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Auto-Diagnosis of Field Problems in an Appliance Operating System
The use of network appliances, i.e., computer systems specialized to perform a single function, is becoming increasingly widespread. Network appliances have many advantages over traditional general-purpose systems such as higher performance/cost metrics, easier configuration and lower costs of management.
Unfortunately, while the complexity of configuration and management of network appliances in normal usage is much lower than that of general-purpose systems, this is not always true in problem situations. The debugging of configuration and performance problems with appliance computers is a task similar to the debugging of such problems with general-purpose systems, and requires substantial expertise.
This paper examines the issues of appliance-like management and performance debugging. We present a number of techniques that enable appliance-like problem diagnosis. These include continuous monitoring for abnormal conditions, diagnosis of configuration problems of network protocols via protocol augmentation, path-based problem isolation via cross-layer analysis, and automatic configuration change tracking. We also describe the use of these techniques in a problem auto-diagnosis subsystem that we have built for the Data ONTAP operating system. Our experience with this system indicates a significant reduction in the cost of problem debugging and a much simpler user experience.
author = {Gaurav Banga},
title = {{Auto-Diagnosis} of Field Problems in an Appliance Operating System},
booktitle = {2000 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC 00)},
year = {2000},
address = {San Diego, CA},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/2000-usenix-annual-technical-conference/auto-diagnosis-field-problems-appliance-operating},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}
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