain trust in the decisions and recommendations produced by BR, the BR System can run in ‘advisory mode’. As part of advisory mode, the possible actions that would be taken are constructed into a workflow, similar to what would be done to actually execute the processes. The workflows are then made visible through standard workflow authoring tooling for customers to inspect or modify. Examples of BPEL tooling include:
BR tooling spans the availability management lifecycle from definition of business objectives, IT resource selection, availability policy authoring and deployment, development and deployment of runtime monitors, etc. In one example, support for the following is captured in the tooling environment for the BR system:
The policy lifecycle for BR goal policies, such as RTO goals, includes, for example:
One of the points in determining operational state of a Recovery Segment is that this design allows for customers to configure a definition of specific ‘aggregated’ states, using properties of individual IT resources. A Recovery Segment is an availability management context, in one example, which may include a diverse set of IT resources.
The customer may provide the rules logic used within the Recovery Segment to consume the relevant IT resource properties and determine the overall state of the RS (available, degraded and unavailable, etc). The customer can develop and deploy these rules as part of the Recovery Segment availability policy. For example, if there is a database included in the Recovery Segment, along with the supporting operating system, storage, and network resources, a customer may configure one set of rules that requires that the database must have completed the recovery of in-flight work in order to consider the overall Recovery Segment available. As another example, customers may choose to configure a definition of availability based on transaction rate metrics for a database, so that if the rate falls below some value, the RS is considered unavailable or degraded, and evaluation of ‘failure’ impact will be triggered within the BR system. Using these configurations, customers can tailor both the definitions of availability, as well as the rapidity with which problems are detected, since any IT resource property can be used as input to the aggregation, not just the operational state of IT resources.
Failure During Workflow Sequences of Preparatory, Recovery, Preventive
Failures occurring during sequences of operations executed within a BPEL compliant process workflow are intended to be handled through use of BPEL declared compensation actions, associated with the workflow activities that took a failure. The BR System creates associated “undo” workflows that are then submitted to compensate, and reset the environment to a stable state, based on where in the workflow the failure occurred.
Customer Values
The following set of customer values, as examples, are derived from the BR system functions described above, listed here with supporting technologies from the BR system:
Management of the IT environment is adaptively performed, as described herein and in a U.S. patent application “Adaptive Business Resiliency Computer System for Information Technology Environments,” (Ser. No. 11/966,495), Bobak et al., co-filed herewith, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Many different sequences of activities can be undertaken in creating a BR environment. The following represents one possible sequence; however, many other sequences are possible. This sequence is provided merely to facilitate an understanding of a BR system and one or more aspects of the present invention. This sequence is not meant to be limiting in any way. In the following description, reference is made to various U.S. patent applications, which are co-filed herewith.
On receiving the BR and related product offerings, an installation process is undertaken. Subsequent to installation of the products, a BR administrator may define the configuration for BR manager instances with the aid of BRM configuration templates.
Having defined the BRM configuration a next step could be to define Recovery Segments as described in “Recovery Segments for Computer Business Applications,” (Ser. No. 11/965,855), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Definition of a RS may use a representation of resources in a topology graph as described in “Use of Graphs in Managing Computing Environments,” (Ser. No. 11/965,906), Bobak et al, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
It is expected that customers will enable BR operation in “observation” mode for a period of time to gather information regarding key metrics and operation execution duration associated with resources in a RS.
At some point, sufficient observation data will have been gathered or a customer may have sufficient knowledge of the environment to be managed by BR. A series of activities may then be undertaken to prepare the RS for availability management by BR. As one example, the following steps may be performed iteratively.
A set of functionally equivalent resources may be defined as described in “Use of Redundancy Groups in Runtime Computer Management of Business Applications,” (Ser. No. 11/965,877), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Specification of the availability state for individual resources, redundancy groups and Recovery Segments may be performed as described in “Use of Multi-Level State Assessment in Computer Business Environments,” (Ser. No. 11/965,832), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Representations for the IT environment in which BR is to operate may be created from historical information captured during observation mode, as described in “Computer Pattern System Environment Supporting Business Resiliency,” (Ser. No. 11/965,851), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. These definitions provide the context for understanding how long it takes to perform operations which change the configuration—especially during recovery periods.
Information on relationships between resources may be specified based on recommended best practices—expressed in templates—or based on customer knowledge of their IT environment as described herein, in accordance with one or more aspects of the present invention. Pairing processing provides the mechanism for reflecting required or desired order of execution for operations, the impact of state change for one resource on another, the effect execution of an operation is expected to have on a resource state, desire to have one subsystem located on the same system as another and the effect an operation has on preparing the environment for availability management.
