Abstract: A tool can be designed that identifies differences or gaps in coverage between network management systems without deploying both network management systems (i.e., an already deployed network management system and a comparison network management system). This “certification gap analyzer” can analyze the coverage of the current network management system in comparison with the certification of the comparison network management system and identify gaps in coverage between devices and device components (collectively referred to hereinafter as “managed objects”) certified in the different network management systems. The certification gap analyzer can present a comparison of coverage of managed objects by leveraging naming patterns of managed objects.

Abstract: Techniques and systems are disclosed for generating and implementing operational status classification extensions to determine multivariate rankings of network elements. A management system includes components that poll network elements to collect operational information such as performance metrics for operationally associated network elements. In response to detecting an operational event based on the operational information, the system includes components for generating training data and processing the training data to generate operational status classifier components.

Abstract: Techniques and systems are disclosed for implementing program extensions. A plugin is instantiated from a class definition object and a plugin interface template. The plugin interface template is a markup language object describing and internally associated with the class definition object. The instantiating includes reading the plugin interface template to determine the template-to-object association and, based on the association, the class definition object and the plugin interface template are stored within a execution memory space of a plugin interface. A plugin interface executes the plugin including in response to a data collection request specifying a plugin ID and one or more input data parameters and one or more method parameters, accessing one or more method objects that are specified by a script language method object defined by the class and that correspond to the method parameters, and executing at least one of the one or more method objects using the input data parameters.

Abstract: A certification-based network manager can consume either simple certifications or collection-inclusive certifications. For a simple certification, the certification-based network manager selects a discovery/collection template for the simple certification and associates the simple certification with at least some of the program code from the selected template. The program code from the selected template includes re-usable blocks or regions of program code (“task functions”) for device discovery and data collection. The certification-based network manager selects the template and the task functions based on the parameters and expressions of the simple certification, and associates with the simple certification to generate an augmented certification. The augmented certification can later be decomposed into individual tasks for scalable dispatch to data collectors.

Abstract: Although MIB extensions allow for access to a rich dataset about a variety of SNMP-enabled devices, utilizing the rich dataset for various management tasks can involve collection of a vast amount of data from an SNMP-enabled device. For instance, a network management system may collect several tables of utilization data for thousands of interfaces divided into multiple sets of interfaces on an SNMP-enabled device to calculate the average utilization of a single group of interfaces. Moreover, the values for some OIDs are other OIDs. In at least these cases, the conventional request-response exchange for data collection is insufficient. Expressions can be written with in an expression languages as data collection queries (“embedded queries”) for interactive querying over multiple exchanges for SNMP data collection.

Abstract: For each of a plurality of time intervals over which metric data is collected from periodic polling of a network of devices, a determination is made of whether metric data of the time interval satisfies a criterion for normal data values defined for a metric corresponding to the metric data. The metric data is marked as anomaly data, in response to determining that the metric data does not satisfy the criterion defined for the metric corresponding to the metric data of the time interval. The metric data is marked as normal data, in response to determining that the metric data satisfies the criterion defined for the metric corresponding to the metric data of the time interval. The metric data marked as normal data is stored in a first database, and the metric data marked as anomaly data and corresponding time intervals in a second database.

Abstract: A data collection workflow architecture can streamline data collection from a heterogeneous network and leverage plug-ins of various technologies for data collection from the heterogeneous network. The data collection workflow architecture uses a workflow definition which is an abstracted series of data collection tasks. The workflow definition expresses the data collection tasks at a level abstracted away from the underlying implementation to increase the ease and efficiency of managing and maintaining data collections on a heterogeneous network. A workflow engine transforms each of the higher level expressions of data collections tasks into task definitions that can be passed to a plug-in engine. The task definition can be considered the abstracted process level expression of a data collection task with variable values injected into it.

Abstract: Runtime data maintained in memory of an executing application is often inaccessible except through functions defined in an application programming interface (API) for the application. As a result, a user or software needs to have knowledge of the API and have access to the internal API functions of the application to access or manipulate the runtime data. To enable easier to access runtime data of an executing application, a query system can be implemented that allows for runtime data to be accessed using a common query language instead of application specific APIs. The query system allows for constructing a query which is submitted to a query engine executing alongside an application. The query engine translates or maps terms in the query to API functions defined for accessing the runtime data of the application. The query engine executes scripts to invoke the API functions for carrying out a received query.

Abstract: A tool can be designed that identifies differences or gaps in coverage between network management systems without deploying both network management systems (i.e., an already deployed network management system and a comparison network management system). This “certification gap analyzer” can analyze the coverage of the current network management system in comparison with the certification of the comparison network management system and identify gaps in coverage between devices and device components (collectively referred to hereinafter as “managed objects”) certified in the different network management systems. The certification gap analyzer can present a comparison of coverage of managed objects by leveraging naming patterns of managed objects.

Abstract: A data validation system receives sets of performance metrics captured by a first monitoring system and a second monitoring system that are monitoring the same components within a data center. The data validation system pairs each set of performance metrics from the first monitoring system to a set of performance metrics from the second monitoring system that are of the same type and related to a same component. The data validation system then normalizes each of the paired sets of performance metrics so that a similarity score for each of the paired sets can be determined. The similarity score is based on a cosine similarity of a paired set of performance metrics multiplied by a ratio of the average value of each of the paired set of performance metrics.

Abstract: A data collection workflow architecture can streamline data collection from a heterogeneous network and leverage plug-ins of various technologies for data collection from the heterogeneous network. The data collection workflow architecture uses a workflow definition which is an abstracted series of data collection tasks. The workflow definition expresses the data collection tasks at a level abstracted away from the underlying implementation to increase the ease and efficiency of managing and maintaining data collections on a heterogeneous network. A workflow engine transforms each of the higher level expressions of data collections tasks into task definitions that can be passed to a plug-in engine. The task definition can be considered the abstracted process level expression of a data collection task with variable values injected into it.

Abstract: For each of a plurality of time intervals over which metric data is collected from periodic polling of a network of devices, a determination is made of whether metric data of the time interval satisfies a criterion for normal data values defined for a metric corresponding to the metric data. The metric data is marked as anomaly data, in response to determining that the metric data does not satisfy the criterion defined for the metric corresponding to the metric data of the time interval. The metric data is marked as normal data, in response to determining that the metric data satisfies the criterion defined for the metric corresponding to the metric data of the time interval. The metric data marked as normal data is stored in a first database, and the metric data marked as anomaly data and corresponding time intervals in a second database.

Abstract: Although MIB extensions allow for access to a rich dataset about a variety of SNMP-enabled devices, utilizing the rich dataset for various management tasks can involve collection of a vast amount of data from an SNMP-enabled device. For instance, a network management system may collect several tables of utilization data for thousands of interfaces divided into multiple sets of interfaces on an SNMP-enabled device to calculate the average utilization of a single group of interfaces. Moreover, the values for some OIDs are other OIDs. In at least these cases, the conventional request-response exchange for data collection is insufficient. Expressions can be written with in an expression languages as data collection queries (“embedded queries”) for interactive querying over multiple exchanges for SNMP data collection.