Automatic (Re)Configuration of IT Systems for Dependability

This paper proposes an approach for automatic, service-driven configuration of networked IT systems focused on achieving a specific set of dependability properties. An automatic process starts from a service-level model to generate dependable configurations for the managed IT infrastructure. The process uses an ontology to model the services and their dependability requirements, the IT infrastructure, the available dependability mechanisms, and their configuration. Configurations are computed by model transformation rules which implement various dependability strategies with different degrees of requirements' satisfaction. Alternative configurations are generated to allow reconfiguring the system taking into account incidents or other operational conditions. A sample system hosting services based on web technologies is used as a proof-of-concept to illustrate application and extent of our approach.