Method and apparatus for event correlation related to service impact analysis in a virtualized environment

A computer-implemented method for determining a status of a service, comprising:

• providing, in a computer processor device, a dependency tree representing (i) relationships among all the infrastructure elements in a computer system that are related to delivery of a service by a computer system, and (ii) how the infrastructure elements interact with each other in a delivery of said service, wherein a state of an infrastructure element is impacted only by states among its immediately dependent infrastructure elements of the dependency tree;
• and
• determining, in the computer processor device, the state of the service by checking current states of infrastructure elements in the dependency tree that immediately depend from the service,
• wherein the infrastructure elements include:
• the service;
• a physical element ha generates an event caused by a pre-defined physical change in the physical element;
• a logical element that generates an event when it as a pre-defined characteristic as measured through a synthetic transaction;
• a virtual element that generates an event when a predefined condition occurs;
• and
• a reference element that is a pre-defined collection of other different elements among the same dependency tree, for which a single policy is defined for handling an event that occurs within the reference element.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions being execute by a computer, the instructions including a computer-implemented method for determining a status of a service, the instructions implement:

• providing, in a computer processor device, a dependency tree representing (i) relationships among all the infrastructure elements in a computer system that are related to delivery of a service by a computer system, and (ii) how the infrastructure elements interact with each other in a delivery of said service, wherein a state of an infrastructure element is impacted only by states among its immediately dependent infrastructure elements of the dependency tree;
• and
• determining, in the computer processor device, the state of the service by checking current states of infrastructure elements in the dependency tree that immediately depend from the service,
• wherein the infrastructure elements include:
• the service;
• a physical element that generates an event caused by a pre-defined physical change in the physical element;
• a logical element that generates an event when it has a pre-defined characteristic as measured through synthetic transaction;
• a virtual element that generates an event when a predefined condition occurs;
• and
• a reference element that is a pre-defined collection of other different elements among the same dependency tree, for which a single policy is defined for handling an event that occurs within the reference element.