Patent ID: 8171347

Claim:
A method for troubleshooting a computer system, the method comprising: receiving an identifier for a suspect computer system, which is suspected of operating abnormally; receiving an identifier for a normal computer system, which is operating normally; automatically sending a command to be executed to both the suspect computer system and the normal computer system, wherein automatically sending the command involves determining if the command is to be modified to enable the command to execute on both computer systems and, if so, before sending the command to the suspect computer system and the normal computer system, modifying the command to match a command-format associated with each computer system; recording system behavior for the suspect computer system and the normal computer system in response to the command; receiving responses to the command and the recorded system behaviors from both the suspect computer system and the normal computer system; and comparing the received responses and the recorded system behaviors to determine differences between a behavior of the suspect computer system and a behavior of the normal computer system.