Abstract: Techniques for improving application server performance and availability are provided. In one aspect, a method of monitoring the health of one or more application servers comprises the following steps. One or more health classes are specified, each of the one or more health classes defining one or more health policies for the one or more application servers. At least one of the one or more health policies is monitored. Violations, if any, of the one or more health policies are detected.

Abstract: A method, system, and computer program product are disclosed for automatically determining a valid ordering of provisioning operations, and their needed parameters, so that a provisioning system can configure a desired resource state. This is accomplished by formally describing the pre-conditions and effects of provisioning operations, the current state of managed resources and the desired final state. A planning algorithm is then used to determine the provisioning operations, a valid ordering and appropriate parameters to bring the system from the current state to the desired state.

Abstract: A system and method for evaluating workload units in a computer system whereby each workload unit is assigned an impact number representing the number of days that the expiration date of a computer system would be changed if the workload unit were to be added or removed from the system with all other workload units remaining the same. Each workload unit may be assigned a different number for each system in the environment. The inventive system and method simplify the task of combining multidimensional workload measures and incorporate the interaction with other workload units in the system by assessing the impact on both a donor and a recipient computer systems' expiration dates. Thus, the invention provides a more robust way to measure the effect of moving workload units between systems to result in a better allocation of work amongst computer systems in a processing environment.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems, methods and apparatus for automatically provisioning and managing resources in a computing utility. Its automation procedures are based on a resource model which allows resource-specific provisioning and management tasks to be encapsulated into components for reuse. These components are assembled into more complex structures and finally computing services. This invention provides a method for constructing a computing service from a set of resources given a high level specification. Once constructed, the service includes a component that provides management function, which can allow modification of its underlying set of resources.

Abstract: A method, system, and computer program product are disclosed for automatically determining a valid ordering of provisioning operations, and their needed parameters, so that a provisioning system can configure a desired resource state. This is accomplished by formally describing the pre-conditions and effects of provisioning operations, the current state of managed resources and the desired final state. A planning algorithm is then used to determine the provisioning operations, a valid ordering and appropriate parameters to bring the system from the current state to the desired state.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems, methods and apparatus for automatically provisioning and managing re-sources in a computing utility. Its automation procedures are based on a resource model which allows resource specific provisioning and management tasks to be encapsulated into components for reuse. These components are assembled into more complex structures and finally computing services. This invention provides a method for constructing a computing service from a set of resources given a high level specification. Once constructed, the service includes a component that provides management function, which can allow modification of its underlying set of resources.

Abstract: A system and method for projecting capacity of computer resources for a plurality of processing systems in a processing environment and for adjusting workload among said systems to improve resource utilization. An administrative processor determines the projected usage of computer resources for a plurality of computer systems in a processing environment by representing the capacity of each of the plurality of computer systems in a normalized unit and by sorting the capacities of the computer systems by the normalized or standardized units. The standardized unit, optimally time as measured as the life expectancy of each different resource of the computer system, is used for the N-axes of the N-dimensional space called a capacity space. Each computer system is mapped to a point in the capacity space, which normalizes configuration and capacity differences between systems by expressing the usage of all resources in the units of time.

Abstract: A system and method for managing storage resources in a computer system. The invention periodically tracks and stores the history of each object stored in the storage resources. For each storage container, the life expectancy is calculated by utilizing the object histories for all objects currently stored in that container.