Self-managing systems are here

As administrators struggle to manage complex IT resources, one of the best solutions to the problem is infrastructure that has the capability to manage itself and deal with most routine problems without human intervention. Rajesh Saha explains what self-managing systems are all about

The line between fact and fiction is not as clear as it used to be. New generations of scientists and inventors keep making possible what was thought impossible just a few years before.

This is especially true in the information technology industry where the pace of innovation seems to be moving at the speed of light. Non-stop performance enhancements in chip speed, system reliability and even the creation of ‘intelligent infrastructure’ are making technology more accessible to more people every day.

Ironically, this has led to a growing problem in the industry. As we get better and better technology with increasing price performance, managing those technologies has become the customer’s number one problem. Some studies have shown that in five years, given the growing shortage of trained systems administrators, the majority of corporations will not be able to manage their systems using current computing technologies

Taking a leaf from Mother Nature

The best self-managing system the world has ever known is the human body. Our bodies autonomously perform a hundred different tasks a day to combat disease, repair wounds, convert food to energy, and basically, help us function on a day to day basis. Without any conscious intervention of any kind, we breathe, fight off infections, and get fed adrenaline when we are excited or threatened and endorphins when we are happy. The multiple systems in the body—respiratory, circulatory, muscular, digestive and others work together in tandem to make all this possible.

This is what scientists today are trying to create with self-managing computer systems. The ultimate goal is to give businesses the ability to manage systems and technology infrastructures that are hundreds of times more complex than those in existence today through what is also known as ‘autonomic computing.’ This means computer systems should be able to self-optimise, self-configure, self-protect and self-heal.

The world of self-managing systems

By creating e-business infrastructure that is autonomous and self-managing, companies will benefit in the following ways:

• Self-optimisation—Improved resource management and automation capabilities
  Self-optimisation requires a system to efficiently maximise resource utilisation to meet end-user needs with no human intervention required. Today’s systems already include industry-leading technologies like logical partitioning, dynamic workload management and dynamic server clustering. These capabilities are being extended across multiple heterogeneous systems to provide a single collection of resources to be managed by a single workload manager across the enterprise. This will allow systems to be used in an optimal fashion to meet end-user needs across the enterprise.
  
  
• Self-configuring—The ability to configure the system on-the-fly
  Self-configuring means the ability for servers to define themselves on-the fly. New features, software, and servers can be dynamically added to the enterprise infrastructure with no disruption of services, and with minimum human intervention. Self-configuring not only includes the ability for each individual system to configure itself on-the-fly, but also for servers within the enterprise to ‘configure themselves’ into the enterprise’s e-business infrastructure.
  
  
• Self-healing—Repair problems online
  For a system to be self-healing, it must be able to recover from a failing component by first detecting and isolating the failed component, taking it offline, fixing or isolating the failed component, and reintroducing the fixed or replacement component into service without any application disruption. The self-healing objective is to minimise all outages—to keep enterprise applications up and available at all times. This strategy includes maximising reliability and availability design with each hardware and software product to maintain continuous availability applications and systems.
  
  
• Self-protecting—Defend against unauthorised access
  Self-protecting systems provide the ability to define and manage access from users to all resources within the enterprise, protect against unauthorised resource access, detect intrusions and report these activities as they occur, and provide back-up/recovery capabilities that are as secure as the original resource management systems.

Is it available today?

The quest to build ever intelligent and self-managing system is an ongoing one. However, various examples of self-managing technologies already exist today and are in use at organisations.

For instance, the Insurance Management Solutions Group (IMSG) offers business process and e-commerce outsourcing to keep many of the largest US insurance carriers on the leading edge of their industry. To stay ahead of its own competitors, the company realised that it needed to rapidly Web-enable its quoting, policy management and reporting applications. They invested in a solution with self-optimising technology, which ensured their requirement for nearly continuous uptime was met. The use of logical partitioning helped spread the company’s applications and dynamically allocate resources throughout the system to achieve high levels of availability and redundancy.

In the highly security-conscious banking industry, Danske Bank got itself a virtual black belt in self-defence as they recognised that a secure, efficient and available IT environment goes a long way. High-end servers helped Danske Bank establish an effective ‘one user, one identity’ security strategy. Self-protecting technology, including Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Remote Access Control Facility (RACF) and digital signatures helped ease the verification and authentication workload for the bank’s IT personnel.

The time is now

Self-managing systems exist today. They have the ability to reduce the TCO of corporate IT systems and optimise the use of limited IT personnel resources through smarter and tougher infrastructure solutions. The best is yet to come as competitive forces in the technology industry drive each vendor to push the envelope ever further in the quest to build more and more intelligent infrastructure, at better price performance year after year.

The author is country manager-zSeries, IBM India