Autonomic Systems

Autonomic computer systems are the systems capable of self-management. They overcome the rapidly growing complexity of computing systems management and reduce the barrier that complexity poses to further growth.

            In other words, autonomic computing refers to the self-managing characteristics of distributed computing resources, adapting to unpredictable changes whilst hiding intrinsic complexity to operators and users. 

            It is inspired by the autonomic nervous system of the human body. This nervous system controls important bodily functions (e.g. respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure) without any conscious intervention.

Features

An autonomic system can have following features 

•   Make decisions on its own,
•   Will constantly check and optimize its status
•   Automatically adapt itself to changing conditions. 

The Autonomic Computing Initiative (ACI) aims at providing the foundation for autonomic systems. An autonomic computing framework can be build by Autonomic Components interacting with each other.

An Autonomic Components can be modeled with 

•   Sensors (for self-monitoring)
•   Effectors (for self-adjustment)
•   Knowledge and adapter (for exploiting policies based on self- and environment awareness).

 

Benefits of autonomic systems

•   They enable modern, networked computing systems to manage themselves without direct human intervention. 

•   Here human operator takes on a new role: He does not control the system directly. Instead, he defines general policies and rules that serve as an input for the self-management process. For this process.

•   IBM has defined the following four functional areas for autonomic systems

 

1.      Self-Configuration: Automatic configuration of components;

2.      Self-Healing: Automatic discovery, and correction of faults;

3.      Self-Optimization: Automatic monitoring and control of resources to ensure the optimal functioning with respect to the defined requirements;

4.      Self-Protection: Proactive identification and protection from arbitrary attacks.