With preliminary definitions in place, a next activity of the BR administrator might be to define the goals for availability of the business application represented by a Recovery Segment as described in “Programmatic Validation in an Information Technology Environment,” (Ser. No. 11/966,619), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Managing the IT environment to meet availability goals includes having the BR system prioritize internal operations. The mechanism utilized to achieve the prioritization is described in “Serialization in Computer Management,” (Ser. No. 11/965,978), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Multiple operations are performed to prepare an IT environment to meet a business application's availability goal or to perform recovery when a failure occurs. The BR system creates workflows to achieve the required or desired ordering of operations, as described in “Dynamic Generation of Processes in Computing Environments,” (Ser. No. 11/965,894), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
A next activity in achieving a BR environment might be execution of the ordered set of operations used to prepare the IT environment, as described in “Dynamic Selection of Actions in an Information Technology Environment,” (Ser. No. 11/965,951), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Management by BR to achieve availability goals may be initiated, which may initiate or continue monitoring of resources to detect changes in their operational state, as described in “Real-Time Information Technology Environments,” (Ser. No. 11/965,930), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Monitoring of resources may have already been initiated as a result of “observation” mode processing.
Changes in resource or redundancy group state may result in impacting the availability of a business application represented by a Recovery Segment. Analysis of the environment following an error is performed. The analysis allows sufficient time for related errors to be reported, insures gathering of resource state completes in a timely manner and insures sufficient time is provided for building and executing the recovery operations—all within the recovery time goal, as described in “Management Based on Computer Dynamically Adjusted Discrete Phases of Event Correlation,” (Ser. No. 11/965,838), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
A mechanism is provided for determining if events impacting the availability of the IT environment are related, and if so, aggregating the failures to optimally scope the outage, as described in “Management of Computer Events in a Computer Environment,” (Ser. No. 11/965,902), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Ideally, current resource state can be gathered after scoping of a failure. However, provisions are made to insure management to the availability goal is achievable in the presence of non-responsive components in the IT environment, as described in “Managing the Computer Collection of Information in an Information Technology Environment,” (Ser. No. 11/965,917), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
With the outage scoped and current resource state evaluated, the BR environment can formulate an optimized recovery set of operations to meet the availability goal, as described in “Defining a Computer Recovery Process that Matches the Scope of Outage,” (Ser. No. 11/965,862), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Formulation of a recovery plan is to uphold customer specification regarding the impact recovery operations can have between different business applications, as described in “Managing Execution Within a Computing Environment,” (Ser. No. 11/965,913), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Varying levels of recovery capability exist with resources used to support a business application. Some resources possess the ability to perform detailed recovery actions while others do not. For resources capable of performing recovery operations, the BR system provides for delegation of recovery if the resource is not shared by two or more business applications, as described in “Conditional Actions Based on Runtime Conditions of a Computer System Environment,” (Ser. No. 11/965,897), Bobak et al., which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Having evaluated the outage and formulated a set of recovery operations, the BR system resumes monitoring for subsequent changes to the IT environment.
In support of mainline BR system operation, there are a number of activities including, for instance:
In order to build a BR environment that meets recovery time objectives, IT configurations within a customer's location are to be characterized and knowledge about the duration of execution for recovery time operations within those configurations is to be gained. IT configurations and the durations for operation execution vary by time, constituent resources, quantity and quality of application invocations, as examples. Customer environments vary widely in configuration of IT resources in support of business applications. Understanding the customer environment and the duration of operations within those environments aids in insuring a Recovery Time Objective is achievable and in building workflows to alter the customer configuration of IT resources in advance of a failure and/or when a failure occurs.
A characterization of IT configurations within a customer location is built by having knowledge of the key recovery time characteristics for individual resources (i.e., the resources that are part of the IT configuration being managed; also referred to as managed resources). Utilizing the representation for a resource, a set of key recovery time objective (RTO) metrics are specified by the resource owner. During ongoing operations, the BR manager gathers values for these key RTO metrics and gathers timings for the operations that are used to alter the configuration. It is expected that customers will run the BR function in “observation” mode prior to having provided a BR policy for availability management or other management. While executing in “observation” mode, the BR manager periodically gathers RTO metrics and operation execution durations from resource representations. The key RTO metrics properties, associated values and operation execution times are recorded in an Observation log for later analysis through tooling. Key RTO metrics and operation execution timings continue to be gathered during active BR policy management in order to maintain currency and iteratively refine data used to characterize customer IT configurations and operation timings within those configurations.
Examples of RTO properties and value range information by resource type are provided in the below table. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that additional, less, and/or different resource types, properties and/or value ranges may be provided.
A specific example of key RTO properties for a z/OS® image is depicted in
The z/OS® image has a set of RTO metrics associated therewith, as described above. Other resources may also have its own set of metrics. An example of this is depicted in
Further, in one example, the RTO properties from each of the resources that are part of the Recovery Segment for App A have been gathered by BR and formed into an “observation” for recording to the Observation log, as depicted at 850.
Resources have varying degrees of functionality to support RTO goal policy. Such capacity is evaluated by BR, and expressed in resource property RTOGoalCapability in the BRMD entry for the resource. Two options for BR to receive information operation execution timings are: use of historical data or use of explicitly customer configured data. If BR relies on historical data to make recovery time projections, then before a statistically meaningful set of data is collected, this resource is not capable of supporting goal policy. A mix of resources can appear in a given RS—some have a set of observations that allow classification of the operation execution times, and others are explicitly configured by the customer.
Calculation of projected recovery time can be accomplished in two ways, depending on customer choice: use of historical observations or use of customers input timings. The following is an example of values for the RTOGoalCapability metadata that is found in the BRMD entry for the resource that indicates this choice:
If the customer is in observation mode, then historical information is captured, regardless of whether the customer has indicated use of explicitly input timings or use of historical information.
