Autonomic computing (AC) is
distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers.
The components of a distributed system commu ...
resources with
self-managing characteristics, adapting to unpredictable changes while hiding intrinsic complexity to operators and users. Initiated by
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
in 2001, this initiative ultimately aimed to develop computer systems capable of self-management, to overcome the rapidly growing complexity of computing
systems management
Systems management is enterprise-wide System administration, administration of distributed systems including (and commonly in practice) computer systems. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management initiatives in telecommunic ...
, and to reduce the barrier that complexity poses to further growth.
Description
The AC system concept is designed to make adaptive decisions, using high-level policies. It will constantly check and optimize its status and automatically adapt itself to changing conditions. An autonomic computing framework is composed of autonomic
component
Component may refer to:
In engineering, science, and technology Generic systems
*System components, an entity with discrete structure, such as an assembly or software module, within a system considered at a particular level of analysis
* Lumped e ...
s (AC) interacting with each other. An AC can be modeled in terms of two main control schemes (local and global) with
sensor
A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal.
In the broadest definition, a sensor is a devi ...
s (for
self-monitoring),
effectors (for self-adjustment), knowledge and planner/adapter for exploiting policies based on self- and environment awareness. This architecture is sometimes referred to as Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute (MAPE).
Driven by such vision, a variety of architectural frameworks based on "
self-regulating" autonomic components has been recently proposed. A similar trend has recently characterized significant research in the area of
multi-agent systems. However, most of these approaches are typically conceived with centralized or cluster-based
server architectures in mind and mostly address the need of reducing management costs rather than the need of enabling complex software systems or providing innovative services. Some
autonomic systems involve mobile agents interacting via loosely coupled communication mechanisms.
''Autonomy-oriented computation'' is a paradigm proposed by Jiming Liu in 2001 that uses artificial systems imitating
social animals' collective behaviours to solve difficult computational problems. For example,
ant colony optimization could be studied in this paradigm.
Problem of growing complexity
Forecasts suggested that the computing devices in use would grow at 38% per year
and the average complexity of each device was increasing.
This volume and complexity was managed by highly skilled humans; but the demand for skilled IT personnel was already outstripping supply, with labour costs exceeding equipment costs by a ratio of up to 18:1. Computing systems have brought great benefits of speed and automation but there is now an overwhelming economic need to automate their maintenance.
In a 2003
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines.
The IEEE ...
''
Computer
A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
'' article, Kephart and Chess
warn that the dream of interconnectivity of computing systems and devices could become the "nightmare of
pervasive computing" in which architects are unable to anticipate, design and maintain the
complexity
Complexity characterizes the behavior of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.
The term is generally used to c ...
of interactions. They state the essence of autonomic computing is system self-management, freeing administrators from low-level task management while delivering better system behavior.
A general problem of modern
distributed computing systems is that their
complexity
Complexity characterizes the behavior of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.
The term is generally used to c ...
, and in particular the complexity of their management, is becoming a significant limiting factor in their further development. Large companies and institutions are employing large-scale
computer network
A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
s for communication and computation. The distributed applications running on these computer networks are diverse and deal with multiple tasks, ranging from internal control processes to presenting web content to customer support.
Additionally,
mobile computing
Mobile computing is human–computer interaction in which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage and allow for transmission of data, which can include voice and video transmissions. Mobile computing involves mobile commun ...
is pervading these networks at an increasing speed: employees need to communicate with their companies while they are not in their office. They do so by using
laptop
A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...
s,
personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...
s, or
mobile phones
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...
with diverse forms of
wireless
Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided transm ...
technologies to access their companies' data.
This creates an enormous complexity in the overall computer network which is hard to control manually by human operators. Manual control is time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone. The manual effort needed to control a growing networked computer-system tends to increase quickly.
80% of such problems in infrastructure happen at the client specific application and database layer. Most 'autonomic' service providers guarantee only up to the basic plumbing layer (power, hardware,
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
, network and basic database parameters).
Characteristics of autonomic systems
A possible solution could be to enable modern, networked computing systems to manage themselves without direct human intervention. The ''Autonomic Computing Initiative'' (ACI) aims at providing the foundation for autonomic systems. It is inspired by the
autonomic nervous system
The autonomic nervous system (ANS), sometimes called the visceral nervous system and formerly the vegetative nervous system, is a division of the nervous system that operates viscera, internal organs, smooth muscle and glands. The autonomic nervo ...
of the human body. This nervous system controls important bodily functions (e.g. respiration,
heart rate
Heart rate is the frequency of the cardiac cycle, heartbeat measured by the number of contractions of the heart per minute (''beats per minute'', or bpm). The heart rate varies according to the body's Human body, physical needs, including the nee ...
