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LISA '03 — Abstract

Pp. 159-172 of the Proceedings

STRIDER: A Black-box, State-based Approach to Change and Configuration Management and Support
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Yi-Min Wang, Chad Verbowski, John Dunagan, Yu Chen, Helen J. Wang, Chun Yuan, and Zheng Zhang, Microsoft Research

Abstract

We describe a new approach, called Strider, to Change and Configuration Management and Support (CCMS). Strider is a black-box approach: without relying on specifications, it uses state differencing to identify potential causes of differing program behaviors, uses state tracing to identify actual, run-time state dependencies, and uses statistical behavior modeling for noise filtering. Strider is a state-based approach: instead of linking vague, high-level descriptions and symptoms to relevant actions, it models management and support problems in terms of individual, named pieces of low-level configuration state and provides precise mappings to user-friendly information through a computer genomics database. We use troubleshooting of configuration failures to demonstrate that the Strider approach reduces problem complexity by several orders of magnitude, making root cause analysis possible.

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Last changed: 7 Nov. 2003 aw
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