Self-Managing Systems: A Control Theory Foundation

Joseph L. Hellerstein IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, New York, USA email: hellers@us.ibm.com

Autonomic Manager

Analyze Knowledge Monitor

Plan

Execute

Sensor

Effector Resource

Figure 1. Architecture for Autonomic Computing.

Extended Abstract
The high cost of ownership of computing systems has resulted in a number of industry initiatives to reduce the burden of operations and management by making systems more self-managing. A major challenge in realizing selfmanaging systems is understanding how automated actions affect system behavior, especially system stability. Other disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, and aeronautical engineering make use of control theory to design feedback systems. This talk uses control theory as a way to identify a number of requirements for and challenges in building selfmanaging systems. The IBM Autonomic Computing Architecture provides a framework in which to build self-managing systems. Figure 1 depicts the components and key interactions for a single autonomic manager and a single resource. The resource (sometimes called a managed resource) is what is being made more self-managing. This could be a single system (or even an application within a system), or it may be a collection of many logically related systems. Sensors provide a way to obtain measurement data from resources, and effectors provide a means to change the behavior of the resource.

Autonomic managers read sensor data and manipulate effectors to make resources more self-managing. The autonomic manager contains components for monitoring, analysis, planning, and execution, and common to all of these is knowledge of the computing environment, service level agreements, and other related considerations. The monitoring component lters and correlates sensor data. The analysis component processes these rened data to do forecasting and problem determination, among other activities. Planning constructs workows that specify a partial order of actions to accomplish a goal specied by the analysis component. The execute component controls the execution of such workows and provides coordination if there are multiple concurrent workows. (The term execute may be broadened to enactment to include manual actions as well.) In essence, the autonomic computing architecture describes feedback control loops for self-managing systems. This talk explores the use of control theory as a way to guide the development of autonomic systems. The talk has three goals: (1) educating systems oriented computer science researchers and practitioners on the concepts and techniques needed to apply control theory to computing systems; (2) describing how control theory can aid in building self-managing systems and identifying the challenges in doing so; and (3) describing a deployable testbed for autonomic computing that is intended to foster research that addresses the challenges identied.

Short Biography
Joseph L. Hellerstein received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Los Angles in 1984. Since then, he has been a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, New York, where he is currently senior manager of the Adaptive Systems Department. Dr. Hellerstein is a senior member of the IEEE, ACM, and the Control Systems Society. He has authored or co-authored over 80 conference and journal papers and two books; his most recent book is Feedback Control of Computing Systems (2004). Currently, he is an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Proceedings of the 29th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN04) 0742-1303/04 $ 20.00 IEEE