FernUni spezial

Automated Management of Distributed Systems
23. Dezember 1996

This thesis describes a concept for automation that supports efficient and effective systems management. First a management model is defined, where the basic building blocks are objects, interfaces and domains. A formal description is given for the relation between these components. Next an object-oriented management architecture that provides a general platform for automated management solutions is described. Generic management service objects are core elements of the architecture. A generic monitoring agent creates events whenever predefined thresholds are exceeded. An automatic adaptation of the polling frequency is included in order to reduce the load on the target system.

Event processing is the most essential part of any management system, because systems management is an event driven process. The described management environment provides a hierarchical structure for event correlation and composition. The proposed mechanisms for event correlation allow to reason about the occurrence of predefined event combinations with consideration of timing constraints. Additional constraints, like the current state of a managed resource, may be defined optionally. The semantic of events is increased towards the higher levels of the event processing hierarchy while the total number of events decreases.

The desired behavior of the data processing system is defined by management policies in a three level hierarchy. The highest level of the hierarchy allows the expression of informal requirements in plain English or any other language. A goal oriented middle level bridges the semantical gap between informal requirements and formal notation on the operational level. The definition of operational policies and events is clearly distinguished. Events enable reasoning about the state of the system, while operational policies define the appropriate activity when certain events occur. A Policy Definition Language (PDL) is provided on the operational level for the formal definition of desired management activities. The PDL serves as a glue between event definitions, domains, management interfaces and desired activity. All these concepts are used together to define the desired behavior of the management system.

Implementation details for a prototype implementation in an CORBA environment conclude the thesis. An adaptive scheduler as application example illustrates the use of the described concepts.

Berichterstatter
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Krämer
Prof. Dr.- Ing. habil. Djamshid Tavangarian, University of Rostock

English Version

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