Autonomic Network Management,

Some Pragmatic ConsiderationsRichard Mortier, MSR Cambridge

Emre Kıcıman, MSR Redmond

Autonomic network management

• Automatic techniques to increase reliability and performance while reducing cost

• A very wide range of techniques exists– Simplistic control loops– Explicit modelling– Gossip/swarming/biological paradigms– …

• Some work well, some still experimental

Roadmap

• A position paper– Some thoughts on successful applications

based on a few historical examples– I will outline our position, leaving detailed

examples to paper

• Disclaimer– Neither of us are autonomic gurus– Neither of us “do” control theory

Three modest proposals

• In paper, with reference to examples

1. Beware interacting control loops

2. Be explicit (in goals and assumptions)

3. Help people help the system

• Clearly many other useful guidelines exist– Question: where are they written down?

Beware interacting control loops

• I am not a control theory person, but…

• …interacting control loops are complex

• Avoid uncontrolled/accidental interactions – Designed interactions can be very welcome– c.f. Session 1, Session 2

Be explicit

• Making assumptions and goals explicit is just good system design practice– If you don’t know what it’s supposed to do, and when,

how can you know what it will do?

• Automatic determination and handling of failure– Can we minimize intervention by self-testing?

• Design for maintenance, upgrade, extension– No large system is truly static– c.f. Session 1, 2

Help people help the system

• Operator intervention is normal behavior – Blind intervention is highly disruptive– Even partially sighted intervention unhelpful

• Design for measurement– Even in a perfect system, operators will want

to know it’s perfect!– c.f. Session 3

Concluding thoughts

• We proposed some guidelines for ANM– From examining historically successful systems– Prerequisites for modelling, composability– Yes they may seem obvious, but …

• None of them address another very tricky area– “inter-foo” problems: economics, regulations, policy conflicts

• Questions– Can we build even a single self-managing computer?– Is this any simpler than a self-managing network?

• Is it a requirement for a self-managing network?

– When should we stop? • Who are we building the self-managing network for?