Nikolaos Anerousis, Hani Jamjoom, Yun Mao and Shu Tao
US Patent 7,937,347
May 2011, (Granted)
Abstract. A method (which can be computer implemented) for inferring
component associations among a plurality of
components in a distributed computing system
includes the steps of obtaining status information
for each pertinent component of the plurality of
components, forming an N by D matrix, X, based on
the status information, and factorizing the matrix X
to obtain a first matrix indicative of the component
associations to be inferred and a second matrix
indicative of failure explanations for corresponding
ones of the probe instances. N is a number of probe
instances associated with a given time frame. D is a
number of the plurality of components for which the
associations are to be inferred. Techniques are also
presented for forming a database with the status
information.