Method And System For Real-time Modeling Of Communication, Virtualization And Transaction Execution Related Topological Aspects Of Monitored Software Applications And Hardware Entities

A computer-implemented system for monitoring a distributed transaction across a distributed computing environment, comprising:

• a transaction agent instrumented in a process executing on a host computing device and executed by a processor of the host computing device, the transaction agent is configured to receive transaction trace data that identifies a transaction being executed in part on the host computing device and service data that identifies a service used by the transaction to enter the process, where the transaction trace data includes an identifier for a thread executing the transaction;
• and
• an OS agent running on the host computing device and executed by the processor of the host computing device, the OS agent determines identifying information for a process group to which the process belongs and identifying information for an operating system executing on the host computing device and upon which the process is running and communicates the identifying information for the process group and identifying information for the operating system to the transaction agent;
• wherein the transaction agent combines the transaction trace data and the service data with the identifying information for the process group and the operating system to form trace and topology correlation data, and sends the trace and topology correlation data over a network to a monitoring node located remotely from the host computing device.

A computer-implemented system for monitoring a distributed transaction across a distributed computing environment, comprising:

• a virtualization agent deployed on a given host computing device and executed by the processor of the given host computing device, the virtualization agent detects other host computing devices implemented as virtualized computer systems, generates a virtualization topology event for the detected virtualized computer systems, and sends the virtualization topology event over a network to a monitoring node, where the virtualization topology event includes an identifier for the virtualized computer systems and an identifier for a network interface assigned to the virtualized computer systems;
• an OS agent running on one of the other host computing devices and executed by the processor of the second host computing device, the OS agent determines identifying information for an operating system running on the one other host computing device, generates an OS topology event and sends the OS topology event over the network to the monitoring node, where the OS topology event includes an identifier for the operating system and the identifier for a network interface assigned to the one other host computing device;
• and
• a topology processor residing of the monitoring node, the topology processor configured to receive the virtualization topology event and the OS topology event and correlate the operating system with a virtualized computer system using the identifier for the network interface.

A computer-implemented method for building an integrated topology model for a distributed computing environment, comprising:

• identifying one or more operating systems to be monitored in the computing environment and installing an OS agent on each of the identified operating systems;
• monitoring, by the installed OS agents, processes executed by the identified operating systems;
• determining, by the installed OS agents, topology data describing the monitored processes;
• reporting, by the installed OS agents, the topology data describing the monitored processes across a network to a monitoring node;
• installing a transaction agent into select processes executed by the identified operating systems;
• monitoring, by the installed transaction agents, transactions executed at least in part by the monitored processes;
• extracting, by the installed transaction agents, topology data describing services that are used by the monitored transactions;
• reporting the topology data describing services across a network to the monitoring node;
• and
• combining the topology data describing the monitored processes with the topology data describing services that are used by the monitored transactions to form a topological model.