Abstract: Systems, methods, and software used in performing automated diagnosis and identification of or forecasting service level object states. Some embodiments include building classifier models based on collected metric data to detect and forecast service level objective (SLO) violations. Some such systems, methods, and software further include automated detecting and forecasting of SLO violations along with providing alarms, messages, or commands to administrators or system components. Some such messages include diagnostic information with regard to a cause of a SLO violation. Some embodiments further include storing data representative of system performance and detected and forecast system SLO states. This data can then be used to generate reports of system performance including representations of system SLO states.

Abstract: A network infrastructure, and methods for managing and configuring networks, are disclosed. The network infrastructure is physically wired once, and includes a plurality of interconnected switches and a plurality of devices coupled thereto, with each network interface on a device coupled to a single switch. Network traffic is forwarded between devices by programming intervening switches to enable a communication path between the devices. Traffic intended for a particular device is forwarded by the intervening switches only to that device. Traffic is only forwarded between devices for which a communication path has been enabled. The network configuration, the function of a device in a network application, or the position of the device in the network topology, can be changed by programming the switches to disable existing communication paths and/or enable new ones. Accordingly, networked resources are allocated as needed without changing the physical wiring of the network.

Abstract: A method for detecting and preventing intrusion in a virtually-wired switching fabric. An embodiment provides for a method in which a switch is programmed with MAC addresses which are authorized for packets processed at each switch port, based on the device coupled to that switch port. If the MAC address is authorized, the packet is forwarded. If it is not, the packet is dropped. Furthermore, MAC addresses that are learned at a port connecting two switches in the fabric are compared to MAC addresses that are expected at that port, based on the physical topology of the network. If an unexpected MAC address is detected, the topology may be traced to locate the host port through which the packet with the unauthorized MAC address entered the virtual network. Additionally, the physical topology of the network may be periodically compared to the expected topology to detect unexpected changes.