GAL-MAD: Towards Explainable Anomaly Detection in Microservice Applications Using Graph Attention Networks

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Akmeemana, Lahiru, Attanayake, Chamodya, Faiz, Husni, Wickramanayake, Sandareka
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912348772499456
author Akmeemana, Lahiru
Attanayake, Chamodya
Faiz, Husni
Wickramanayake, Sandareka
author_facet Akmeemana, Lahiru
Attanayake, Chamodya
Faiz, Husni
Wickramanayake, Sandareka
contents The transition to microservices has revolutionized software architectures, offering enhanced scalability and modularity. However, the distributed and dynamic nature of microservices introduces complexities in ensuring system reliability, making anomaly detection crucial for maintaining performance and functionality. Anomalies stemming from network and performance issues must be swiftly identified and addressed. Existing anomaly detection techniques often rely on statistical models or machine learning methods that struggle with the high-dimensional, interdependent data inherent in microservice applications. Current techniques and available datasets predominantly focus on system traces and logs, limiting their ability to support advanced detection models. This paper addresses these gaps by introducing the RS-Anomic dataset generated using the open-source RobotShop microservice application. The dataset captures multivariate performance metrics and response times under normal and anomalous conditions, encompassing ten types of anomalies. We propose a novel anomaly detection model called Graph Attention and LSTM-based Microservice Anomaly Detection (GAL-MAD), leveraging Graph Attention and Long Short-Term Memory architectures to capture spatial and temporal dependencies in microservices. We utilize SHAP values to localize anomalous services and identify root causes to enhance explainability. Experimental results demonstrate that GAL-MAD outperforms state-of-the-art models on the RS-Anomic dataset, achieving higher accuracy and recall across varying anomaly rates. The explanations provide actionable insights into service anomalies, which benefits system administrators.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_00058
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GAL-MAD: Towards Explainable Anomaly Detection in Microservice Applications Using Graph Attention Networks
Akmeemana, Lahiru
Attanayake, Chamodya
Faiz, Husni
Wickramanayake, Sandareka
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
I.2.m
The transition to microservices has revolutionized software architectures, offering enhanced scalability and modularity. However, the distributed and dynamic nature of microservices introduces complexities in ensuring system reliability, making anomaly detection crucial for maintaining performance and functionality. Anomalies stemming from network and performance issues must be swiftly identified and addressed. Existing anomaly detection techniques often rely on statistical models or machine learning methods that struggle with the high-dimensional, interdependent data inherent in microservice applications. Current techniques and available datasets predominantly focus on system traces and logs, limiting their ability to support advanced detection models. This paper addresses these gaps by introducing the RS-Anomic dataset generated using the open-source RobotShop microservice application. The dataset captures multivariate performance metrics and response times under normal and anomalous conditions, encompassing ten types of anomalies. We propose a novel anomaly detection model called Graph Attention and LSTM-based Microservice Anomaly Detection (GAL-MAD), leveraging Graph Attention and Long Short-Term Memory architectures to capture spatial and temporal dependencies in microservices. We utilize SHAP values to localize anomalous services and identify root causes to enhance explainability. Experimental results demonstrate that GAL-MAD outperforms state-of-the-art models on the RS-Anomic dataset, achieving higher accuracy and recall across varying anomaly rates. The explanations provide actionable insights into service anomalies, which benefits system administrators.
title GAL-MAD: Towards Explainable Anomaly Detection in Microservice Applications Using Graph Attention Networks
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
I.2.m
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00058