Patent Application
20140075008
1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to data processing and apparatuses for updating, and, more particularly, to managing updating of software, including multiple files.
2. Background
Administration of computer systems involves detecting and addressing software and hardware faults. Software and hardware faults may be detected by the generation of trouble “tickets,” which are generated in response to “trap” data that is transmitted from a monitored computer system. The trap data is sent to a ticket-generating system that analyzes the trap data. If the trap data indicates that a fault has occurred, a trouble ticket is generated and sent to the appropriate party. Trap data does not universally require the generation of a trouble ticket. Systems and processes may be placed in special modes of functionality that continue to generate trap data, wherein no fault has actually occurred.
In one aspect of this disclosure, a distributed maintenance mode method is disclosed, comprising receiving an indicator that a monitored system has entered maintenance mode. Trap data is received for the monitored system. It is determined whether the monitored system is in maintenance mode based on the indicator. The trap data is stored and a billable incident ticket is generated for the monitored system if it is determined that the monitored system is not in maintenance mode. The trap data is stored and no billable incident ticket is generated for the monitored system if it is determined that the monitored system is in maintenance mode.
In another aspect of this disclosure, a distributed maintenance mode system is disclosed, comprising a computer processor and computer memory, the computer memory comprising program instructions that, when executed, cause the computer processor to receive an indicator that a monitored system has entered maintenance mode, receive trap data for the monitored system, determine whether the monitored system is in maintenance mode based on the indicator, store the trap data and generate a billable incident ticket for the monitored system if it is determined that the monitored system is not in maintenance mode, and store the trap data and generate no billable incident ticket for the monitored system if it is determined that the monitored system is in maintenance mode.
The foregoing has outlined rather generally the features and technical advantages of one or more embodiments of this disclosure in order that the following detailed description may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of this disclosure will be described hereinafter, which may form the subject of the claims of this application.
This disclosure is further described in the detailed description that follows, with reference to the drawings, in which:
Computer systems are often fully or partially disabled for periodic maintenance. However, these systems may continue to generate trap data, some of which may be interpreted as indicating a fault, due to the stoppage or interference maintenance mode may have with normal operation. This extra trap data may then erroneously generate new trouble tickets. These trouble tickets must then be filtered out from the pool of legitimate trouble tickets, which is often done manually.
This lack of control over trap data generation and trouble ticket generation creates a serious business problem, because the issue impacts the costs of computer system administration. Customers are generally billed based on the number of tickets generated over a period of time, so the generation of extraneous trouble tickets may cost customers if these extraneous trouble tickets are not properly filtered out of the pool of legitimate trouble tickets. Similarly, the burden of filtering out extraneous trouble tickets drives expenditure for system administrators, increasing labor costs and requiring the use of network and server resources. Current solutions include manually disabling monitoring agents, trap data sources or trouble ticket generation infrastructure; or having support teams ignore or close out extraneous trouble tickets as non-billable. The former has significant drawbacks. Shutting down these vital components renders administrators unable to monitor other components of the system, effectively creating an outage in the monitoring and ticketing infrastructure. Similarly, it may expose customers to the administrator's inability to automatically sort out non-billable trouble tickets, impinging the reputation of the system administrator.
This application discloses a system and method for distributed maintenance mode control. The distributed maintenance mode control provides a mechanism to place a monitored system or component of a monitored system into a maintenance mode. This is preferably done at the point in which trap data is collected and trouble tickets are generated. Once a system has been placed in a maintenance state, trap data received related to the system is ignored for the purposes of trouble ticket generation. Advantageously, this avoids the need for manual filtration of extraneous trouble tickets, without sacrificing continuous monitoring of the system or other systems and subcomponents. It also provides continued historical data reporting on trap data that was received during the maintenance state. Monitoring agents can still operate and collect performance and historical data.
The maintenance module 125 implements distributed maintenance mode control via the maintenance module 125. The maintenance module 125 may be a software process operating on the ticketing server in conjunction with the ticketing module 130, which is responsible for receiving trap data and generating trouble tickets based on the trap data. The maintenance module 125 and ticketing module 130 may be portions of a single software process, or be implemented as distinct software processes. The maintenance module 125 and ticketing module 130 may similar be implemented on the same server (as depicted), or operate on separate but communicatively coupled servers. A trap data database 135 may store trap data received from the monitored systems 145a-145d. The trap data database 135 may be implemented on a separate storage device distinct from the memory device 110, or be implemented within the memory device 110.
The ticketing server 100 then receives trap data for the affected monitored server 145a-145d through network 140 (step 205). The ticketing server 100 may then determine whether the affected monitored server 145a-145d is in maintenance mode (step 210). If the affected server 145a-145d is not in maintenance mode, then the trap data is stored in the trap data database 135, and a trouble ticket is generated by the ticketing module 130 based on the trap data (step 215). If the affected server 145a-145d is in maintenance mode, then the trap data is stored in the trap data database 135, and no trouble ticket is generated (step 220).
Aspects of the present invention have been described with respect to block diagrams and/or flowchart illustrations of methods, apparatus (system), and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer instructions. These computer instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The aforementioned programs can be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including low-level, high-level, object-oriented or non object-oriented languages, such as Java, Smalltalk, C, and C++. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer, or entirely on a remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet service provider). Alternatively, the functions of the aforementioned programs can be implemented in whole or in part by computer circuits and other hardware (not shown).
The foregoing description of various embodiments of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive nor to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible. Such modifications and variations that may be apparent to a person skilled in the art of the invention are intended to be included within the scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
