Passive monitoring of virtual systems using agent-less, near-real-time indexing

1. A method for passively monitoring a virtual server, comprising:

creating a read-only target based on a configuration of a virtual server disk associated with a virtual server;

exposing the virtual server disk to be accessed by a monitoring crawler;

wrapping an image file of the virtual server in a linear block device defined by a device mapper table for the virtual server disk,

wherein the exposing includes copying the device mapper table to the read-only target;

disassociating, prior to the exposing, the read-only target from a different virtual server disk associated with a different virtual server, the different virtual server disk having been previously accessed by the monitoring crawler via the read-only target,

wherein the disassociating includes copying the device mapper table associated with the virtual server over a different device mapper table associated with the different virtual server in the read-only target without removing information common to the virtual server and the different virtual server;

acquiring, by the monitoring crawler, a set of features regarding the virtual server from the virtual server disk via the read-only target; and

analyzing at least one of the set of features to perform passive monitoring of the virtual server.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

identifying device configurations of the virtual server using a hypervisor-based virtualization management utility; and

determining the configuration of the virtual server disk based on the identifying.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the monitoring crawler is included in a crawler virtual server that is different from the virtual server being monitored and that is located on a common physical server with the virtual server.

4. The method of claim 1 ,

wherein the read-only target is a read-only Internet Small Computer System Interface (ISCSI) target for a virtual server disk of the virtual server,

wherein the monitoring crawler is located on a physical server that is remote from the common physical server containing the virtual server, and

wherein the exposing includes presenting the read-only ISCSI target over a network as the read-only target.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving, prior to the retrieving, a request from a central detection server at an indexing appliance, the request requesting the monitoring crawler to perform passive monitoring on the virtual server;

forwarding data corresponding to the set of features from the monitoring crawler to the central detection server; and

performing the analyzing at the central detection server.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

creating, in response to a request, a copy-on-write storage;

copying, for every write to a data block, data being written via the write to the copy-on-write storage,

wherein the acquiring includes accessing the data block to get data that has not been written and accessing the copy-on-write storage to get data that has been written.

7. A system for passively monitoring a computer system, comprising at least one computer device that performs a method, comprising:

creating a read-only target based on a configuration of a virtual server disk associated with a virtual server;

exposing the virtual server disk to be accessed by a monitoring crawler;

wrapping an image file of the virtual server in a linear block device defined by a device mapper table for the virtual server disk,

wherein the exposing includes copying the device mapper table to the read-only target;

disassociating, prior to the exposing, the read-only target from a different virtual server disk associated with a different virtual server, the different virtual server disk having been previously accessed by the monitoring crawler via the read-only target,

wherein the disassociating includes copying the device mapper table associated with the virtual server over a different device mapper table associated with the different virtual server in the read-only target without removing information common to the virtual server and the different virtual server;

acquiring, by the monitoring crawler, a set of features regarding the virtual server from the virtual server disk via the read-only target; and

analyzing at least one of the set of features to perform passive monitoring of the virtual server.

8. The system of claim 7 , the method further comprising:

identifying device configurations of the virtual server using a hypervisor-based virtualization management utility; and

determining the configuration of the virtual server disk based on the identifying.

9. The system of claim 7 , wherein the monitoring crawler is included in a crawler virtual server that is different from the virtual server being monitored and that is located on a common physical server with the virtual server.

10. The system of claim 7 ,

wherein the read-only target is a read-only Internet Small Computer System Interface (ISCSI) target for a virtual server disk of the virtual server,

wherein the monitoring crawler is located on a physical server that is remote from the common physical server containing the virtual server, and

wherein the exposing includes presenting the read-only ISCSI target over a network as the read-only target.

11. The system of claim 7 , the method further comprising:

receiving, prior to the retrieving, a request from a central detection server at an indexing appliance, the request requesting the monitoring crawler to perform passive monitoring on the virtual server;

forwarding data corresponding to the set of features from the monitoring crawler to the central detection server; and

performing the analyzing at the central detection server.

12. The system of claim 7 , the method further comprising:

creating, in response to a request, a copy-on-write storage;

copying, for every write to a data block, data being written via the write to the copy-on-write storage,

wherein the acquiring includes accessing the data block to get data that has not been written and accessing the copy-on-write storage to get data that has been written.

13. A computer program product embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium for implementing a method for passively monitoring a computer system, the method comprising:

creating a read-only target based on a configuration of a virtual server disk associated with a virtual server;

exposing the virtual server disk to be accessed by a monitoring crawler;

wrapping an image file of the virtual server in a linear block device defined by a device mapper table for the virtual server disk,

wherein the exposing includes copying the device mapper table to the read-only target;

disassociating, prior to the exposing, the read-only target from a different virtual server disk associated with a different virtual server, the different virtual server disk having been previously accessed by the monitoring crawler via the read-only target,

wherein the disassociating includes copying the device mapper table associated with the virtual server over a different device mapper table associated with the different virtual server in the read-only target without removing information common to the virtual server and the different virtual server;

acquiring, by the monitoring crawler, a set of features regarding the virtual server from the virtual server disk via the read-only target; and

analyzing at least one of the set of features to perform passive monitoring of the virtual server.

14. The program product of claim 13 , the method further comprising:

identifying device configurations of the virtual server using a hypervisor-based virtualization management utility; and

determining the configuration of the virtual server disk based on the identifying.

15. The program product of claim 13 , wherein the monitoring crawler is included in a crawler virtual server that is different from the virtual server being monitored and that is located on a common physical server with the virtual server.

16. The program product of claim 13 ,

wherein the read-only target is a read-only Internet Small Computer System Interface (ISCSI) target for a virtual server disk of the virtual server,

wherein the monitoring crawler is located on a physical server that is remote from the common physical server containing the virtual server, and

wherein the exposing includes presenting the read-only ISCSI target over a network as the read-only target.

17. The program product of claim 13 , the method further comprising:

receiving, prior to the retrieving, a request from a central detection server at an indexing appliance, the request requesting the monitoring crawler to perform passive monitoring on the virtual server;

forwarding data corresponding to the set of features from the monitoring crawler to the central detection server; and

performing the analyzing at the central detection server.

18. The program product of claim 13 , the method further comprising:

creating, in response to a request, a copy-on-write storage;

copying, for every write to a data block, data being written via the write to the copy-on-write storage,

wherein the acquiring includes accessing the data block to get data that has not been written and accessing the copy-on-write storage to get data that has been written.

19. A method for deploying an application on a computer infrastructure for passively monitoring a computer system, comprising:

creating a read-only target based on a configuration of a virtual server disk associated with a virtual server;

exposing the virtual server disk to be accessed by a monitoring crawler;

wrapping an image file of the virtual server in a linear clock device defined by a device mapper table for the virtual server disk,

wherein the exposing includes copying the device mapper table to the read-only target;

disassociating, prior to the exposing, the read-only target from a different virtual server disk associated with a different virtual server, the different virtual server disk having been previously accessed by the monitoring crawler via the read-only target,

wherein the disassociating includes copying the device mapper table associated with the virtual server over a different device mapper table associated with the different virtual server in the read-only target without removing information common to the virtual server and the different virtual server;

acquiring, by the monitoring crawler, a set of features regarding the virtual server from the virtual server disk via the read-only target; and

analyzing at least one of the set of features to perform passive monitoring of the virtual server.