In the operation of a computer system, a variety of manipulations are executed for servers in the computer system. Examples of such manipulations may include backup of data in a server and update of programs installed in a server, etc. For a large-scaled computer system, it is difficult for an administrator to manually execute all manipulations (hereinafter referred to as operation manipulations) occurring during the system operation.
For example, an operation scenario is generated for automatically executing the operation manipulations. The operation scenario is, for example, information defining an order of execution of the operation manipulations. When the operation scenario is generated in advance, it is possible to automatically execute the operation manipulations in accordance with the generated operation scenario. For example, an incident management system for automatically coping with known incidents is being under consideration.
When a server to be manipulated has a trouble, there are some cases where manipulations are unable to be executed in accordance with the operation scenario. As measures against such cases, for example, a technique for generating an interruption scenario for interrupting execution of the operation scenario is being under consideration.
Related techniques are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2013-008178 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-332025.
As for the methods for generating an operation scenario applied to a plurality of servers, for example, a method for individually generating operation scenarios related to operation manipulations for individual servers is considered. In this method, the operation scenarios are generated individually every time the number of servers is changed, which may result in an imposition of excessive burden for generating operation scenarios on an administrator under current situations where the number of servers may be easily changed by using a virtual machine.
In order to reduce the burden for generating operation scenarios, an operation scenario for collectively executing operation manipulations for a plurality of servers may be generated. Accordingly, it may be possible to decrease the number of operation scenarios to be generated and thus alleviate the burden for generating operation scenarios imposed on the administrator.
However, conventionally, when an abnormality occurs in some servers in the collective execution of the operation manipulations according to the operation scenario for the plurality of servers, it is not possible to determine the range of influence by the abnormality. Therefore, the execution of the entire operation scenario is stopped even by an abnormality in some servers, which makes it impossible to execute operation manipulations for the servers that are not directly related to the abnormality. Such use of the operation scenario for collectively executing operation manipulations for the plurality of servers may result in stoppage of all operation manipulations in the operation scenario due to the abnormality of some servers and reduction of efficiency of execution of operation manipulations.