, and
blood pressure
Blood pressure (BP) is the pressure of Circulatory system, circulating blood against the walls of blood vessels. Most of this pressure results from the heart pumping blood through the circulatory system. When used without qualification, the term ...
) without any conscious intervention.
In a
self-managing autonomic system, the human operator takes on a new role: instead of controlling the system directly, he/she defines general policies and rules that guide the self-management process. For this process, IBM defined the following four types of property referred to as self-star (also called self-*, self-x, or auto-*) properties.
# Self-configuration: Automatic configuration of components;
# Self-healing: Automatic discovery, and correction of faults;
#
Self-optimization: Automatic monitoring and control of resources to ensure the optimal functioning with respect to the defined requirements;
# Self-protection: Proactive identification and protection from arbitrary attacks.
Others such as Poslad
and Nami and Sharifi
[
] have expanded on the set of self-star as follows:
#
Self-regulation: A system that operates to maintain some parameter, e.g.,
Quality of service
Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...
, within a reset range without external control;
# Self-learning: Systems use machine learning techniques such as
unsupervised learning
Unsupervised learning is a framework in machine learning where, in contrast to supervised learning, algorithms learn patterns exclusively from unlabeled data. Other frameworks in the spectrum of supervisions include weak- or semi-supervision, wh ...
which does not require external control;
#
Self-awareness
In philosophy of self, philosophy, self-awareness is the awareness and reflection of one's own personality or individuality, including traits, feelings, and behaviors. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While ...
(also called Self-inspection and Self-decision): System must know itself. It must know the extent of its own resources and the resources it links to. A system must be aware of its internal components and external links in order to control and manage them;
#
Self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...
: System structure driven by physics-type models without explicit pressure or involvement from outside the system;
# Self-creation (also called
Self-assembly
Self-assembly is a process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction. When the ...
,
Self-replication): System driven by ecological and social type models without explicit pressure or involvement from outside the system. A system's members are self-motivated and self-driven, generating complexity and order in a creative response to a continuously changing strategic demand;
# Self-management (also called self-governance): A system that manages itself without external intervention. What is being managed can vary dependent on the system and application. Self -management also refers to a set of self-star processes such as autonomic computing rather than a single self-star process;
# Self-description (also called self-explanation or Self-representation): A system explains itself. It is capable of being understood (by humans) without further explanation.
IBM has set forth eight conditions that define an autonomic system:
The system must
# know itself in terms of what resources it has access to, what its capabilities and limitations are and how and why it is connected to other systems;
# be able to automatically configure and reconfigure itself depending on the changing computing environment;
# be able to optimize its performance to ensure the most efficient computing process;
# be able to work around encountered problems by either repairing itself or routing functions away from the trouble;
# detect, identify and protect itself against various types of attacks to maintain overall system security and integrity;
# adapt to its environment as it changes, interacting with neighboring systems and establishing communication protocols;
# rely on open standards and cannot exist in a proprietary environment;
# anticipate the demand on its resources while staying transparent to users.
Even though the purpose and thus the behaviour of autonomic systems vary from system to system, every autonomic system should be able to exhibit a minimum set of properties to achieve its purpose:
#
Automatic
Automatic may refer to:
Music Bands
* Automatic (Australian band), Australian rock band
* Automatic (American band), American rock band
* The Automatic, a Welsh alternative rock band
Albums
* ''Automatic'' (Jack Bruce album), a 1983 el ...
: This essentially means being able to self-control its internal functions and operations. As such, an autonomic system must be self-contained and able to start-up and operate without any manual intervention or external help. Again, the knowledge required to bootstrap the system (''Know-how'') must be inherent to the system.
#
Adaptive: An autonomic system must be able to change its operation (i.e., its configuration, state and functions). This will allow the system to cope with temporal and spatial changes in its operational context either long term (environment customisation/optimisation) or short term (exceptional conditions such as malicious attacks, faults, etc.).
#
Aware: An autonomic system must be able to monitor (sense) its operational context as well as its internal state in order to be able to assess if its current operation serves its purpose. Awareness will control adaptation of its operational behaviour in response to context or state changes.