The administrator can alter, on a resource basis, which set of timings BR is to use. The default is to use historical observations. In particular, a change source of resource timing logic is provided that alters the source that BR uses to retrieve resource timings. The two options for retrieving timings are from observed histories or explicitly from admin defined times for operation execution. The default uses information from the observed histories, gathered from periodic polls. If the customer defines times explicitly, the customer can direct BR to use those times for a given resource. If activated, observation mode continues and captures information, as well as running averages, and standard deviations. The impact to this logic is to alter the source of information for policy validation and formulation of recovery plan.
With respect to the historical observations, there may be a statistically meaningful set of observations to verify. The sample size should be large enough so that a time range for each operation execution can be calculated, with a sufficient confidence interval. The acceptable number of observations to qualify as statistically meaningful, and the desired confidence interval are customer configurable using BR UI, but provided as defaults in the BRMD entry for the resource. The default confidence interval is 95%, in one example.
There are metrics from a resource that are employed by BR to enable and perform goal management. These include, for instance:
There is also a set of information about the resource that is employed—this information is provided as defaults in the BRMD entry for the resource, but provided to the BR team in the form of best practices information/defaults by the domain owners:
In addition to the resources defined herein as part of the IT configuration that is managed, there are other resources, referred to herein as assessed resources. Assessed resources are present primarily to provide observation data for PSE formation, and to understand impact(s) on managed resources. They do not have a decomposed RTO associated with them nor are they acted on for availability by BR. Assessed resources have the following characteristics, as examples:
Similarly, there are likely scenarios where a resource exists in a customer environment that already has an alternative availability management solution, and does not require BR for its availability. However, since other resources that are managed by BR may be dependent on them, they are observed and assessed in order to collect observation data and understand their impacts on managed resources. Additionally, there may be resources that do not have alternative management solutions, but the customer simply does not want them managed by BR, but other managed resources are dependent upon them. They too are classified as assessed resources.
These assessed resources share many of the same characteristics of managed resources, such as, for example:
Finally, there are a few restrictions that BR imposes upon assessed resources, in this embodiment:
To facilitate the building of the customer's IT configuration, observations regarding the customer's environment are gathered and stored in an observation log. In particular, the observation log is used to store observations gathered during runtime in customer environments, where each observation is a collection of various data points. They are created for each of the Recovery Segments that are in “observation” mode. These observations are used for numerous runtime and administrative purposes in the BR environment. As examples the observations are used:
BR gathers observations during runtime when “observation mode” is enabled at the Recovery Segment level. There are two means for enabling observation mode, as examples:
The administrator may also disable observation mode for a Recovery Segment, which stops it from polling for data and creating subsequent observation records for insertion in the log. However, the accumulated observation log is not deleted. In one example, an RS remains in observation mode throughout its lifecycle. The UI displays the implications of disabling observation mode.
In BR, the observations that are collected by BR during runtime can be grouped into two categories, as examples:
A periodic poll observation is a point-in-time snapshot of the constituent resources in a Recovery Segment. Observation data points are collected for those resources in the Recovery Segment(s) which have associated BR management data for any of the following reasons, as examples:
The full value of these observations is derived for an RS when they include data that has been gathered for its constituent resources, plus the resources that those are dependent upon. In one embodiment, the administrator is not forced to include all dependent resources when defining a Recovery Segment, and even if that were the case, there is nothing that prevents them from deleting various dependent resources. When defining a Recovery Segment, the BR UI provides an option that allows the customer to display the dependency graph for those resources already in the Recovery Segment. This displays the topology from the seed node(s) in the Recovery Segment down to and including the dependent leaf nodes. The purpose of this capability is to give the customer the opportunity to display the dependent nodes and recommend that they be included in the Recovery Segment.
Preparatory and recovery workflows are built by the BR manager to achieve the customer requested RTO policy based on resource operations timings. During active policy monitoring by the BR manager, measurements of achieved time for operations are recorded in observations to the log and used to maintain the running statistical data on operation execution times. Observations written to the log may vary in the contained resource RTO metrics and operation execution timings.
Observations are also collected from any of the BPEL workflows created by BR in the customer's environment. There is a standard template that each BR BPEL workflow uses. As part of that template, observation data is captured at the start of, during, and at the completion of each workflow. Specifically, in one example, one observation is created at the end of the workflow with data accumulated from completion of each activity. This information is used to gather timings for workflow execution for use in creating subsequent workflows at time of failure.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, management of an IT environment is facilitated by employing resource pairing information that establishes relationships between different resources of the environment. In particular, management of the IT environment is conditionally controlled by runtime analysis of pairing constructs and trigger conditions. Further information regarding pairings, trigger conditions and their use are described below. (Trigger, set of conditions and conditions are used synonymously herein.)
