Patent ID: 7089259
Filing Date: 2006-08-08
Classification: H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A system for providing a framework for network appliance management in a distributed computing environment, comprising: an appliance status table recording a status report periodically received from a status daemon autonomously operating on each of a plurality of network appliances, each status report containing health and status information and application-specific data pertaining to autonomous configuration and management of each network appliance; and a catalog server maintaining configuration settings for each network appliance progressively assembled concurrent to providing installable components and dynamically providing a catalog listing currently installable components for being installed on each network appliance based on the configuration settings independently received from the network appliance; wherein each network appliance, prior to sending the status report, executes at least one initial plug-in; and, after installing the installable components, executes at least one post-plug-in; wherein the at least one initial plug-in monitors the status daemon to determine if the status daemon is running, and restart the status daemon if it is determined that the status daemon is not running; wherein the catalog further includes installable component names, installable component versions, a tag indicating a component server at which to locate and obtain each installable component, and a type indicator indicating whether each installable component is a package or a file; wherein a network operations center establishes a secure session with each network appliance utilizing Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS); wherein the appliance status table further records a user identifier associated with one of the network appliances from which the status report is received and a time the status report is received.