Federation Lifecycle Management Incorporating Coordination of Bio-inspired Self-management Processes

Abstract

As it has evolved, the Internet has had to support a broadening range of networking technologies, business models and user interaction modes. Researchers and industry practitioners have realised that this trend necessitates a fundamental rethink- ing of approaches to network and service management. This has spurred signi cant research e orts towards developing autonomic network management solutions incor- porating distributed self-management processes inspired by biological systems. Whilst signi cant advances have been made, most solutions focus on management of single network domains and the optimisation of speci c management or control processes therein. In this paper we argue that a networking infrastructure providing a myriad of loosely coupled services must inherently support federation of network domains and facilitate coordination of the operation of various management processes for mutual bene t. To this end, we outline a framework for federated management that facilitates the coordination of the behaviour of bio-inspired management processes. Using a case study relating to distribution of IPTV content, we describe how Federal Relationship Managers realising our layered model of management federations can communicate to manage service provision across multiple application/storage/network providers. We outline an illustrative example in which storage providers are dynamically added to a federation to accommodate demand spikes, with appropriate content being migrated to those providers servers under control of a bio-inspired replication process.