Self Management of Large-Scale Distributed Systems by Combining Structured Overlay Networks and Components

This position paper envisions making large-scale distributed applications self managing by combining component models and structured overlay networks. A key obstacle to deploying large-scale applications running on Internet is the amount of management they require. Often these applications demand specialized personnel for their maintenance. Making applications self-managing will help removing this obstacle. Basing the system on a structured overlay network will allow extending the abilities of existing component models to large-scale distributed systems. Structured overlay networks provide guarantees for efficient communication, e±cient load-balancing, and self-manage in case of joins, leaves, and failures. Component models, on the other hand, support dynamic configuration, the ability of part of the system to reconfigure other parts at run-time. By combining overlay networks with component models we achieve both low-level as well as high-level self-management. We will target multi-tier applications, and specifically we will consider three-tier applications using a self-managing storage service