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Abstract
Computing technology has progressed rapidly over the last several decades with implementations and
applications that were unthinkable a decade ago now commonplace. The rate of progress, however, has
brought its own cost. As large IT infrastructures grow more complex the cost of managing these systems
has increased rapidly. As a result a greater percentage of the IT budget is going toward maintenance of the
infrastructure rather than improving its benefit to the business. The complexity of such a computing
infrastructure requires that the environment become more “autonomic” -- that is, self-managing.
Developing self-managing computing resources is not a new problem for computer scientists. For
decades system components and software have been evolving to deal with the increased complexity of
system control, resource sharing, and operational management. The advent of the Internet and
dramatically increased price performance of information technology in the last few years has led to a huge
growth in the scale and complexity of computing systems. Autonomic computing is the next logical
evolution of these past trends to address the increasingly complex and distributed computing environments
of today.

Keywords
Autonomic computing, self-managing systems, predictive control, processor power management

Abstract

Autonomic computing systems have the ability to manage themselves

and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business policies and objectives. Self-managing
systems can perform management activities based on situations they observe or sense in the IT
environment. Rather than IT professionals initiating management activities, the system observes
something about itself and acts accordingly. This allows the IT Professional to focus on high-value
tasks while the technology manages the more mundane operations.

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Chapter 1
Introduction

The high-tech industry has spent decades creating computer systems with ever mounting
degrees of complexity to solve a wide variety of business problems. Ironically, complexity itself has
become part of the problem. As networks and distributed systems grow and change, they can
become increasingly hampered by system deployment failures, hardware and software issues, not to
mention human error. Such scenarios in turn require further human intervention to enhance the
performance and capacity of IT components. This drives up the overall IT costs—even though
technology component costs continue to decline. As a result, many IT professionals seek ways to
improve their return on investment in their IT infrastructure, by reducing the total cost of
ownership of their environments while improving the quality of service for users.

Software developers have fully exploited a four to six order-of-magnitude increase in

computational power producing ever more sophisticated software applications and environments. There
has been exponential growth in the number and variety of systems and components. The value of database
technology and the Internet has fueled significant growth in storage subsystems, which are now capable of
holding petabytes of structured and unstructured information. Networks have interconnected our
distributed, heterogeneous systems. Our information society creates unpredictable and highly variable
workloads on those networked systems. And today, those increasingly valuable, complex systems require
more and more skilled IT professionals to install, configure, operate, tune and maintain.

Autonomic computingSelf managing computing helps in addressing these complexity issues by

using technology to manage technology. The idea is not new many of the major players in the
industry have developed and delivered products based on this concept. Self managing computing is
also known as autonomic computing.

The term autonomic is derived from human biology. The autonomic nervous system
monitors your heartbeat, checks your blood sugar level and keeps your body temperature close to
98.6°F, without any conscious effort on your part. In much the same way, autonomic computingself

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managing computing components anticipate computer system needs and resolve problems with
minimal human intervention.

However, there is an important distinction between autonomic activity in the human body and
autonomic responses in computer systems. Many of the decisions made by autonomic elements in the
body are involuntary, whereas autonomic elements in computer systems make decisions based on tasks
you choose to delegate to the technology. In other words, adaptable policy rather than rigid hard coding
determines the types of decisions and actions autonomic elements make in computer systems.

Autonomic computingSelf managing computing systems have the ability to manage themselves
and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business policies and objectives. Self-managing
systems can perform management activities based on situations they observe or sense in the IT
environment. Rather than IT professionals initiating management activities, the system observes
something about itself and acts accordingly. This allows the IT professional to focus on high-value
tasks while the technology manages the more mundane operations. Autonomic computingSelf
managing computing can result in a significant improvement in system management efficiency, when
the disparate technologies that manage the environment work together to deliver performance
results system wide.

However, complete autonomic systems do not yet exist. This is not a proprietary solution. It's
a radical change in the way businesses, academia, and even the government design, develop, manage
and maintain computer systems. Autonomic computingSelf managing computing calls for a whole new
area of study and a whole new way of conducting business.

Autonomic computingSelf managing computing is the self-management of e-business

infrastructure, balancing what is managed by the IT professional and what is managed by the
system. It is the evolution of e-business.

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Chapter 2
2.1 What is autonomic computingself managing computing?

