Content

Motivation
Why Autonomic Computing
Autonomic Computing Paradigm
Properties
Autonomic Computing Today
General architecture of Autonomic Computing
Challenges and Conclusion
Motivation
• Advanced computing development
– Good news: benefits in all areas (research, business)
– Bad news: difficult to configure/operate, manage
Large number of nodes and parameters
Operating behaviors become complex and
unanticipated, large task for management
New challenges of computing systems
– Scalability (million nodes)
– Heterogeneity (various operating systems)
– Dynamics (ad-hoc connection, add/remove entities
arbitrary)
– Reliability ( reliable components/operating systems)
Why Autonomic
Computing?
The main reason for large blue-chip
companies, like IBM, being interested in
autonomic computing is the need to reduce
the cost and complexity of owning and
operating an IT infrastructure .
In particular, there is a need to alleviate the
complexity with which system administrators
of IT services are faced today.
 The aim is to allow administrators to specify
high-level policies that define the goals of the
autonomic system, and let the system
manage itself to accomplish these goals.
Contd…
 At present, system administrators must
tweak hundreds of settings and often spend
weeks before getting a system to run
optimally.
Autonomic systems are also faster at
adapting to changes to the environment, e.g.
by distributing its resources differently when
a critical-project requires more CPU
processing power.
 Autonomic Computing
Paradigm
• To design and build computing systems capable of
running themselves, adjusting to varying
circumstances, and preparing their resources to
handle most efficiently the workloads we put
upon them.
• Autonomic Computing is a concept that brings
together many fields of computing with the purpose
of creating computing systems that are reflective
and self-adaptive.
• Autonomic computing is generally considered to be a
term first used by IBM in 2001 to describe computing
systems that are said to be self-managing
Properties of Autonomic
Computing
Self-Configuration
Adapt automatically to the
dynamically changing
environment
• Internal adaptation
– Add/remove new components
(software)
– configures itself on the fly
• External adaptation
Systems configure themselves
into a global infrastructure
Self-healing
• Discover, diagnose and
react to disruptions
without disrupting the
service environment
• Fault components should
be
– detected
– Isolated
– Fixed
– reintegrated
Self-optimization
Monitor and tune resources
automatically
– Support operating in
unpredictable environment
– Efficiently maximization of
resource utilization without
human intervention
• Dynamic resource allocation
and workload management.
– Resource: Storage, databases,
networks
– For example, Dynamic server
clustering
Self-protection
Anticipate, detect, identify
and protect against
attacks from anywhere
– Defining and managing
user
access to all computing
resources
– Protecting against
unauthorized resource
Access, e.g. SSL
– Detecting intrusions and
reporting as they occur
Autonomic Computing
Today
The ideas behind autonomic computing are not
new. In fact, it is possible to find some aspects of
autonomic computing already in today’s software
products .
 Windows XP optimises its user interface (UI) by
creating a list of most often used programs in the
start menu. Thus, it is self-configuring in that it
adapts the UI to the behaviour of the user
It can also download and install new critical updates
without user intervention, sometimes without
restarting the system. Therefore, it also exhibits
basic self-healing properties.
 DHCP and DNS services allow devices to self-
configure to access a TCP/IP network. PCs on a LAN
can discover other devices, such as printers, and
General Architecture of
Autonomic Computing

An Autonomic Element manages itself and

delivers service
Interaction between different Autonomic
Elements using Policies
Autonomic Elements
Consist of one or more managed elements coupled
with a single
autonomic manager
Management using
MAPE:
– Monitoring managed
elements and their
external environment
– Analyzing the
gathered
information
– Planning and
executing
based on information
A Managed Element can be:
Hardware resource, CPU,Printer, Database,
Application service,etc
PMAC – An example of
Autonomic Computing
Policy Management for Autonomic Computing (PMAC)
– An autonomic core technology published in 2005
– Available under http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/pmac
• Purpose: Providing a Policy management infrastructure
– Automating what administrators do today
• Administrators follow written policies
• With autonomic, autonomic managers follow machine-readable policy
• Autonomic Manager – Selects policies, evaluates policies, and
provides decisions to the managed element in order to manage its
behavior
• Using Autonomic Computing Policy Language(ACPL) as common
policy language
– ACPL contains 4 tuples: Scope, Condition, Business value, Decision
• Scope represents managed elements, Business value is the decision
priority
• Decision can be Actions, Configuration Profiles and Results
PMAC - Architecture
PMAC – Example
• Consider the goal policy
– Scope: Company A’s on-line ordering system
– Condition: During business hours
– Business value: 100
– Decision: 2-second average response time
• In this case the Managed element is an on-line ordering system
• Autonomic Manager makes the decision by
– Monitoring data coming from the online ordering system
– Analyzing the gathered data using conditions (business
hours?)
– Planing and executing based on the previous analyses
• Calculate the average response time and
• If it is far from 2 seconds then adding servers in order to provide
functionality
Challenges of Autonomic
Computing
• Autonomic System challenges
– Self-configuration in large-scale application

– Problem localization and automated remediation

– Decision making of coordination of optimizing process

– Self-protecting against active threats

specific types of threats
Conclusion
• Solution of today’s increasing complexity in computing
science
Self-Management and dynamic adaptive behaviors
• Still challenges in diverse fields of science and
technology
– Autonomic behavior in one field of science
System managements, software engineering, etc.
– Needs for a abstraction and co-operation in relevant fields