Open interface for autonomic management of virtualized resources in complex systems — construction methodology

This paper is a practical report presenting the methodology for constructing an open interface for the autonomic management of virtual resources in complex systems. The described methodology supports most of the autonomic computing system requirements. The presented approach is general and can be applied to different levels of distributed computing systems, ranging from physical resources, through virtualized subsystems, up to application servers and software components. The proposed solution, illustrated by the JIMS framework, fully exploits the potential of the contemporary virtualization, SOA and Java technologies for open system implementation and management, such as JMX and Web Services. As a case study, an open interface construction for the management of Solaris 10 resources has been described in detail. Many practical remarks have been made, including conclusions drawn from system implementation. The discussion of the presented solution forms a background for more general reflections about technologies that could be exploited to build autonomic computing systems.