Automating Infrastructure Composition for Internet Services
Todd Poynor · USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference · 2001
This paper describes a framework for automatically configuring relationships that tie together the software and hardware infrastructure components for an Internet-based service, which we also call composing the service infrastructure. Management and infrastructure software employ the framework to specify, discover, and react to changes in the infrastructure components participating in the service, automatically configuring cross-component relationships based on this information. This plays a key role in increasing the flexibility of a highly dynamic service infrastructure by reducing manual configuration required to redeploy resources. The framework also facilitates enterprises distributed across multiple autonomous administrative domains by automating chores required to tie resources distributed among the domains together into a cohesive service. We advocate extending existing service discovery protocols to distribute the information needed by the framework and suggest this as an area for future standardization.