Compliance testing engine for integrated computing system

摘要

A technique tests whether an integrated computing system having server, network and storage components complies with a configuration benchmark expressed as rules in first markup-language statements such as XML. The rules are parsed to obtain test definition identifiers identifying test definitions in a second set of markup-language statements, each test definition including a test value and an attribute identifier of system component attribute. A management database is organized as an integrated object model of all system components. An interpreter invoked with the test definition identifier from each rule process each test definition to (a) access the management database using the attribute identifier obtain the actual value for the corresponding attribute, and (b) compare the actual value to the test value of the test definition to generate a comparison result value that can be stored or communicated as a compliance indicator to a human or machine user.

主权项

1. An apparatus for testing compliance of a computing system, the apparatus comprising a processor and a memory storing executable instructions that in response to execution by the processor cause the apparatus to at least:
receive a collection of rules in a first set of markup-language statements, the collection of rules representing a configuration benchmark against which a computing system is to be tested for compliance, the computing system having interconnected components; parse the collection of rules to obtain test references to tests and comparison values used therein, the tests being defined in a second set of markup-language statements, with references to at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes as represented in a database organized as an object model of the computing system, the object model expressing physical and functional relationships among the interconnected components; and invoke an interpreter with the test references and comparison values to perform the tests defined in the second set of markup-language statements using the comparison values, performance of the tests including the apparatus being caused to:
access the database using the references to the at least some of the interconnected components and their attributes to obtain actual values of their attributes; andperform the tests to generate results based on comparisons of the actual values and corresponding ones of the comparison values, the results indicating whether the computing system is compliant with the configuration benchmark.