Autonomic computingSelf managing computing is about freeing IT professionals to focus on

high-value tasks by making technology work smarter. This means letting computing systems and
infrastructure take care of managing themselves. Ultimately, it is writing business policies and goals
and letting the infrastructure configure, heal and optimize itself according to those policies while
protecting itself from malicious activities. Autonomic computingSelf managing computing systems
have the ability to manage themselves and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business
policies and objectives.

In an autonomic environment the IT infrastructure and its components are Self-managing.

Systems with self-managing components reduce the cost of owning and operating computer systems.
Self-managing systems can perform management activities based on situations they observe or sense
in the IT environment. Rather than IT professionals initiating management activities, the system
observes something about itself and acts accordingly. This allows the IT professional to focus on
high-value tasks while the technology manages the more mundane operations. IT infrastructure
components take on the following characteristics: self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and
self-protecting.

Self-configuring

Systems adapt automatically to dynamically changing environments. When hardware and

software systems have the ability to define themselves “on-the fly,” they are self-configuring. This
aspect of self-managing means that new features, software, and servers can be dynamically added to
the enterprise infrastructure with no disruption of services. Systems must be designed to provide this
aspect at a feature level with capabilities such as plug and play devices, configuration setup wizards, and
wireless server management. These features will allow functions to be added dynamically to the enterprise
infrastructure with minimum human intervention. Self-configuring not only includes the ability for
each individual system to configure itself on the fly, but also for systems within the enterprise to

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configure themselves into the e-business infrastructure of the enterprise. The goal of autonomic
computingself managing computing is to provide self-configuration capabilities for the entire IT
infrastructure, not just individual servers, software, and storage devices.

Self- healing
Systems discover, diagnose, and react to disruptions. For a system to be self-healing, it must
be able to recover from a failed component by first detecting and isolating the failed component,
taking it off line, fixing or isolating the failed component, and reintroducing the fixed or
replacement component into service without any apparent application disruption. Systems will need
to predict problems and take actions to prevent the failure from having an impact on applications.
The self-healing objective must be to minimize all outages in order to keep enterprise applications
up and available at all times. Developers of system components need to focus on maximizing the
reliability and availability design of each hardware and software product toward continuous
availability.

Self-optimizing.

Systems monitor and tune resources automatically. Self-optimization requires hardware and
software systems to efficiently maximize resource utilization to meet end-user needs without human
intervention. IBM systems already include industry leading technologies such as logical partitioning,
dynamic workload management, and dynamic server clustering. These kinds of capabilities should be
extended across multiple heterogeneous systems to provide a single collection of computing resources that
could be managed by a “logical” workload manager across the enterprise. Resource allocation and
workload management must allow dynamic redistribution of workloads to systems that have the necessary
resources to meet workload requirements. Similarly, storage, databases, networks, and other resources
must be continually tuned to enable efficient operations even in unpredictable environments. Features
must be introduced to allow the enterprise to optimize resource usage across the collection of
systems within their infrastructure, while also maintaining their flexibility to meet the ever-
changing needs of the enterprise.

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Self-protecting.

Systems anticipateanticipate, detect, identify, and protect themselves from attacks from
anywhere. Self-protecting systems must have the ability to define and manage user access to all
computing resources within the enterprise, to protect against unauthorized resource access, to
detect intrusions and report and prevent these activities as they occur, and to provide backup and
recovery capabilities that are as secure as the original resource management systems. Systems will
need to build on top of a number of core security technologies already available today. Capabilities
must be provided to more easily understand and handle user identities in various contexts,
removing the burden from administrators.

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2.2 Characteristics – The Eight Elements

 To be autonomic, a system needs to “know itself”— and consist of components that also possess a
system identity.

( An autonomic system must configure and reconfigure itself under varying and unpredictable
conditions.

 An autonomic system never settles for the status quo—it always looks for ways to optimize its
workings.

 An autonomic system must perform something akin to healing—it must be able to recover from
routine and extraordinary events that might cause some parts to malfunction.

 A virtual world is no less dangerous than the physical one, so an autonomic computingself
managing computing system must be an expert in self-protection.

 AnA autonomic computingself managing computing system knows its environment and the context
surrounding its activity, and acts accordingly.

 An autonomic system cannot exist in a hermetic environment (and must adhere to open
standards).

