Abstract: The present invention provides a method of preventing harmful variability and oscillation in weight based, dynamic load balancing environments. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods to effectively determine the magnitude of weight changes in dynamic load balancing environments based on the workload magnitude and server farm capacity. This method depends on the development of new multi-system characteristics such as a relative workload metric to characterize the workload of the system relative to the collective capacity of all of the systems to handle the workload.

Abstract: Techniques for globally managing systems are provided. One or more measurable effects of at least one hypothetical action to achieve a management goal are determined at a first system manager. The one or more measurable effects are sent from the first system manager to a second system manager. At the second system manager, one or more procedural actions to achieve the management goal are determined in response to the one or more received measurable effects. The one or more procedural actions are executed to achieve the management goal.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method of determining a metric of capacity in computing systems and computer applications. Capacity in this sense refers to the ability of computer systems and computer applications to perform work. Many applications and multi-hop system strategies could benefit from understanding the amount of work a particular system or application is capable of performing. A metric such as this can be very difficult to calculate due to widely varying system hardware, operating system architectures; application behavior/performance, etc. This disclosure describes a method of dynamic capacity estimation which learns the capacity of an application or system with respect to the work asked of the system and the resources used by the application in question.

Abstract: A method for version negotiation between two entities is provided. Described in the context of communication protocol negotiation, an initiating entity proposes an initial communication protocol version to a receiving entity. In response, the receiving entity accepts the protocol version if it is within the range of its supported versions or proposes an alternative protocol version selecting to be either the highest or lowest protocol version supported by the receiving entity. This allows the receiving entity to successfully limit the number of protocol versions it supports and to communicate this restriction in any protocol setting to the initiating entity. The initiating entity then accepts the proposed alternative protocol version. If version negotiation is successful, either the accepted initial version or the accepted alternative version of the communication protocol is used for the duration of the communication session between the initiating entity and the receiving entity.

Abstract: Under the present invention meta data specifying modification constraints for one or more of the attributes of an (operational) policy is generated/provided. Thereafter, the meta data is associated with the policy so that the constraints specified by the meta data can govern the modification of the policy. Under the present invention there are at least two ways of associating the meta data with a policy. In one embodiment, the meta data is embodied as a meta policy that can be associated with one or more (operational) policies. In another embodiment, the meta data is inserted into individual policies as additional attributes.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for distributing traffic across a group of machines using application instance statistics. In order to perform load balancing in accordance with the present invention, a method of generating weights to bias load balancing distributions is provided. The application instances to which traffic is being distributed, or the application middleware, are instrumented to establish certain metrics about the application while running. The application instance instrumentation will provide application statistics such as number of successful transactions, application response times, application topology, importance of transactions being processed, time the application is blocked waiting for resources, resource consumption data, and the like. These metrics are collected, processed, and then presented as a set of weights to the load balancing apparatus to govern its distribution of traffic.