The BR system maintains BR-specific internal information related to the pairings of resources it interacts with, and each entry in the BR-specific Relationship Data (BRRD) table represents an instance of such a pairing. The pairing record identifies the resources that participate in the pairing, and resources can be any of those that appear in the BRMD, e.g., resource instances, BR internal resources, and/or BR externally exposed resources. The BRRD includes information about operation ordering across resources; failure, unavailable and degradation impact across resources; effects of operations on one resource to another; affinity and negative affinity among resources; and effects of preparatory operations and constraints to be enforced on the impact of recovery for one business application or other business applications, as examples.
Information reflected in pairings enable, for instance:
In one example, pairings follow a common structure regardless of their use. For each pairing, there exists four major sections of its specification:
A first resource is identified and may be any type of resource recognized within the environment. The specification may be further qualified by definition of an operation on the resource, a property and associated value of the resource or a state and associated value of the resource. In the BR parings described below, a first resource is specified as, for instance:
Directives are unique to each pairing type and declare the alteration caused to the second resource. Directives reflected in the BR pairings described below include, for instance:
The second resource can be any resource instance supported in the environment. It is the resource on which the directive acts. The specification may be further qualified by definition of an operation on the resource. In the BR pairings described below, a second resource is specified as, for example:
A set of conditions may optionally be associated with a pairing. The set of conditions enables the runtime characteristics of the environment to be used in evaluating whether or not the pairings are actively enforced.
Across the runtime environment, there are a number of cases where there is information related to pairings of resources and operations on resources that BR will use to assess impact, create workflows and make decisions about tradeoffs. This information is employed by BR to achieve the requirements that customers have submitted for recoveries of complex environments that have a large set of interdependencies across resources and operations. Further, there have been a number of requirements received from customers that indicate the assessment of the information across these pairings is dynamic to the current environment, rather than statically defined to be true across each instance of a given pairing of resources and across all time and changes to the runtime environment.
This information is described as BR Relationship Data (BRRD), and specifically, there are several uses for this information, including, for instance:
The following design points, as examples, are enforced for the pairing data:
There is information about resource pairings that is used for ordering of operations across resources, and this information is to be considered in generating workflows. The ordering can be used at generation of preparatory, preventive, or recovery workflows to specify, for instance:
These types of rules about the handling of dependencies are expected to employ a conditional expression of when they should be exercised. In the example above, the rule for pausing network operations prior to a storage operation should only be triggered in times of recovery. In some cases, since operations can fall into multiple categories (prep, recovery, etc.), BR is to use the runtime state of the environment to assess whether there is a current recovery in progress.
In addition, staff operations (e.g., operations performed by employees, etc.) can be incorporated into the ordering dependencies by creating pairing information between the Staff resource and other IT resource operations.
Syntax of Ordering Rules
Information on pairings can also be used to specify impact of one resource on another in terms of degradation or impact.
When an error or state change of a resource is received by BR, the RS assesses state. In addition, related resources that have not yet failed are evaluated for impact.
The information for the initial set of impact pairing templates is based on the information on dependency of relationships based on best practices as experienced by those in management of IT resources. Similar to the other pairing rules, the customer can apply these templates, and are to inspect, modify and accept or reject the recommendations explicitly.
Resource providers define the operations and states supported. Either through programmatic expression or written documentation, the lifecycle for a resource, the state at each phase of the lifecycle and the one or more operations which transition the resource between states are defined. The vendor providing the resource, the customer utilizing the resource or, for some other resources, the BR system provides for formalizing the resource state and operation data.
There exists a set of relationships among resources that are expressed either by resource owners or customers. The relationships may be formalized by BR for a set of resources. The relationships are reflected in formation of the one or more DAG(s) used in formation of Recovery Segments. From the relationships below, suggested impact relationships are formed during Recovery Segment definition.
There are different categories of state changes which can impact other resources in some way, and each is to be considered in composing a list of impacted resources. For instance:
In each case, if ResourceA has a functional dependency on ResourceB, or is degraded, failed or made unavailable by ResourceB, BR uses the resource-impact-resource rule configured on the BRRD entry between ResourceA and ResourceB. In this case, the determination of impact can also be driven by the current environment characteristics by comparing property and value information cached at the BRMD entry for any resource with the trigger specified for the impact rule.
Within BR, resource state is evaluated at, for instance, two levels—at the resource instance level and at the RS level. The individual resource composed states—based on first level state composition rules—are represented in the BRMD entry for each resource. The 2nd level state aggregation at the RS level may be established and implemented via the specification of impact pairing rules, such as those described in the syntax section below.
Syntax of Impact Rules
The following are some examples of specifications for both a dependency flag, as well as the Impact pairing rules:
Information on pairings can also be used to specify the effect executing an operation on a Resource can have to the state of a Resource. Specifically, operation effect pairings enable the provider, vendors and customers, as examples, to reflect a future state of a Resource as a result of potential execution of a Resource operation.
When a containment region for an error has been evaluated and recovery operations have been selected, the BRM analyzes operation effect pairings. Pairing information is retrieved from the BRRD and BR specific management data on Resources is retrieved from the BRMD.
Changes resulting from projected execution of Resource operations on the state of the Resource are indicated in operation effect pairings. Examples are:
Operations to be performed in the recovery workflow alter the state of Resources. Projecting the state change to the Resources resulting from recovery operation execution is used in support of constraint analysis to understand if recovery of one RS should be allowed to impact another RS. BR uses the operation effect rules configured on the BRRD entry for a resource. The determination of effect can also be driven by the current environment characteristics by comparing property, value information cached at the BRMD entry for any resource with the trigger specified for the operation effect rule.
