Optimising the execution of management functions in distributed systems
Hanan L. Lutfiyya, Michael Bauer, Hasina Abdu · 2000
With the increased availability and complexity of distributed systems comes a greater need for solutions to assist in the management of distributed system components. Despite the significant contributions made towards the development of management tools that monitor and control distributed systems, little has been done to address issues such as optimising the execution of management functions with respect to system and management requirements. This thesis presents a management optimisation model in which management agents and managed objects are efficiently configured based on a set of system and management requirements. Agents can be dynamically reconfigured to adapt to changes in these requirements. We begin by defining distributed systems and distributed system management, and present an example management framework. The optimisation model is presented and an algorithm is formalised. We then describe performance characteristics of our algorithm, followed by prototype and experiments. Finally, we describe enhancements made to the algorithm, possible applications and future research directions.