 Perhaps most critical for the user, an autonomic computingself managing computing system will
anticipate the optimized resources needed to meet a user’s information needs while keeping its
complexity hidden.

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Chapter 3
Path to Autonomic ComputingSelf managing computing

Delivering system wide autonomic environments is an evolutionary process enabled by

technology, but it is ultimately implemented by each enterprise through the adoption of these
technologies and supporting processes. The path to autonomic computingself managing computing can
be thought of in five levels. These levels, defined below, start at basic and continue through
managed, predictive, adaptive and finally autonomic.

1. 1. Basic levell—a
A starting point of IT environment. Each infrastructure element is managed independently by
IT professionals who set it up, monitor it and eventually replace it.

2. 2. Managed level—
Ssystems management technologies can be used to collect information from disparate
systems onto fewer consoles, reducing the time it takes for the administrator to collect and
synthesize information as the IT environment becomes more complex.

3. 3. Predictive level
—Nnew technologies are introduced to provide correlation among several infrastructure
elements. These elements can begin to recognize patterns, predict the optimal configuration and
provide advice on what course of action the administrator should take.

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4. 4. Adaptive level
—Aas these technologies improve and as people become more comfortable with the advice
and predictive power of these systems, we can progress to the adaptive level, where the systems
themselves can automatically take the right actions based on the information that is available to
them and the knowledge of what is happening in the system.

5. 5. Autonomic level
—Tthe IT infrastructure operation is governed by business policies and objectives. Users
interact with the autonomic technology to monitor the business processes, alter the objectives, or
both.

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Grand Challenge

Research into creating autonomic systems won't be easy, but future computer systems will have to
incorporate increased levels of automation if we expect them to manage the ballooning amount of data, the
ever-expanding network and the increasing might of processing power.

To create autonomic systems researchers must address key challenges with varying levels of
complexity. Here is a partial list of the challenges we face.

 System identity:
o Before a system can transact with other systems it must know the extent of its own
boundaries. How will we design our systems to define and redefine themselves in dynamic
environments?

 Interface design:
o With a multitude of platforms running, system administrators face a briar patch of knobs.
How will we build consistent interfaces and points of control while allowing for a
heterogeneous environment?

 Translating business policy into I/T policy:

o The end result needs to be transparent to the user. How will we create human interfaces that
remove complexity and allow users to interact naturally with I/T systems?

 Systemic approach:
o Creating autonomic components is not enough. How can we unite a constellation of
autonomic components into a ffederated system?

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 Standards:
o The age of proprietary solutions is over. How can we design and support open standards
that will work?

 Adaptive algorithms:
o New methods will be needed to equip our systems to deal with changing environments and
transactions. How will we create adaptive algorithms to take previous system experience
and use that information to improve the rules?

o Improving network-monitoring functions to protect security, detect potential threats and

achieve a level of decision-making that allows for the redirection of key activities or data.


 Smarter microprocessors that can detect errors and anticipate failures.

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Chapter 4
Autonomic ComputingSelf managing computing Architecture Concepts

A standard set of functions and interactions govern the management of the IT system and its
resources, including client, server, database manager or Web application server. This is represented
by a control loop (shown in the diagram below) that acts as a manager of the resource through
monitoring, analysis and taking action based on a set of policies.

These control loops, or managers, can communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer context
and with higher-level managers. For example, a database system needs to work with the server,
storage subsystem, storage management software, the Web server and other system elements to
achieve a self-managing IT environment. The pyramid shown below represents the hierarchy in
which autonomic computingself managing computing technologies will operate.

The bottom layer of the pyramid consists of the resource elements of an enterprise networks,
servers, storage devices, applications, middleware and personal computers. Autonomic
computingSelf managing computing begins in the resource element layer, by enhancing individual
components to configure, optimize, heal and protect themselves.

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 Moving up the pyramid, resource elements are grouped into composite resources, which
begin to communicate with each other to create self-managing systems. This can be represented by a
pool of servers that work together to dynamically adjust workload and configuration to meet
certain performance and availability thresholds. It can also be represented by a combination of
heterogeneous devices (databases, Web servers and storage subsystems) that work together to achieve
performance and availability targets.

At the highest layer of the pyramid composite resources are tied to business solutions, such
as a customer care system or an electronic auction system. True autonomic activity occurs at this
level.
The solution layer requires autonomic solutions to comprehend the optimal state of business
processes based on policies, schedules, and service levels and so on and drive the consequences of process
optimization back down to the composite resources and even to individual elements.

