Autonomic Computing An Introduction Guenter Kickinger 1 Outline

Autonomic Computing An Introduction Guenter Kickinger 1

Outline § Autonomic Computing in General – IBM’s perspective § Technologies & Tools § Autonomic Computing and the Grid § What can AC do for us? 2

The Problem – Increasing Complexity of IT Systems § Complex systems require more and more skilled IT professionals to install, configure, operate, tune and maintain. § Difficulty of managing today’s computing systems goes well beyond the administration of individual software environments. New levels of complexity: – Integration of several heterogeneous environments into corporate-wide computing systems – Extension beyond company boundaries into the Internet – Architects are less able to anticipate and design interactions among components – Systems will become too massive and complex for even most system integrators to install 3

An Example Progress in Telephony 4

Autonomic Computing – The Solution (? ? ? ) § Autonomic computing helps address these complexity issues by using technology to manage technology. § Term “autonomic” is derived from human biology – autonomic nervous system. – adjusts to many situations automatically without external help. – ANS monitors your heartbeat, checks your blood sugar level and keeps your body temperature close to 37, without any conscious effort on your part. § The vision: computing systems that can manage themselves given high-level objectives from administrators. – – – Manage complexity “Know” themselves Continuously tune themselves Adapt to unpredictable conditions Prevent and recover from failures Provide a secure environment 5

Components of Self-Management § self-configuring § self-healing § self-optimizing § self-protecting – components adapt dynamically to changes in the IT system, using policies provided by IT professionals. – e. g. deployment of new components, removal of existing components – environments can detect problematic operations and then initiate corrective action – system identifies and isolates a failed component. Comp. is taken offline, repaired or replaced. – to make the best use of available resources even though these resources and requirements are constantly changing. – to allow authorized people to access the right data at the right time – to detect hostile or intrusive behaviour – to take autonomous actions to make the system less vulnerable. 6

the autonomic element autonomic manager Sensors Effectors Analyze Monitor Plan Execute Knowledge Sensors Effectors Element 7

autonomic manager collaboration customer order solution database management vendor relationship solution database resource server management 8

Technologies & Tools (1) § IBM Emerging Technologies Toolkit (ETTK) – software development kit for designing, developing, and executing emerging autonomic, web service, and gridrelated technologies. – evolved from the Web Services Toolkit (WSTK) – includes a fully-functioning SOAP engine and embedded application server – provides • basic software components to experiment with and create Web services and autonomic programs • architectural overview of autonomic technologies, Web services, sample programs, utility services and tools for developing and deploying autonomic programs and Web services. – Technologies: WSDL, SOAP, WS-Resource. Framework 9

Technologies & Tools (2) § IBM Autonomic Computing Toolkit 2. 0 – The IBM autonomic computing toolkit is a collection of • • • technologies, tools, examples, scenarios, and documentation that is designed for users wanting to learn about, adapt, and develop autonomic behaviour in their products and systems. 10

Technologies & Tools (3) § IBM Autonomic Computing Toolkit 2. 0 – Technologies • Autonomic Management Engine • Generic Log Adapter (to translate product log messages into a Common Base Event data format) • Log and Trace Analyzer • Integrated Solutions Console • Solution Install – Tools • Integrated Solutions Console Toolkit • Resource Model Builder • Adapter Rule Editor 11

AC and the Grid § Grid as an enabling technology – The Grid provides the open protocols needed for AC, like OGSA, WS-RF § Autonomic Grid Applications – context-aware self-managing applications in widely distributed, heterogeneous Grid environments – Extending the Grid middleware by autonomic capabilities 12

What Can AC Do For Us? Help to make the interactive data analysis stable, in a heterogeneous Grid environment 13

Making Interactive Data Analysis Robust – Improving PROOF § Applying autonomic computing concepts, but dynamically at runtime rather than for system administration purposes § self-configuration – dynamic slaves • PROOF slaves leave (e. g. resources are not longer available) • PROOF slaves join (e. g. new resources become free) – if user aborts execution, all processes should be aborted too (Ctrl-C feature) 14

Making Interactive Data Analysis Robust – Improving PROOF § self-healing – analyse why processes are dying • e. g. error in selector script (DIV by 0) – find the best strategy to recover from the error • restart the process on another CPU? • what about intermediate results? § self-optimization – Learn from previous analysis sessions how to improve performance § self-protection – Analysis of possible threats has to be done – Security issues (authentication, encryption, …) – Protected environments for selector scripts 15

Conclusion § autonomic computing is a concept of selfmanaging IT systems, analogous to the autonomic nervous system of the human (animal) body § the principles of the autonomic computing can be used to make the interactive data analysis framework more robust (i. e. PROOF) § To do so, the IBM focus of AC – the selfmanagement of an IT system infrastructure to reduce IT costs – has to be shifted to the selfmanagement of the distributed interactive data analysis process 16