Syntax of Operation Effect Rules
There is information about resource pairings that is employed for determining when a given resource is required to co-locate or required to not co-locate with another resource. The ordering information is used primarily when an operation that requires the move of a resource to a different hosting container is chosen as the recovery operation. When such an operation is chosen, the co-location pairings for that resource are evaluated in choosing a target for the move. There are two basic options for co-location: attracts and repels.
These types of rules about co-location are expected to employ a conditional expression of when they should be exercised. BR uses the runtime state of the environment to assess whether a co-location requirement is to be enforced. One simple example is: a co-location requirement may exist between two resources, but only when the state of one resource is operational.
Syntax of Ordering Rules
There is information about resource pairings that are used in determining the effect a preparatory operation can have on a recovery operation. These linkages are used to determine which prep operation to choose during prep workflow formulation. The pairings are not required, in this example, but are configurable by customers. In addition, a set of templates is provided that customers can use, or use as a basis for modifying the result of template application.
These types of rules about the effect of a preparatory action on a recovery action, in conjunction with the measured/captured operation timings of the recovery operations, are used during prep formulation, to find the set of prep operations that will most likely achieve a desired goal, such as a required RTO.
Syntax of Ordering Rules
Information on pairings can also be used to specify constraints on what recovery actions can be taken. Specifically, constraint pairings enable customers to allow or disallow recovery of one RS which represents a business application to cause another RS to become failed, degraded up to RTO allowed recovery time, degraded beyond RTO allowed recovery time, or not to be impacted.
When a Containment Region for an error has been evaluated, recovery operations have been selected and the potential effect of recovery operations to RS(s) states evaluated, the BRM analyzes constraint pairings. References to the BRRD for pairings information and the BRMD for BR specific Resource data is utilized.
Changes to one RS state are either allowed or disallowed from altering another RS state.
In each case, if recovery is performed for RS1, the recovery operations cause an impact to RS2. RS2 becomes either unavailable or degraded as a result. BR uses the constraint rules configured on the BRRD entry between RS1 and RS2. The determination of impact can also be driven by the current environment characteristics by comparing property, value information cached at the BRMD entry for any resource with the trigger specified for the impact rule.
Syntax of Constraint Rules
When specifying pairings, customers may also specify conditions which are to be evaluated as true during runtime for the pairing to be used. The UI is used to compose a pairing and associated triggers or set-of-conditions. Multiple conditions from the list below may be specified with comparisons utilizing logical operators (e.g., equal, greater than, less than, etc.).
As one example, the BRRD is implemented as a DB2 table in the Business Resilience datastore that physically resides in the BR environment. That database is created at installation time, and the BRRD table is created and initialized (if necessary) at that time. It is not associated with a particular resource and is not used to persist any resource properties. The typical access mechanism is via JDBC calls from the BR UI client(s) and the BR management functions using JDBC type 4 drivers. One example of the physical model of the BRRD table is shown below and is described in detail in the following sections.
The BRRD table includes the singleton values associated with a BRRD entry. One example of the fields of the BRRD table are described below.
Add/Update for Pairings
Pairing information can be added or updated. One embodiment of the logic to add or revise pairing information is described with reference to
Updating the pairing rules has an impact on the currently validated and prepared policies, since these rules are used in generating a prepare workflow, in estimating recovery time, and in formulating recovery, as examples. As a result, the RS Summary State is updated for the set of RS that include the pairing in their scope of management. RS Summary State is not set for other RSs. The admin initiates this request. Upon successful completion, the BRRD Entry is updated, as well as the RS Summary State for those RSs that include the pairing in their management scope.
Referring initially to
A UI interaction requests the BR administrator to choose to use or not use templates for pairings, STEP 901. If templates are not requested, INQUIRY 902, the BR administrator is requested to identify the two resources that are for the pairing, STEP 903. However, if templates are to be used, the BR administrator is requested to specify the RS for which pairing information is to be processed, STEP 904. The requested RS and associated topology are retrieved, STEP 905, and templates which are applicable to the topology are selected, STEP 906. Through the UI, the available templates are presented for selection by the BR administrator, STEP 907. The requested templates are applied to the RS and associated topology to generate suggested pairings, STEP 908.
Processing proceeds for each pairing whether recommended by template evaluation or direct specification by the BR administrator, STEP 909 (
If an “operation ordering” pairing is being processed, INQUIRY 911, either the pairing recommended by the template is presented or a skeleton for the operation ordering is augmented with the specified Resource 1 and Resource 2, and the pairing is presented, STEP 912. Through the UI, operations for Resource 1 and Resource 2 are presented, STEP 913. A selection or modification for changing a recommended template or existing pairing of Resource 1 operation from among the presented list of valid Resource 1 operations is made, STEP 914. A selection or modification for changing a recommended template or existing pairing of Resource 2 operation from among the presented list of valid Resource 2 operations is made, STEP 915. The operation ordering directive is selected from the UI presented valid values of “before” or “after”, STEP 916. The formed pairing is presented with a question to the BR administrator regarding trigger specification, STEP 917.