In an autonomic environment, components work together, communicating with each other

and with high-level management tools. They regulate themselves and, sometimes, each other. They
can proactively manage the system, while hiding the inherent complexity of these activities from end
users and IT professionals.

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Another aspect of the autonomic computingself managing computing architecture is shown in the
diagram below. This portion of the architecture details the functions that can be provided for the
control loops. The architecture organizes the control loops into two major elements—a managed
element and an autonomic manager. A managed element is what the autonomic manager is
controlling. An autonomic manager is a component that implements a particular control loop.

Managed elements
The managed element is a controlled system component. There can be a single resource (a
server, database server or router) or a collection of resources (a pool of servers, cluster or business
application). The managed element is controlled through its sensors and effectors:
 The sensors provide mechanisms to collect information about the state and state transition of
an element. To implement the sensors, you can either use a set of “get” operations to retrieve
information about the current state, or a set of management events (unsolicited,
asynchronous messages or notifications) that flow when the state of the element changes in a
significant way.
 The effectors are mechanisms that change the state (configuration) of an element. In other
words, the effectors are a collection of “set” commands or application programming
interfaces (APIs) that change the configuration of the managed resource in some important
way.

The combination of sensors and effectors form the manageability interface that is available
to an autonomic manager. As shown in the figure above, by the black lines connecting the elements
on the sensors and effectors sides of the diagram, the architecture encourages the idea that sensors

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and effectors are linked together. For example, a configuration change that occurs through effectors
should be reflected as a configuration change notification through the sensor interface.

Autonomic manager

The autonomic manager is a component that implements the control loop. The architecture
dissects the loop into four parts that share knowledge:
 The monitor part provides the mechanisms that collect, aggregate, filter, manage and report
details (metrics and topologies) collected from an element.
 The analyze part provides the mechanisms to correlate and model complex situations .
situations. These mechanisms allow the autonomic manager to learn about the IT
environment and help predict future situations.
 The plan part provides the mechanisms to structure the action needed to achieve goals and
objectives. The planning mechanism uses policy information to guide its work.
 The execute part provides the mechanisms that control the execution of a plan with
considerations for on-the-fly updates.

The four parts work together to provide the control loop functionality. The diagram shows a
structural arrangement of the parts—not a control flow. The bold line that connects the four parts
should be thought of as a common messaging bus rather than a strict control flow. In other words,
there can be situations where the plan part may ask the monitor part to collect more or less
information. There could also be situations where the monitor part may trigger the plan part to
create a new plan. The four parts collaborate using asynchronous communication techniques, like a
messaging bus.

The sensors and effectors provided by the autonomic manager facilitate collaborative interaction
with other autonomic managers. In addition, autonomic managers can communicate with each
other in both peer-to-peer and hierarchical arrangements. The numerous autonomic managers in a
complex IT system must work together to deliver autonomic computingself managing computing to
achieve common goals.

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Autonomic manager knowledge
Data used by the autonomic manager’s four components are stored as shared knowledge.
The shared knowledge includes things like topology information, system logs, performance metrics
and policies.

The knowledge used by a particular autonomic manager could be created by the monitor
part, based on the information collected through sensors, or passed into the autonomic manager
through its effectors. An example of the former occurs when the monitor part creates knowledge
based on recent activities by logging the notification it receives from a managed element into a
system log. An example of the latter is policy. A policy consists of a set of behavioral constraints or
preferences that influence the decisions made by an autonomic manager. Specifically, the plan part
of an autonomic manager is responsible for interpreting and translating policy details. The analysis
part is responsible for determining if the autonomic manager can abide by the policy, now and in
the future.

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Chapter 5
Grand Challenge

Research into creating autonomic systems won't be easy, but future computer systems will
have to incorporate increased levels of automation if we expect them to manage the ballooning
amount of data, the ever-expanding network and the increasing might of processing power.
To create autonomic systems researchers must address key challenges with varying levels of
complexity. Here is a partial list of the challenges we face.

