Method and apparatus for analyzing a root cause of a service impact in a virtualized environment

A computer-implemented method that determines a root cause of a service impact, comprising:

• storing, in a dependency graph data storage that stores a dependency graph that includes nodes which represent states of infrastructure elements in a managed system, and impacts and events among the infrastructure elements in a managed system that are related to delivery of a service by the managed system;
• receiving, in a processor, events that can cause change among the states in the dependency graph, wherein an event occurs in relation to one of the infrastructure elements in a managed system;
• for each of the events, executing, in the processor, an analyzer that analyzes and ranks each individual node in the dependency graph that was affected by the event based on (i) states of the nodes which impact the individual node, and (ii) the states of the nodes which are impacted by the individual node, to provide a score for each of at least one event which is associated with the individual node;
• ranking, in the processor, all of the events based on the scores;
• and
• providing, in the processor, the rank as indicating a root cause of the events with respect to the service.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions being executed by a computer, the instructions including a computer-implemented method that determines a root cause of a service impact, the instructions implement:

• storing, in a dependency graph data storage that stores a dependency graph that includes nodes which represent states of infrastructure elements in a managed system, and impacts and events among the infrastructure elements in a managed system that are related to delivery of a service by the managed system;
• receiving events that can cause change among the states in the dependency graph, wherein an event occurs in relation to one of the infrastructure elements in a managed system;
• for each of the events, executing an analyzer that analyzes and ranks each individual node in the dependency graph that was affected by the event based on (i) states of the nodes which impact the individual node, and (ii) the states of the nodes which are impacted by the individual node, to provide a score for each of at least one event which is associated with the individual node;
• ranking all of the events based on the scores;
• and
• providing the rank as indicating a root cause of the events with respect to the service.