Self-Management with Niche, a Platform for Self-Managing Distributed Applications

Vladimir Vlassov (1) , Ahmad Al-Shishtawy (1) , Per Brand (2) , Nikos Parlavantzas (3)

1 KTH - KTH Royal Institute of Technology [Stockholm]
2 SICS
3 MYRIADS - Design and Implementation of Autonomous Distributed Systems

We present Niche, a general-purpose distributed component management system used to develop, deploy and execute self-managing distributed applications. Niche consists of both a component-based programming model as well as a distributed runtime environment. It is especially designed for complex distributed applications that run and manage themselves in dynamic and volatile environments. Self-management in dynamic environments is challenging due to the high rate of system or environmental changes and the corresponding need to frequently reconfigure, heal, and tune the application. The challenges are met partly by making use of an underlying overlay in the platform to provide an efficient, location-independent, and robust sensing and actuation infrastructure, and partly by allowing for maximum decentralization of management. We describe the overlay services, the execution environment, showing how the challenges in dynamic environments are met. We also describe the programming model and a high-level design methodology for developing decentralized management, illustrated by two application case studies.

Mots clés: self-management; component-based; distributed applications

Domaines: Calcul parallèle, distribué et partagé [cs.DC]

Vladimir Vlassov, Ahmad Al-Shishtawy, Per Brand, Nikos Parlavantzas. Self-Management with Niche, a Platform for Self-Managing Distributed Applications. Formal and Practical Aspects of Autonomic Computing and Networking: Specification, Development and Verification, IGI Global, 2011. ⟨hal-00519596⟩