If trigger or set-of-condition specifications are desired, INQUIRY 918 (
Returning to INQUIRY 911 (
If trigger or set-of-condition specifications is desired, the Add/Update Trigger, “AddupT”, routine is invoked, STEP 929. Thereafter, or if trigger or set-of-condition specifications is not desired, processing continues with STEP 974 (
Returning to INQUIRY 921, if impact assessment pairing is not being processed, a determination is made as to whether “operation effect” pairing is being processed, INQUIRY 930 (
If an “operation effect” pairing is being processed, either the pairing recommended by the template is presented or the skeleton for the operation effect is augmented with the specified Resource 1 and Resource 2, and the pairing is presented, STEP 931. Through the UI, valid operations for Resource 1 are presented, STEP 932. A selection or modification for changing a recommended template or existing pairing of Resource 1 operation from among the presented list of valid Resource 1 operations is made, STEP 933. Through the UI, valid state(s) for Resource 2 are presented, STEP 934. A selection or modification for changing a recommended template or existing pairing of Resource 2 state from among the presented list of valid Resource 2 state(s) is made, STEP 935. The formed pairing is presented with a question to the BR administrator regarding trigger specification, STEP 936.
If trigger or set-of-condition specifications is desired, INQUIRY 937, the Add/Update Trigger, “AddupT”, routine is invoked, STEP 938. Thereafter, or if the trigger or set of condition specifications is not desired, processing continues with STEP 974 (
Returning to INQUIRY 930, if operation effect pairing is not being processed, a determination is made as to whether co-location pairing is being processed, INQUIRY 939 (
If a “co-location” pairing is being processed, either the pairing recommended by the template is presented or the skeleton for the co-location pairing is augmented with the specified Resource 1 and Resource 2, and the pairing is presented, STEP 940. The co-location directive is selected from the UI presented valid values of “attracts” or “repels”, STEP 941. If “attracts” is selected, INQUIRY 942, Resource 1 is evaluated for being of type CICS or DB2, INQUIRY 943. If true, Resource 2 type is evaluated for being either CICS, DB2, operating system or a RG of CICS, DB2 or operating system type, INQUIRY 944, and processing continues, as described below.
Returning to INQUIRY 943, if Resource 1 is not of type CICS or DB2, a determination is made as to whether Resource 1 is of type operating system, INQUIRY 945. If Resource 1 is of type operating system, INQUIRY 945, Resource 2 is evaluated for being of type operating system, computer system or RG of operating system or computer system type, INQUIRY 946. If Resource 1 and Resource 2 fail to pass validity checks, INQUIRIES 943-946, processing returns to selection of two resources for pairing specification, STEP 903 (
Returning to INQUIRY 942 (
Returning to INQUIRY 947, if Resource 1 is not of type DB2 or CICS, a determination is made as to whether Resource 1 is of type operating system, INQUIRY 949. If Resource 1 is of type operating system, Resource 2 is evaluated for being of type operating system or RG of operating system type, INQUIRY 950. If Resource 1 and Resource 2 fail to pass validity checks, INQUIRIES 947-950, processing returns to selection of two resources for pairing specification, STEP 903 (
If trigger or set-of-condition specifications are desired, INQUIRY 952, the Add/Update Trigger, “AddupT”, routine is invoked, STEP 953. Thereafter, or if trigger specification is not requested, processing continues with STEP 974 (
Returning to INQUIRY 939 (
If trigger or set-of-condition specifications is desired, INQUIRY 961, the Add/Update Trigger, “AddupT”, routine is invoked, STEP 962. Thereafter, or if trigger specification is not requested, definition of the prep effect pairing continues with adding RS(s) associated with either of the two resources participating in the pairing to the list of RS(s) requiring summary status update, STEP 963 (
Returning to INQUIRY 954, if prep-effect pairing is not being processed, a determination is made as to whether constraint pairing is being processed, INQUIRY 964 (
Otherwise, if a constraint pairing is being processed, either the pairing recommended by the template is presented or the skeleton for the constraint pairing is augmented with the specified Resource 1 and Resource 2, and the pairing is presented, STEP 965. A determination is made as to whether Resource 1 and Resource 2 are RS type, INQUIRY 966. If not, processing continues at STEP 903 (
If trigger or set-of-condition specifications is desired, INQUIRY 972, the Add/Update Trigger, “AddupT”, routine is invoked. STEP 973. Thereafter, or if trigger specification is not requested, processing continues with saving pairings that have been formed in the BRRD_update_list for subsequent update, STEP 974, as, for example, an atomic transaction. Processing then returns to STEP 909 (
When all the pairings in the selected group have been processed, a determination is made as to whether additional pairings are to be processed, INQUIRY 975 (
Definition of Triggers
As described above, if trigger or set-of-condition specifications is desired, the AddUpt routine is invoked. One embodiment of the logic of this routine is described with reference to
Referring to
RS(s) associated with either resource of the pairing being processed are retrieved, STEP 1012, and RG(s) associated with either resource of the pairing are retrieved, STEP 1014. Both resources associated with the pairing along with RS(s) and RG(s) are presented for customer selection in formation of a trigger condition, STEP 1016 (
If the customer chooses to form a trigger condition based on an RG, INQUIRY 1018, the states associated with the RG and logical operators for equal or not equal are presented for selection, STEP 1020. Processing then continues at STEP 1036 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1018 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1022, if an RG or RS is not specified, for a specified resource to be used in forming a trigger condition, properties and valid value ranges for properties of the resource are presented, STEP 1030. The defined aggregated and unblocking state(s) associated with the resource are presented via the UI, STEP 1032 (
