7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising compiling said rules regularly into cause, evidence, and effects (“C-E-F”) metadata and storing said C-E-F metadata, said C-E-F metadata representing a-then current configuration of said grid-based computing system, and wherein one or more versions of said C-E-F metadata are used by said engine to determine probabilities for said analyses.
1. A method for producing a derived list of suspect root causes for fault events in a grid-based computing system, the method comprising: establishing a rules database containing rules describing said grid-based computing system; establishing one or more agent scripts each adapted to identify potential causes for particular fault events that may occur in said computing system, each said agent script referencing said rules in said database to analyze metadata produced by said computing system; receiving an indication of a fault event after it occurs in said computing system; and initiating an automated diagnostic agent process instance in said computing system according to one of said agent scripts associated with said occurred fault event, said automated diagnostic agent instance process comprising a rules-based engine that establishes an event belief network that applies inferential logic to associate root causes with fault events by logic performing one or more analyses to construct a derivative list event according to said rules; and with said automated diagnostic agent process instance, generating and outputting a derived list from the derivative list events that contains an identification of probable isolated faults, wherein each of said probable isolated faults has a probability index assigned thereto and wherein said probability index represents a confidence level for deriving a conclusion that the associated fault is a root cause for an investigated fault event.