Repair-policy refinement in distributed systems

A method comprising:

• receiving a sequence of states for each of a plurality of devices by a repair service, wherein the sequence of states for a device comprises an indicator of each state the device entered into and an associated time, an indicator of each repair action performed on the device, and the events and signals generated by one or more sensors or devices that led to the repair action;
• determining the effectiveness of the repair actions based on the sequence of states and an amount of time each state that had a repair action performed remained in a healthy state by the repair service;
• receiving one or more policies by the repair service, wherein the policies indicate repair actions to perform on the devices based on the states of the devices and the events and signals generated by the one or more sensors;
• and
• determining the effectiveness of the one or more policies by the repair service based on the determined effectiveness of the repair actions and the events and signals generated by one or more sensors that led to the repair actions from the sequence of states using a formal language to represent a sequence of the signals and events.

A system comprising:

• a plurality of devices;
• a plurality of sensors monitoring the plurality of devices and generating a plurality of signals and events for each device based on the monitoring;
• and
• a repair service adapted to:
• determine a state of each of the devices based on the plurality of signals and events;
• perform one or more repair actions on one or more of the devices according to the determined states;
• record, for each device, the state of the device, a time the device entered the state, and any repair actions performed on the device by the repair service;
• and
• determine the effectiveness of one or more repair actions using the recorded states, the performed repair actions, and the time the devices entered each state.