When customer selection of trigger conditions has been made, STEP 1036, validation for resource property and value specification is begun. If a resource property and an equal condition is specified, INQUIRY 1038, checking is performed to insure the specified value is within the valid range for the property, INQUIRY 1040. If the value specified is invalid, an error is provided to the customer along with the valid range for the property which may be limited by other trigger conditions, STEP 1042. Processing continues with customer interaction to select resource property and value for the new trigger condition, STEP 1030 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1038 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1044 (
After validity checking (e.g., true conditions for INQUIRIES 1040, 1044, 1046 and 1048), the new trigger is formed, STEP 1050 (
For trigger specification requested directly through the UI, INQUIRY 1056, the updated BRRD is stored internally to this routine for subsequent mass update as, for instance, a single transaction, STEP 1058. If other pairing triggers are to be defined, INQUIRY 1060, processing continues with UI interaction to select the Resource, RS or RG for which pairings are to be located, STEP 1002 (
Otherwise, a transaction is started so all trigger updates made will appear externally to this routine in a consistent and complete manner, STEP 1062 (
Dynamic Evaluation of Triggers in Pairing Use
Pairings are retrieved as needed from the BRRD table via, for instance, SQL requests. BR configuration recommendations suggest backing the BRRD table with database buffer pool storage sufficient in size to insure retrieval requests are satisfied from memory access. In each process which retrieves a BRRD, evaluation is invoked to determine if the pairing is to be used based on the then current runtime environment. One embodiment of this logic is described with reference to
Referring to
During evaluation, if the trigger specified RS.Admin state or RS.Operational state or RS.Current PSE, INQUIRY 1104, the current data for the BRMD of the RS is retrieved, STEP 1106. If RS.Admin state was specified, INQUIRY 1108, the specified state value is compared “equal” or “not equal” as defined by the trigger operator against the current RS.Admin state, INQUIRY 1110. If true, processing continues at the next trigger condition, STEP 1144 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1108 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1112 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1104 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1118 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1126 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1130 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1134, if the trigger did not specify resource property equality to value comparison, a determination is made as to whether the trigger specified a resource property less than comparison, INQUIRY 1138 (
Returning to INQUIRY 1138, for a trigger condition which specified greater than comparison, the trigger specified property value is compared “greater than” against the current resource property value, INQUIRY 1142. If true, processing continues at the next trigger condition, STEP 1144, in which processing proceeds to STEP 1100 (
Described in detail above is one technique appropriate for any of the pairing types. A more optimized implementation may be achieved by construction of a routine specific to the trigger set-of-conditions for each defined pairing. During trigger set-of-condition specification, the conditions for the trigger can cause creation of comparison statements returning evaluation of true or false. The comparison statements can be compiled into a runtime routine or can be translated to executable binaries depending on language and performance optimization preferences. The resulting executable binary would be invoked when evaluation of execution for the pairing is required resulting in more efficient and tailored trigger processing.
Extensions to the above technique may be made to provide for additional logical operators between trigger conditions. The above technique asserts all trigger conditions are to evaluate true for the pairing to be evaluated as true—logically an AND of the conditions. Alterations to the construction of trigger conditions and evaluation of trigger conditions can be introduced in support of one or more of the conditions being evaluated as true resulting in the pairing overall being evaluated as true—logically an OR of the conditions.
Deletion of Pairing
The deletion of a pairing deletes the BRRD entry associated with the pairing. The flow first logs the information to be deleted, so that any relevant data on ordering, impact, operation effect, constraints, prep effect, co-location or constraint is captured in case the BR Administrator wants to reuse any of the specifications. This flow is initiated from the UI, as one example, and one embodiment of the logic is as follows:
Pairing(s) can be used to support predictive analysis of actions that would be taken by the BR system. Executing in a tooling environment the predictive routines support the BR Administrator by operating on hypothetical configurations and detected events. Examples include:
Other predictive scenarios can be created. Tooling to utilize pairings, hypothetical IT environments and hypothetical events provide the BR Administrator the ability to understand system behavior without suffering IT resource outages. Alterations in pairings, along with iterative predictive analysis, enables refinement of recovery plans and validation of intended results from pairings specification.
Described in detail herein is a capability for conditionally controlling management of an IT environment based on real-time analysis of pairing constructs. By employing runtime evaluation of pairing constructs in performing management tasks, the results of those tasks are effected by the current environment. This optimizes the management of the environment.