 System identity: Before a system can transact with other systems it must know the extent of
its own boundaries. How will we design our systems to define and redefine themselves in
dynamic environments?
 Interface design: With a multitude of platforms running, system administrators face a briar
patch of knobs. How will we build consistent interfaces and points of control while allowing
for a heterogeneous environment?
 Translating business policy into I/T policy : The end result needs to be transparent to the
user. How will we create human interfaces that remove complexity and allow users to
interact naturally with I/T systems?
 Systemic approach: Creating autonomic components is not enough. How can we unite a
constellation of autonomic components into a federated system?
 Standards: The age of proprietary solutions is over. How can we design and support open
standards that will work?

Adaptive algorithms: New methods will be needed to equip our systems to deal with changing
environments and transactions. How will we create adaptive algorithms to take previous system
experience and use that information to improve the rules?

Chapter 6
Implementing autonomic computingself managing computing

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 Shifting the burden of managing systems to self-managing technologies does not happen
overnight and cannot be solely accomplished by acquiring new products. Skills within the
organization need to adapt, and processes need to change to create new benchmarks of success.

As companies progress through the five levels of autonomic computingself managing

computing, the processes, tools and benchmarks become increasingly sophisticated, and the skills
requirement becomes more closely aligned with the business.

The basic level represents the starting point for many IT organizations. If IT organizations
are formally measured, they are typically evaluated on the time required to finish major tasks and
fix major problems. The IT organization is viewed as a cost center, with variable labor costs
preferred over an investment in centrally coordinated systems management tools and processes.

In the managed level IT organizations are measured on the availability of their managed
resources, their time to close trouble tickets in their problem management system and their time to
complete formally tracked work requests. To improve on these measurements, IT organizations
document their processes and continually improve them through manual feedback loops and
adoption of best practices. IT organizations gain efficiency through consolidation of management
tools to a set of strategic platforms and through a hierarchical problem management triage
organization.

In the predictive level IT organizations are measured on the availability and performance of
their business systems and their return on investment. To improve, IT organizations measure,
manage and analyze transaction performance. The critical nature of the IT organization’s role in
business success is understood. Predictive tools are used to project future IT performance, and
many tools make recommendations to improve future performance.

In the adaptive level IT resources are automatically provisioned and tuned to optimize
transaction performance. Business policies, business priorities and service-level agreements guide
the autonomic infrastructure behavior. IT organizations are measured on comprehensive business

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system response times (transaction performance), the degree of efficiency of the IT infrastructure
and their ability to adapt to shifting workloads.

In the autonomic level IT organizations are measured on their ability to make the business
successful. To improve business measurements they understand the financial metrics associated
with e-business activities and supporting IT activities. Advanced modeling techniques are used to
optimize e-business performance and quickly deploy newly optimized e-business solutions.

Conclusion
In today’s world, we have millions of businesses, billions of humans that compose them, and
trillions of devices that they will depend upon .All these require the services of the I/T industry to keep
them running. And it's not just a matter of numbers. It's the complexity of these systems and the way they
work together that is creating a shortage of skilled I/T workers to manage all of the systems. It's a problem
that's not going away, but will grow exponentially, just as our dependence on technology has.The solution
to this may lie in automation, or creating a new capacity where important computing operations can run
without the need for human intervention and that regulate themselves much in the same way our
autonomic nervous system which regulates and protects our bodies. Immediate benefits will include
reduced dependence on human intervention to maintain complex systems accompanied by a substantial
decrease in costs and a simplified user experience through a more responsive, real-time system. The IBM
vision of autonomic computing has 8 defining characteristics which are as follows:-
 An autonomic computing system needs to "know itself" - its components must also possess a
system identity.

 An autonomic computing system must configure and reconfigure itself under varying (and in the
future, even unpredictable) conditions.
 An autonomic computing system never settles for the status quo - it always looks for ways to optimize
its workings.

 An autonomic computing system must perform something akin to healing - it must be able to recover
from routine and extraordinary events that might cause some of its parts to malfunction.

 A virtual world is no less dangerous than the physical one, so an autonomic computing system must be
an expert in self-protection.

 An autonomic computing system must know its environment and the context surrounding its activity,
and act accordingly.

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 While independent in its ability to manage itself, it must function in a heterogeneous world and
implement open standards -- in other words, an autonomic computing system cannot, by definition, be a
proprietary solution.

 An autonomic computing system will anticipate the optimized resources needed while keeping its
complexity hidden.

Some components of this technology are already up and running. However, complete systems do not yet
exist. And hence much work has to be done to make this dream a reality.

References

1. www.wikipedia.org
2. www.google.com

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