Evolutionary levels
IBM defined five evolutionary levels, or the ''autonomic deployment model'', for the deployment of autonomic systems:
* Level 1 is the basic level that presents the current situation where systems are essentially managed manually.
* Levels 2–4 introduce increasingly automated management functions, while
* level 5 represents the ultimate goal of autonomic, self-managing systems.
Design patterns
The design complexity of Autonomic Systems can be simplified by utilizing
design patterns such as the
model–view–controller
Model–view–controller (MVC) is a software architectural pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divides the related program logic into three interconnected elements. These elements are:
* the model, the internal representat ...
(MVC) pattern to improve
concern separation by
encapsulating functional concerns.
Control loops
A basic concept that will be applied in Autonomic Systems are
closed control loops. This well-known concept stems from
Process Control
Industrial process control (IPC) or simply process control is a system used in modern manufacturing which uses the principles of control theory and physical industrial control systems to monitor, control and optimize continuous Industrial processe ...
Theory. Essentially, a closed control loop in a self-managing system monitors some resource (software or hardware component) and autonomously tries to keep its parameters within a desired range.
According to IBM, hundreds or even thousands of these control loops are expected to work in a large-scale self-managing computer system.
Conceptual model
A fundamental building block of an autonomic system is the sensing capability (''Sensors S
i''), which enables the system to observe its external operational context. Inherent to an autonomic system is the knowledge of the ''Purpose'' (intention) and the ''Know-how'' to operate itself (e.g.,
bootstrapping
In general, bootstrapping usually refers to a self-starting process that is supposed to continue or grow without external input. Many analytical techniques are often called bootstrap methods in reference to their self-starting or self-supporting ...
, configuration knowledge, interpretation of sensory data, etc.) without external intervention. The actual operation of the autonomic system is dictated by the ''Logic'', which is responsible for making the right decisions to serve its ''Purpose'', and influence by the observation of the operational context (based on the sensor input).
This model highlights the fact that the operation of an autonomic system is purpose-driven. This includes its mission (e.g., the service it is supposed to offer), the policies (e.g., that define the basic behaviour), and the "
survival instinct". If seen as a control system this would be encoded as a feedback error function or in a heuristically assisted system as an algorithm combined with set of
heuristic
A heuristic or heuristic technique (''problem solving'', '' mental shortcut'', ''rule of thumb'') is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless ...
s bounding its operational space.
See also
*
Autonomic networking
*
Autonomic nervous system
The autonomic nervous system (ANS), sometimes called the visceral nervous system and formerly the vegetative nervous system, is a division of the nervous system that operates viscera, internal organs, smooth muscle and glands. The autonomic nervo ...
*
Organic computing
Organic computing is computing that behaves and interacts with humans in an organic (model), organic manner. The term "organic" is used to describe the system's behavior, and does not imply that they are constructed from Organic matter, organic ma ...
*
Resilience (network)
References
External links
International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2013) Autonomic Computing by Richard Murch published by IBM PressPractical Autonomic Computing – Roadmap to Self Managing TechnologyAutonomic computing blogWhitestein Technologies – provider of development and integration environment for autonomic computing softwareApplied Autonomics provides Autonomic Web ServicesEnigmatec Website – providers of autonomic computing softwareHandsfree Networks – providers of autonomic computing software
CASCADAS Project: Component-ware for Autonomic, Situation-aware Communications And Dynamically Adaptable, funded by the European UnionCASCADAS Autonomic Tool-Kit in Open SourceANA Project: Autonomic Network Architecture Research Project, funded by the European Union*
ttp://www.bsc.es/autonomic Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Autonomic Systems and eBusiness PlatformsSOCRATES: Self-Optimization and Self-Configuration in Wireless NetworksDynamically Self Configuring Automotive SystemsASSL (Autonomic System Specification Language) : A Framework for Specification, Validation and Generation of Autonomic Systems*
tp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/library/medoc.ustuttgart_fi/DIP-2787/DIP-2787.pdf Explanation of Autonomic Computing and its usage for business processes (IBM)- in GermanAutonomic Computing Architecture in the RKBExplorerInternational Journal of Autonomic ComputingBiSNET/e: A Cognitive Sensor Networking Architecture with Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization
Licas: Open source framework for building service-based networks with integrated Autonomic Manager.
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