Cloud management using a component health model

A computer system comprising the following:

• one or more processors;
• system memory;
• one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the computing system to perform a method for preventing cascading failures in cloud components, the method comprising the following:
• an act of establishing one or more declarative safety conditions which declaratively describe cloud computing conditions that are to be maintained at one or more cloud components including at least one of hardware components and software components;
• an act of detecting that at least one of the declarative safety conditions is no longer being met, indicating that an error has occurred at one or more components of a specified cloud;
• an act of determining, based on which safety condition is no longer being met, where the error occurred within the specified cloud;
• and
• an act of sending a notification to one or more users indicating that the error occurred, the notification further indicating the cloud component at which the error occurred.

A computer system comprising the following:

• one or more processors;
• system memory;
• one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the computing system to perform a method for establishing a model for testing cloud components, the method comprising the following:
• an act of modeling one or more identified cloud components including at least one of cloud hardware components and cloud software components as health entities, wherein the health entities are configured to provide state information about the cloud component, the modeling resulting in a health model for cloud management components that manage cloud hardware, the health model identifying the health of cloud components at a plurality of hierarchical levels including a cluster level, a data center level and a cloud level;
• an act of establishing one or more declarative safety conditions which declaratively describe cloud computing conditions that are to be maintained at the identified cloud components;
• an act of testing against at least one of the one or more declarative safety conditions to determine which cloud components are or are becoming problematic;
• and
• an act of presenting a graphical user interface (GUI) that shows a graphical representation of the health model, including one or more of the cloud components at each hierarchical level.