Mitigating risk and impact of server-change failures

A method for identifying and responding to a failure of a server-change operation, the method comprising:

• the system computing a baseline risk of change failure as a function of users' answers to survey questions about a planned server change,
• where the planned server change comprises a reconfiguration of a virtual server of a virtual network, and
• where each answer of the users' answers either identifies a probability that the planned server change will fail or identifies an impact of a failure of the planned server change;
• the system identifying a historic change-failure rate as a function of mined data that characterizes past attempted server changes;
• the system calculating a predictive incident probability as a function of a predictive analytics engine's prediction of a likelihood that the virtual server is of a type that is known to be problematic during server changes
• the system deriving a change-risk value by adjusting the baseline risk as a function of the historic change-failure rate and of the predictive incident probability;
• and
• the system initiating, in order to reduce any impact of a failure of the planned server change, collateral activities as a function of the change-risk value.

A computer program product, comprising a computer-readable hardware storage device having a computer-readable program code stored therein, the program code configured to be executed by a computerized change-management system, of a network-management platform, comprising a processor, a memory coupled to the processor, and a computer-readable hardware storage device coupled to the processor, the storage device containing program code configured to be run by the processor via the memory to implement a method for identifying and responding to a failure of a server-change operation, the method comprising:

• the processor computing a baseline risk of change failure as a function of users' answers to survey questions about a planned server change,
• where the planned server change comprises a reconfiguration of a virtual server of a virtual network, and
• where each answer of the users' answers either identifies a probability that the planned server change will fail or identifies an impact of a failure of the planned server change;
• the processor identifying a historic change-failure rate as a function of mined data that characterizes past attempted server changes;
• the processor calculating a predictive incident probability as a function of a predictive analytics engine's prediction of a likelihood that the virtual server is of a type that is known to be problematic during server changes
• the processor deriving a change-risk value by adjusting the baseline risk as a function of the historic change-failure rate and of the predictive incident probability;
• and
• the processor initiating, in order to reduce any impact of a failure of the planned server change, collateral activities as a function of the change-risk value.