Modal Policy Management Framework for Management of Distributed Systems

Policy-based management has emerged as a promising solution for the management of large-scale and heterogeneous networks, since it can reduce complexity in management applications. Meanwhile, one of the key challenges is to may require adaptation of existing policies to dynamic and distributed circumstances. Thus, policies themselves need to be managed and adapted. Modal policy management framework (MPMF) is proposed to supports collaborative management operations and dynamic adaptation of policy in response to changes within the managed environment. A large scale distributed management system is divided into many management domains to autonomous management. Global state view is acquired through resource pool and the corresponding triggering update mechanism. A modal logic-based policy definition language and its syntax are defined, which can be used to describe system's goal and decision functions. Finally, the monitoring and management model is presented to show that MPMF can meet the requirements of management of distributed systems.