LISA '07 – Abstract
Pp. 153–166 of the Proceedings
PDA: A Tool for Automated Problem Determination
Hai Huang, Raymond Jennings III, Yaoping Ruan, Ramendra Sahoo, Sambit Sahu, and Anees Shaikh, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Abstract
Problem determination remains one of the most expensive and time-consuming functions in system management due to the difficulty in
automating what is essentially a highly experience-dependent task. In
this paper we study the characteristics of problem tickets in an
enterprise IT infrastructure and observe that most of the tickets come
from very few products and modules, and OS problems present higher
resolving duration. We propose PDA, a problem management tool that
provides automated problem diagnosis capabilities to assist system
administrators in solving real-world problems more efficiently. PDA
uses a two-level approach of proactive, high-level system health
checks, coupled with rule-based "drill-down" probing to
automatically collect detailed information related to the problem. Our
tool allows system administrators to author and customize probes and
rules accordingly and share across the organization. We illustrate the
usage and benefits of PDA with a number of UNIX problem scenarios that
show PDA is able to quickly collect key information through its rules
to aid in problem determination.
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