One or more aspects of the present invention can be included in an article of manufacture (e.g., one or more computer program products) having, for instance, computer usable media. The media has therein, for instance, computer readable program code means or logic (e.g., instructions, code, commands, etc.) to provide and facilitate the capabilities of the present invention. The article of manufacture can be included as a part of a computer system or sold separately.
One example of an article of manufacture or a computer program product incorporating one or more aspects of the present invention is described with reference to
A sequence of program instructions or a logical assembly of one or more interrelated modules defined by one or more computer readable program code means or logic direct the performance of one or more aspects of the present invention.
Advantageously, a capability is provided for conditionally controlling management of an IT environment based on current conditions of the environment. This enables a flexible, optimal management technique to be provided. Further, a capability is provided that enables pairing constructs to be used in predicting results in management tasks. Advantageously, the pairing constructs can be customized by the customer. Also, they can be revised, added to and/or deleted during runtime, thereby dynamically altering the runtime behavior of the environment.
Although various embodiments are described above, these are only examples. For example, the processing environments described herein are only examples of environments that may incorporate and use one or more of the present invention. Environments may include other types of processing units or servers or the components in each processing environment may be different than described herein. Each processing environment may include additional, less and/or different components than described herein. Further, the types of central processing units and/or operating systems or other types of components may be different than described herein. Again, these are only provided as examples.
Moreover, an environment may include an emulator (e.g., software or other emulation mechanisms), in which a particular architecture or subset thereof is emulated. In such an environment, one or more emulation functions of the emulator can implement one or more aspects of the present invention, even though a computer executing the emulator may have a different architecture than the capabilities being emulated. As one example, in emulation mode, the specific instruction or operation being emulated is decoded, and an appropriate emulation function is built to implement the individual instruction or operation.
In an emulation environment, a host computer includes, for instance, a memory to store instructions and data; an instruction fetch unit to obtain instructions from memory and to optionally, provide local buffering for the obtained instruction; an instruction decode unit to receive the instruction fetched and to determine the type of instructions that have been fetched; and an instruction execution unit to execute the instructions. Execution may include loading data into a register for memory; storing data back to memory from a register; or performing some type of arithmetic or logical operation, as determined by the decode unit. In one example, each unit is implemented in software. For instance, the operations being performed by the units are implemented as one or more subroutines within emulator software.
Further, a data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code is usable that includes at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements include, for instance, local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memory which provide temporary storage of at least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution.
Input/Output or I/O devices (including, but not limited to, keyboards, displays, pointing devices, DASD, tape, CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and other memory media, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers. Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modems, and Ethernet cards are just a few of the available types of network adapters.
Further, although the environments described herein are related to the management of availability of a customer's environment, one or more aspects of the present invention may be used to manage aspects other than or in addition to availability. Further, one or more aspects of the present invention can be used in environments other than a business resiliency environment.
Yet further, many examples are provided herein, and these examples may be revised without departing from the spirit of the present invention. For example, in one embodiment, the description is described in terms of availability and recovery; however, other goals and/or objectives may be specified in lieu of or in addition thereto. Additionally, the resources may be other than IT resources. Further, there may be references to particular products offered by International Business Machines Corporation or other companies. These again are only offered as examples, and other products may also be used. Additionally, although tables and databases are described herein, any suitable data structure may be used. There are many other variations that can be included in the description described herein and all of these variations are considered a part of the claimed invention.
Further, for completeness in describing one example of an environment in which one or more aspects of the present invention may be utilized, certain components and/or information is described that is not needed for one or more aspects of the present invention. These are not meant to limit the aspects of the present invention in any way.
One or more aspects of the present invention can be provided, offered, deployed, managed, serviced, etc. by a service provider who offers management of customer environments. For instance, the service provider can create, maintain, support, etc. computer code and/or a computer infrastructure that performs one or more aspects of the present invention for one or more customers. In return, the service provider can receive payment from the customer under a subscription and/or fee agreement, as examples. Additionally or alternatively, the service provider can receive payment from the sale of advertising content to one or more third parties.
In one aspect of the present invention, an application can be deployed for performing one or more aspects of the present invention. As one example, the deploying of an application comprises providing computer infrastructure operable to perform one or more aspects of the present invention.
As a further aspect of the present invention, a computing infrastructure can be deployed comprising integrating computer readable code into a computing system, in which the code in combination with the computing system is capable of performing one or more aspects of the present invention.
As yet a further aspect of the present invention, a process for integrating computing infrastructure, comprising integrating computer readable code into a computer system may be provided. The computer system comprises a computer usable medium, in which the computer usable medium comprises one or more aspects of the present invention. The code in combination with the computer system is capable of performing one or more aspects of the present invention.
The capabilities of one or more aspects of the present invention can be implemented in software, firmware, hardware, or some combination thereof. At least one program storage device readable by a machine embodying at least one program of instructions executable by the machine to perform the capabilities of the present invention can be provided.
The flow diagrams depicted herein are just examples. There may be many variations to these diagrams or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order, or steps may be added, deleted, or modified. All of these variations are considered a part of the claimed invention.
Although embodiments have been depicted and described in detail herein, it will be apparent to those skilled in the relevant art that various modifications, additions, substitutions and the like can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention and these are therefore considered to be within the scope of the invention as defined in the following claims.
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