Importance

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Abstract

Apparatus for assisting management of services provided by a computer system includes an inferencing engine (30) for carrying out inferencing operations on a declarative model (24) of a service, using facts about the system stored in a fact base (32). A resident goal store (102) contains declarative definitions of goals which concern availability of services and which it is desirable for the system to continue to satisfy; these definitions are linked to associated facts in the fact base. The service model (24) includes definitions of events which can occur in the system and may affect availability of services, and definitions of actions which can be taken to modify the configuration of the system. When occurrence of an event defined in the service model is reported to the apparatus, the event definition is used to guide analysis of the event report and appropriate updating of the fact base. Goals which are linked to the updated facts are then examined to assess whether the goals are still satisfied. If a goal is no longer satisfied the service model is searched for actions which can re-configure the system to enable the goal to be re-satisfied. If a goal involves information about an entity in a part of the system managed by a second, different management apparatus (10D), the second apparatus can be requested to establish a sub-goal concerning the status of that entity. Thereafter the second apparatus takes appropriate action, autonomously, to keep the sub-goal satisfied, and reports back only if it is unable to satisfy the sub-goal.

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First Claim