Network configuration predictive analytics engine
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsYik Shaw Ngoo, HeeThong How
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A mechanism associated with a network management system (NMS) interprets and predicts the impact on a network of a network configuration change proactively. By providing pre-configuration analysis in this manner, a network administrator can determine the potential effect of the proposed configuration change in advance of actually inserting a configuration command in the network that might otherwise have unforeseen and damaging consequences. The technique is implemented using a predictive analytics engine that receives a proposed network command and, using a current network topology, executes the command against one or more NMS algorithms to verify that the command can be implemented safely.
Claims7
A method of network management in association with a network management system, comprising:
- generating and maintaining a substantially real-time view of a network topology by continuously receiving status updates from network devices in a network being managed, at least one status update received in response to a programmatic command line interface query to a given one of the network devices;
- receiving a corrective command, the corrective command having been automatically generated by the network management system in response to a fault occurrence in the network and that is proposed by the network management system to address the fault occurrence;
- selecting an algorithm from a set of algorithms associated with network management system (NMS) functions, each of the algorithms providing a distinct context-specific NMS operation, and wherein the algorithm selected is determined based on a type of the fault occurrence and the corrective command that has been generated;
- and
- analyzing, using the algorithm so selected, the corrective command so received against the substantially real-time view of the network topology prior to the corrective command being deployed to address the fault occurrence to simulate a network response to executing the corrective command in the network;
- wherein the analyzing step is carried out at least in part in a hardware element.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.