Working together - Cloud Foundry Unconference Lightning Talk
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The document discusses the vision of creating self-managing computing systems called autonomic computing systems. Such systems would be able to manage themselves according to administrators' goals, similar to how the human autonomic nervous system regulates vital functions without conscious effort. As computing systems continue growing in complexity and scale, autonomic computing is presented as the only option to avoid a looming software crisis caused by the inability of humans to manage increasingly complex IT environments. The document outlines IBM's manifesto on autonomic computing and its potential to create computing hierarchies that can self-govern like natural systems.
Working together - Cloud Foundry Unconference Lightning Talk
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- 9. C O V E R F E A T U R E The Vision of Autonomic Computing Systems manage themselves according to an administrator’s goals. New components integrate as effortlessly as a new cell establishes itself in the human body. These ideas are not science fiction, but elements of the grand challenge to create self-managing computing systems.
- 10. I n mid-October 2001, IBM released a manifesto observing that the main obstacle to further progress in the IT industry is a looming soft- ware complexity crisis.1 The company cited applications and environments that weigh in at tens of millions of lines of code and require skilled IT professionals to install, configure, tune, and maintain. The manifesto pointed out that the difficulty of managing today’s computing systems goes well beyond the administration of individual software environments. The need to integrate several het- erogeneous environments into corporate-wide com- puting systems, and to extend that beyond company boundaries into the Internet, introduces new levels of complexity. Computing systems’ complexity appears to be approaching the limits of human capability, yet the march toward increased inter- connectivity and integration rushes ahead unabated. This march could turn the dream of pervasive computing—trillions of computing devices con- nected to the Internet—into a nightmare. Pro- gramming language innovations have extended the size and complexity of systems that architects can design, but relying solely on further innovations in programming methods will not get us through the present complexity crisis. As systems become more interconnected and figure, optimize, maintain, and merge. And there will be no way to make timely, decisive responses to the rapid stream of changing and conflicting demands. AUTONOMIC OPTION The only option remaining is autonomic com- puting—computing systems that can manage them- selves given high-level objectives from admini- strators. When IBM’s senior vice president of research, Paul Horn, introduced this idea to the National Academy of Engineers at Harvard University in a March 2001 keynote address, he deliberately chose a term with a biological conno- tation. The autonomic nervous system governs our heart rate and body temperature, thus freeing our conscious brain from the burden of dealing with these and many other low-level, yet vital, functions. The term autonomic computing is emblematic of a vast and somewhat tangled hierarchy of natural self-governing systems, many of which consist of myriad interacting, self-governing components that in turn comprise large numbers of interacting, autonomous, self-governing components at the next level down. The enormous range in scale, starting with molecular machines within cells and extending to human markets, societies, and the entire world socioeconomy, mirrors that of computing systems, Jeffrey O. Kephart David M. Chess IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center Self-Managing Systems
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