Challenges and Best Practices in Policy-Based Autonomic Architectures

Based on insights from the development of a commercial framework for the autonomic management of data center resources, we identify some of the main challenges faced by autonomic architectures. We describe a number of best practices for overcoming or, in some cases, working around these challenges, and we propose a general-purpose autonomic architecture that complies with our best practices and builds on recent advances in autonomic solution development. The core component of the architecture is a universal policy engine configured by means of a model of the resources placed under its control, and using a set of flexible policies for their management. This model-driven approach enables the development of effective autonomic systems comprising a heterogeneous mix of legacy resources and autonomic-enabled components.